19. Rafe
RAFE
He was elbow-deep in the hold replacing the last cargo mount when Dex's boots appeared at the top of the ladder.
"Cap." Dex's voice he had slight urgency in it. "You're going to want to come up."
Rafe set the wrench down and climbed the ladder. The afternoon light hit him when he came on deck, warm and clean, the lake flat under a blue sky. A good day.
Malrick Sloane was walking down the dock toward the Ashvane.
He had his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face that Rafe wanted to remove with his fists.
Dex stood at the gangway, arms crossed. Orick had come up from the stern and was watching from the rail. Pell, who had no idea who the man was but could read a room, had set down his sandwich.
Malrick stopped at the foot of the gangway. Looked up at the deck, at Rafe.
"Beautiful afternoon," he said.
"I told you to stay away."
"You told me to stay away from her. You didn't say anything about your ship." The smile widened. "Although I have to say, the repairs are coming along. Rowan does good work. Another few days and you'll be back on the water. Back to your routes, your contracts, your honest living."
"What do you want, Malrick?"
"Just a friendly visit. I was in the area.
" He rocked on his heels, hands still in his pockets, relaxed as a man at a garden party.
"Lovely walk along the river this morning.
The western shore is beautiful this time of year.
Very peaceful. Until you get close to the water, of course.
Then things get a bit more... atmospheric. "
Rafe's hands went still at his sides. His wolf had surfaced, hard and fast, pressing against his skin with an intensity that narrowed his vision.
"You went to her."
"I introduced myself. It seemed polite, given that we have mutual interests."
"I told you to stay away from her."
"You made a threat in a tavern. I don't take orders from competitors, Rafe. You know that about me." Malrick tilted his head, studying him with those pale brown eyes. "She's interesting, by the way. More composed than I expected. Strong. Direct. I can see the appeal, beyond the obvious utility."
"Get off my dock."
"It's the town's dock, technically." But he took a half step back, reading the shift in Rafe's posture. Smart enough to know when the line was close. "I just thought you should know that she and I had a productive conversation. About her gift. About the way this town handles it. About you."
"About me."
"Your name came up. Naturally." The smile turned thinner. Sharper. "She had questions. I had answers. Whether she believed them is her business, but I will say this, Rafe. For a man who's been sleeping with the woman, you've left a remarkable number of blanks for someone else to fill in."
Dex shifted his weight. A quiet adjustment, the fox positioning himself between the visitor and the ship. Malrick noticed and was amused by it.
"I'm leaving," Malrick said. "Don't worry.
I got what I came for." He turned, took two steps up the dock, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
"She asked me a good question, actually.
She asked what I wanted with a stormcaller.
You might want to think about what your answer would be. If she ever asks you."
He walked up the dock road with that long, easy stride, coat catching the breeze off the lake, and disappeared.
Rafe stood on the deck with his hands gripping the rail and his wolf howling.
"Cap," Dex said quietly.
"Not now."
"Rafe."
"I said not now." He let go of the rail. His knuckles ached from the grip. He went below, changed his shirt because the one he was wearing smelled like caulking compound, came back up, and walked off the ship without a word to anyone.
He knocked on her door too hard. He knew it the second his fist hit the wood but he couldn't calibrate right now. His wolf was driving and the best he could do was keep it pointed in the right direction.
She opened the door. Her hair was down, loose over her shoulders, still damp at the ends. She was in a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows and her feet were bare on the stone floor. She saw his face and whatever was there made her step back without a word.
He came inside. She closed the door behind him.
"He came to you," Rafe said.
"This morning. At the river."
"What did he say?"
"A lot." She crossed her arms. Guarded. But not against him, or not entirely.
She was holding herself together the way she held weather, with effort.
"He knew about Ardenmere. The date, the details, all of it.
He said he could help me shape my gift into something respected instead of hidden. He called what I do extraordinary."
"He called it a resource when he talked to me. A commodity."
"That tracks. He also talked about you."
"I'm sure he did."
"He said you held the Kellert contract by undercutting every bid on the channel.
That you used port officials to lock competitors out.
That you're a territorial alpha who eliminates threats instead of competing with them.
" She paused. "He made you sound like someone who'd keep a stormcaller close for the same reason he would. Just with better manners."
"Do you believe him?" Rafe asked.
"I'm asking you."
He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat. Not because he was comfortable but because standing over her while she asked hard questions wasn't the right posture for this conversation.
"The Kellert account was mine for four years because I earned it.
I ran the best route, delivered on time, kept my rates competitive.
