Chapter 5
OLIVIA
There’s weird, and then there’s Tuesday afternoon, hiding an orc in your cabin while grocery shopping for protein powder and burn cream weird.
I keep my head down as I make my way through the fluorescent aisles of Grubb’s General Market, trying not to look suspicious.
Which is hard when I’ve got a twenty-pound tub of whey isolate in one arm and a tube of heavy-duty burn ointment in the other.
Add in the pack of triple-A batteries Kursk insisted on after “taming” the microwave and I look like a doomsday prepper with a gym addiction.
People glance at me. Some smile. Others snicker. I can hear the whispers under their breath—“Bathroom Beast Lady,” “Cryptid Queen,” “She who sprays with foam.”
Whatever. I’ve been mocked before. I can take it.
What I can’t take is the silky, unmistakable voice that curls into my ear like the devil’s own cologne.
“Well, well. Liv. Fancy seeing you here.”
I freeze.
I turn, slowly, and there he is—Chet Goddamn Latham, in all his smug, swole, golden-boy glory. His polo shirt clings to every sculpted ab like it was vacuum-sealed. His khakis are crisp. His teeth flash like he’s auditioning for a toothpaste commercial.
Chet used to be my boyfriend. He’s also the reason I don’t date anymore.
“Chet,” I say, trying to sound neutral.
He grins wider. “Still rocking the ‘I just rolled out of bed with an existential crisis’ look, I see.”
“Oh, you know me,” I reply sweetly, “always chasing the edge of fashion and despair.”
His eyes flick to the items in my arms. His smile falters—just a fraction.
“Burn cream and bulk protein?” he says, with that practiced, faux-casual tone he uses when he’s hunting for blood. “Didn’t peg you for a CrossFit girl.”
I shrug. “Gotta keep up with the monsters in my life.”
He laughs. “Right. Monsters. You’re still doing the whole… bathroom beast thing, huh?”
I clench my jaw. “I said what I saw.”
“Of course you did,” he says, voice dipped in syrup and spite. “Everyone’s gotta have a thing, right? Mine’s coaching varsity lacrosse. Yours is cryptid-hunting and yelling about sewer demons.”
I smile thinly. “And emotional manipulation. Don’t forget that one.”
He blinks, just for a second. A tiny flicker of annoyance.
Then he steps closer.
His cologne is the same. Musky, overconfident, and somehow both charming and nauseating. “So... new boyfriend?”
“What?”
“You’re glowing,” he says. “In a real post-orgasmic-sword-maiden kind of way. It’s not the protein, babe. Spill.”
I want to knee him in the jaw.
Instead, I say, “I’m seeing someone.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone I know?”
Before I can make up a convincing lie—before I can even think—he appears.
Kursk stands at the end of the aisle like a fantasy novel cover come to life.
Even with the illusion magic, he’s massive—broad shoulders, chiseled chest, impossibly handsome in that rugged, battle-hardened, might-have-strangled-a-bear-this-morning sort of way.
He’s wearing jeans now, but no shirt. Apparently shirts “constrict his breath,” whatever that means.
His illusion-magic "skin" is tan, but his eyes still burn gold, and the long braid down his back sways like a war banner when he walks.
He also has a large bag of beef jerky and a jug of chocolate milk in one hand.
“Kursk,” I say quickly, “this is… my ex. Chet.”
Chet extends a hand, smirking. “Hey, man. You from around here?”
Kursk looks down at the offered hand like it’s something that might explode. “I am not your man,” he says.
“Oh-kay,” Chet mutters, withdrawing.
Kursk steps between us, just enough to make a point. He stares at Chet like he’s trying to decide whether to disembowel him or merely dislocate his arms.
Chet, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. Much.
“So... Kursk,” he says, drawing out the name like it’s something stuck in his teeth. “You a wrestler or something?”
“I am a hunter.”
“Oh yeah? Deer?”
“No.”
“Wild boar?”
“No.”
“…What then?”
Kursk leans in, voice low. “Monsters.”
Chet blinks.
I cough. “He’s Norwegian. Big into LARPing. You know how it is.”
“Right,” Chet says. “Well, good luck with… that.”
He turns back to me. “Anyway, Liv, if you ever get tired of... all this,” he waves a hand at Kursk, “you know where to find me.”
“Yeah,” I reply, “somewhere between gym class and your own reflection.”
He laughs. But it’s tight. Forced.
Then he walks away.
Kursk waits until he’s out of earshot before growling, “That man is a dung-hearted fool.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, still gripping the protein tub like a shield. “He’s also my ex.”
“You have terrible taste in mates.”
“Tell me about it.”
He looks at me for a moment. “But you have better taste now.”
I snort. “Don’t push your luck, Orcy Balboa.”
He grins, sharp and dangerous. “You liked it when I kissed you.”
“I tolerated it.”
“You pressed back.”
“Reflex.”
“You tasted of cinnamon.”
“I will mace you.”
