19. Leire
NINETEEN
LEIRE
Aslan’s cabin is nothing like I expected.
I don’t know what I imagined—an empty space, maybe. Functional and cold, stripped of anything personal. A predator’s den where comfort came second to practicality. Taxidermied deer heads. A single folding chair. Maybe a shrine to protein powder.
Instead, I find warmth.
The cabin sits at the edge of tiger territory, nestled against the base of the Thornback Mountains where the wild magic runs strongest. Dark timber walls rise from a foundation of river stone.
Moss grows on the roof in patches of deep green.
A garden—an actual garden with herbs and late-blooming flowers—borders the path to the front door.
“You have a garden.” The words come out wondering.
“Dorothea started it, a long time ago. Different soil now, but I couldn’t let it die—kept cuttings when I moved, kept the ones that would take root twice.” His hand tightens briefly on mine, then relaxes.
He says her name without flinching. Progress.
The inside surprises me more. Bookshelves line one wall, crammed with volumes in no apparent order—histories and fiction and what looks like an entire section on botanical magic.
A massive stone fireplace dominates the main room, cold now but surrounded by furniture that actually looks comfortable.
A leather couch worn soft from use. Chairs with blankets draped over their arms. A kitchen visible through an archway, clean but clearly used.
This isn’t a place someone passes through. This is a home.
“It’s not what I expected.”
He moves through the space, lighting lamps, coaxing the fire to life with practiced efficiency. “What did you expect?”
“Less... cozy. Maybe a collection of enemy skulls?”
His mouth twitches. “I save the skulls for special occasions.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I wander while he works, touching spines of books, examining the small details that reveal who he is when no one’s watching.
A carving on the mantle that looks handmade—a tiger, crude but careful.
Photographs in simple frames, faces I don’t recognize but assume are pride members.
A throw pillow embroidered with what appears to be a very confused-looking fish.
“Did you make this?” I hold up the pillow.
“Torin gave it to me. As a joke.”
“It’s a fish.”
“It is supposed to be a tiger. I know that. He knows that. Nobody else in Mistvale knows that, which is the problem.” He takes the pillow, stares at it like it personally wronged him. “He was very proud of it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.”
Mental note: Blackmail material. Zeph is going to love this.
The fire catches, warmth blooming through the cabin. I watch the flames dance, feel the heat seep into bones that have been cold since the Preservers grabbed me. The battle feels distant now—hours ago? Days? Time has gone strange since Aslan carried me out of the mist and into whatever this is.
He straightens from the hearth. Turns to face me.
The firelight catches the sharp angles of his face, the amber of his eyes, the white streak at his temple—the one an accident left behind. He’s still wearing battle debris—blood on his clothes, scratches across his knuckles, exhaustion in the set of his shoulders.
But he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.
“You should shower.” His voice is rough. Controlled. “Get the blood off.”
I look down at myself. He’s right—I’m covered in it. Dried brown on my hands, smeared across my clothes, probably matted in my hair. Evidence of violence I don’t want to carry any longer.
“Is that your way of telling me I smell?”
“It’s my way of offering hot water and clean towels.”
“Smooth.” I sniff my arm experimentally. Wince. “Okay, fair. I smell like a crime scene.”
“You smell like survival.” His voice drops. “But the shower has excellent water pressure.”
He shows me to the bathroom—small but functional, with a shower that delivers on the promise. He sets out towels, leaves a shirt on the counter that’s clearly his, and retreats without another word.
The door clicks shut.
I stand in the sudden silence, staring at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. The woman looking back is a disaster. Copper hair tangled and blood-streaked. Face pale beneath the grime. Eyes too bright, carrying the wild energy of survival and excitement and terror.
You’re about to sleep with a tiger shifter, I tell my reflection.
The reflection doesn’t seem concerned.
This should terrify me. Should bring up all my defenses, all the walls I’ve built, all the very good reasons why trusting people ends in devastation.
Instead, I feel... ready.
Stripped to the foundation and ready to build on ground that might actually hold.
The shower is blissfully hot. I stand under the spray until the water runs clear, until the tension unknots from my muscles, until I stop seeing enemies every time I close my eyes. Aslan’s soap smells like pine and woodsmoke—like him. I use it anyway. Let his scent sink into my skin.
When I emerge, wrapped in a towel too big for me, his shirt waits where he left it. Dark gray, soft from years of washing, long enough to brush my thighs.