I didn't undercut. I outworked. The port officials he's talking about are harbourmasters I've known for a decade because I file clean paperwork and I don't cause problems at their docks.
" He looked at her across the small table.
"Malrick lost that account because he couldn't compete honestly.
So he stole my bid numbers, my cargo specs, my rate negotiations.
Used them to build an offer that looked better on paper than anything I could match because he already knew my ceiling. "
"He said no one ever proved that."
"Nobody did. Because Malrick doesn't leave proof.
He leaves impressions. He plants ideas and lets other people draw the conclusions he wants them to draw.
That's what he's doing here. With the manifests, with the traders, with you.
" He leaned forward. "Isla, listen to me.
This man does not do anything without three motives underneath it.
Every word he said to you this morning was designed to accomplish something.
The sympathy about your power. The flattery.
The casual way he dropped Ardenmere into the conversation like it was public knowledge he just happened to stumble across. None of that was accidental."
"I know that."
"Do you? Because you're standing in your kitchen asking me whether I'm the kind of man who'd keep you close for what you can do, which means some part of what he said stuck."
She didn't answer immediately. "Some part stuck," she said. "Because you haven't told me everything either."
The truth of that hit him hard. She was right.
He'd told her about Malrick. He'd told her he didn't regret the night they'd spent together.
He'd asked to see her. But underneath all of that he was carrying something he hadn't said, the biggest thing, the thing his wolf screamed at him to tell her every time he was within ten feet of her.
He couldn't. Not tonight. Not when Malrick had just spent a morning planting doubt, making her question every motive of every man who came near her.
If he told her about the mate bond now, it would sound like exactly what Malrick had accused him of.
Another alpha staking a claim on a powerful woman for his own reasons.
"You're right," he said. "I haven't told you everything. And I'm asking you to trust that the things I'm holding back aren't what he's making them out to be."
"That's a big ask."
"I know it is."
"Especially from a man I haven’t known long."
"I know that too."
The kitchen was small, the table between them, the candle from the other night still sitting in its dish though she hadn't lit it. He could see her weighing his words against Malrick's, trying to find the seam where truth separated from performance.
"He scared me," she said. Not dramatically.
A confession delivered to the kitchen table more than to him.
"Not because he threatened me. Because he knew things about me that nobody should know, and he talked about them like they were ingredients in a recipe.
My father, the boats, the years I spent running.
He laid it all out like he was reading from a ledger. "
"That's what he does. He turns people into data points and then uses the data to get what he wants."
"And what does he want with me?"
"Control. Access. The ability to point you at a stretch of river and let the weather do his negotiating for him." Rafe held her gaze. "He doesn't see you as a person, Isla. He sees you as an advantage. And he will say whatever he needs to say to make you believe the two things are the same."
She stayed quiet as the light in the kitchen shifted from afternoon gold to the deeper amber of early evening, the sun dropping behind the ridge, shadows stretching across the stone floor.
"You came here angry," she said.
"I'm still angry."
"At him or at me?"
"At him. For going near you after I told him not to. For using your father's death as a conversation starter. For walking up to my dock afterward and smiling about it." His jaw was tight. "Not at you. Never at you."
Something moved across her face but it wasn’t the guarded look she'd worn when he came through the door. This was softer, more open, more dangerous for both of them than the anger had been.
"Why do you care this much?" she asked. "About what he said to me. About whether I'm safe. You're leaving in three days, Rafe. Your ship is almost fixed. You said it yourself, the water is your life."
"It is."
"Then why are you in my kitchen for the second time this week looking like you'd tear a man apart for talking to me?"
Because you're my mate. Because my wolf chose you and I chose you and every hour I spend pretending otherwise is a lie I'm telling both of us.
But she wasn’t ready to hear it. And he wasn’t ready to say it.
"Because you deserve better than what he's offering," he said. "And because I'm not the kind of man who walks away when someone I care about is being hunted."
Her arms uncrossed slowly, hands dropping to the counter behind her.
"Someone you care about," she said.
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Don't ask me to put a date on it."
"I'm asking."
"Then the answer is earlier than makes sense and I'm not going to apologize for it."
The light was almost gone from the window now, the kitchen settling into the blue-gray of evening, and she was looking at him with an expression felt through his entire body.
Not just attraction. Recognition. The same pull he'd been fighting since the dock, reflected back at him from a woman who didn't have a word for it yet but was done pretending it wasn't there.
She pushed off the counter and crossed the kitchen. Two steps. She stopped in front of him where he sat in the chair, close enough that his knees bracketed her legs, close enough that he could feel the warmth coming off her skin.
"Stay," she said.