He tilts his head. “What is this mace? Is it stronger than the fire weapon you sprayed me with?”
“It’s pepper spray, and no. But it’ll make you cry like a baby on jalapeno day.”
He laughs.
Loud.
Startling a nearby shopper into dropping a jar of pickles.
I realize I’m smiling, too.
It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion—and I’m the idiot in the passenger seat, yelling at the driver to hit the brakes even as the tree gets closer.
We’re at Marla’s Diner. Cozy booths. Laminated menus that haven’t changed since Reagan. Greasy air thick with the scent of bacon fat and burnt coffee. The kind of place where people order “the usual,” and if you ask for oat milk, they ask if you’ve been dropped on your head.
Kursk doesn’t fit here. Not even a little.
He takes up the whole booth by himself, looking like a Calvin Klein model got possessed by a Viking.
Shirtless still—because “the cloth itches like dead bark,” apparently—his illusion magic makes him look human to everyone else, but it does nothing about his aura.
The sheer presence of him turns heads, straightens spines.
People instinctively make way when he walks past.
And of course, Chet shows up.
Again.
Like some smug specter conjured by my worst decisions.
He saunters over with that permanent smirk, high school varsity ring glinting, and a stupid frappuccino in hand.
“Hey there, lovebirds,” he says, slipping into the booth opposite Kursk. “Didn’t expect to see you slumming it at Marla’s.”
I sigh. “Hi, Chet.”
Kursk watches him, expression unreadable.
“You trying to bulk up your boy here?” Chet asks, gesturing to the two burgers, pile of hashbrowns, and milkshake Kursk has already inhaled. “Guy looks like he wrestles bears for a living.”
“I do,” Kursk says, deadpan.
Chet laughs. “Oh, you’re funny. I like that.”
“No jest.”
“Sure, bud. Say, what gym you go to? You bench, like, what—four-fifty?”
“I do not know this number. I lift boulders.”
Chet lets out another smirking laugh, then leans forward on his elbows. “You know, back when Olivia and I were together, we used to come here all the time. She’d always order the—”
I kick him under the table.
He chokes on his smug.
“Anyway,” he says, recovering. “We used to arm wrestle for who paid. I won most of the time, didn’t I, Liv?”
I don’t reply. I’m too busy staring at his trap.
Kursk raises one eyebrow. “You challenge your mate for coin?”
“Not a mate,” I mutter.
Chet shrugs. “Just a little fun. You ever try it? Arm wrestling?”
Kursk’s grin is slow. Deliberate. Dangerous.
“Yes.”
“Well then.” Chet claps his hands. “Let’s go, big guy. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Oh no,” I say, too late.
They clear a spot on the counter.
Marla herself, all five-foot-two and eighty-something of her, wipes down the laminate with a sigh. “Don’t break anything, or you’re both washing dishes for a week.”
Chet rolls up his sleeves. Kursk just sets his elbow down like he’s slamming down a tree trunk.
Their hands clasp.
There’s a hush over the diner.
Someone puts down their fork mid-bite.
“On three,” Chet says. “One. Two—”
CRACK.
The table splits.
I’m not being dramatic. It literally splits. Right down the middle. Chet’s arm goes limp like a wet noodle, and he just sort of stands there, staring, as half the counter collapses beneath them.
Marla shrieks. Someone’s coffee flies into the air.
“Okay! That’s enough!” I yell, grabbing Kursk’s arm before he decides to finish Chet off with a salt shaker.
Kursk doesn’t move. He just stares at Chet, cold and calm. “You are unworthy of her.”
Chet opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s gone pale.
I drag Kursk toward the exit.
“We’re leaving now. No more public feats of strength, please. You can bench-press a mountain later.”
“But he insulted your honor.”
“Yeah, well, so do bad Yelp reviews. Doesn’t mean I level the restaurant.”
We get back to the cabin just as the sun starts dipping below the treeline.
Kursk hasn’t said much. Which is weird, because he usually doesn’t shut up about honor, vengeance, and the superiority of raw elk meat. But now? Quiet. Brooding.
I toss the groceries on the counter and pull off my jacket. “Okay, look. I get it. You don’t like Chet. I don’t like Chet. But you can’t just snap furniture and walk out of diners. We’re trying to keep a low profile.”
“I apologize.”
The words come out of nowhere.
I blink. “Wait. Really?”
He nods. “You are right. My temper shamed us both.”
I stare at him.
Then I start laughing.
Hard.
I lean on the counter, wheezing.
“I’m sorry,” I say between gasps. “It’s just—you apologizing? You, who roared at a ceiling fan and declared it a ‘sky demon?’”
“It hummed at me in a hostile tone.”
I snort. “Yeah, that’s called electricity.”
He tilts his head. “Your world is full of invisible spirits.”
“Tell me about it.”
I don’t know when we started standing this close.
One second, I’m reaching for a glass of water.
The next, he’s only inches away.
Too big for the kitchen.
His presence hums in the air, something ancient and wild and strange—and yet, grounded. Safe.