I put it on. Button it with fingers that only shake a little.
This is happening. This is happening.
I’m not a virgin. I’ve had sex before, despite what my two-year drought might suggest. But this feels different. This feels like more than bodies and pleasure and release.
This feels like a choice. A declaration. A step off a cliff into freefall.
I take a breath.
Open the door.
He’s waiting by the fire.
Still dressed, still controlled, but I can see the tension in his shoulders. The way his hands grip the mantle. The glow in his eyes that isn’t entirely human.
He turns when he hears me. And stops.
His gaze travels down—the shirt that shows my bare legs, my still-damp hair curling against my shoulders, my face scrubbed clean of blood and fear. I watch his throat work. Watch his hands flex against the stone.
“You look...” He stops. Breathes. “You look like you belong here.”
“In your shirt?”
“In my home.”
The words hit harder than they should. I’ve spent two years feeling like I belonged nowhere—like exile had stripped away not just my coven but my place in the world. Like I would wander rootless forever, waiting for the next betrayal to tear away whatever foundation I’d managed to build.
But standing here, in his cabin, wearing his shirt, watching firelight paint gold across his sharp features—I feel like I’ve finally stopped running.
“Come here.” My voice is steadier than I feel.
He moves toward me. Slow. Deliberate. Giving me time to change my mind.
I don’t.
When he reaches me, he stops. Waiting.
“I’m terrified.” The admission comes out quiet. Honest.
“Of me?”
“Of wanting this as much as I do.” I meet his eyes. Amber and gold, flickering with banked heat. “Of letting you in and having it be real. Of what happens if I lose you the way I lost everything else.”
“You won’t—”
“You can’t promise that.” I put a finger to his lips before he can argue. “No one can promise that. Life doesn’t work that way. People leave. People die. People betray you to ancient conspiracies that wanted to destroy your entire existence.”
“Fair point.”
“But.” I move my hand from his lips to his jaw. Feel muscle flex beneath my palm. “I’m more afraid of not trying. Of spending the rest of my life wondering what we could have been. Of letting fear win because fear is comfortable and I’m tired of comfortable.”
His hand comes up to cover mine. Warm. Solid. Real.
“I let fear run my life for a long time.” His voice is rough gravel. His fingers thread through mine. “You made me want to stop.”
“That’s very romantic for a man who ripped someone’s arm off tonight.”
“I contain multitudes.”
I laugh despite everything. Despite the weight of this moment, despite the cliff I’m standing on.
He makes me laugh. Even now. Even here.
Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s everything.
“Kiss me.”
He doesn’t hesitate.
His mouth finds mine like he’s been memorizing the path for weeks—which, knowing him, he probably has. The kiss starts slow. Careful. The same control he brings to everything, the same intensity held in check.
But I don’t want careful tonight.
I fist my hands in his shirt and pull him closer. Press my body against his. Let him feel exactly what I’m offering, what I’m asking for, what I need.
He groans against my mouth. The sound travels through me, lighting fires in places that have been cold for far too long.
His hands find my waist. My hips. The hem of his shirt riding up my thighs. Every touch deliberate. Every movement asking permission even as his kiss turns hungry.
“Aslan.” His name feels different in my mouth now. More intimate. More mine. “I want this. I want you. Stop being noble and—”
He lifts me.
One fluid motion, hands under my thighs, my legs wrapping around his waist. The kiss doesn’t break. If anything, it deepens—his tongue sliding against mine, his teeth grazing my lower lip, his grip on my body possessive in a way that should alarm me but instead makes me feel wanted. Claimed. His.
He carries me toward the bedroom.
The room is simple. Bed with rumpled covers. Dresser. Windows facing the mountains. But I barely notice because he’s laying me down on sheets that smell like him, and his weight is settling over me, and his hands are everywhere.
“Leire.” My name in his voice. Rough and wanting and reverent. “Are you sure?”
“If you ask me that again, I’m going to—”
He kisses the words away. Smart man.
His fingers find the buttons of the shirt—his shirt, on my body—and work them open with patience I don’t possess. Each button reveals more skin. Each inch exposed draws a sound from him that’s barely human. By the time the shirt falls open, I’m trembling. Not from cold.
“Beautiful.” He traces the curve of my breast. The dip of my waist. The flare of my hip. Mapping me like I’m territory he intends to know completely. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
“You’re still dressed.”
“Problem?”