Chapter 12
CRISS
Kieran had given him the southern perimeter again, which Criss suspected was less about ward maintenance and more about getting him out of the house before one of them said something they'd have to deal with.
Fine by him. The morning air was cool and the trail was soft underfoot and the woods smelled like pine resin and wet stone, and if he walked fast enough, he could almost outpace the image of dark curls on his pillow and an empty bed at four in the morning.
Almost.
He'd been checking markers for about an hour, the methodical work of pressing his palm to carved stone and reading the resonance.
Three clean, one slightly off, noted and flagged for Kieran to review.
His tiger had settled into something close to functional, the frantic energy from this morning dulled by movement and purpose, though the animal still pulled his attention east every few minutes like a compass needle he couldn't override.
Right at the ridge where he knew she worked.
He stopped at the fifth marker and leaned against it, arms crossed, staring through the trees in the direction his tiger kept insisting on.
This was stupid. He didn't chase women. Women came to him, and when they left, he let them go with a smile and no hard feelings.
That was how it worked. The system had functioned flawlessly for a decade and he was not about to dismantle it because one archaeologist with a tool belt and an attitude had scrambled his wiring for a few hours.
Except he kept thinking about what she'd said by the fire, before things had shifted.
The way she'd talked about her work, the dig, the patience of letting the ground show you what it wanted.
There'd been something real in her voice when she'd said it.
She cared about something enough to chase it into the mud in a rainstorm, alone, in a town full of supernaturals who could snap her in half.
He had never cared about anything like that.
And that was interesting. He didn't meet interesting women often. Beautiful, sure. Willing, plenty. But interesting was rare, and his tiger had apparently decided to develop taste at the worst possible moment.
He pushed off the marker and kept walking, but the pull east didn't fade. If anything, it sharpened, and after another ten minutes of pretending he wasn't going to do exactly what he was about to do, he changed direction.
He'd just talk to her. Clear the air. Make sure things weren't going to be awkward the next time they ran into each other at Twyla's or Maeve's. Small town, limited social options. It was practical. Mature, even. Kieran would be proud.
He was maybe a quarter mile from the ridge when the ground shook.
Not a tremor. A jolt, hard enough to stagger him mid-stride, followed by a low grinding sound that came up through the soil and vibrated in his bones.
His tiger snapped to full alert, ears forward, every muscle taut.
The trees around him swayed without wind, and a flock of birds exploded from the canopy in a panicked burst of wings and noise.
Then he heard her. Not a scream, but a sharp, bitten-off sound of surprise that carried through the woods and hit his tiger like a live wire.
He caught himself form shifting, but his dead sprint was instinct.
The trail to the ridge was overgrown but his tiger found the path through instinct and speed, branches whipping past as he covered the distance in minutes. He broke through the tree line into the basin and found chaos.
The dig site looked like it had been hit by something from below.
Fresh cracks webbed across the stone floor, and a massive slab of limestone had sheared off the ridge face and lay in fragments across the work area.
Tarps were scattered, a tripod was on its side, and the air smelled ancient in a way that made his tiger's hackles rise.
Stephanie was crouched behind a thick oak root system at the basin's edge, journal open on her knee, pen moving fast. She had dirt on her face, a red welt across one palm, and stone dust in her hair, and she was writing like the ground hadn't just tried to kill her.
"What the hell happened?" He crossed the basin in four strides, eyes scanning the fractured stone, the dark gap in the ridge face, the scattered equipment. "Are you hurt?"
She didn't look up. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. The ground just split open and you're sitting in the middle of it taking notes."
"I'm sitting behind a root system taking notes. So, I’m fine." She finished whatever she was writing and closed the journal. "And yes, the ground split open. That's kind of the point of excavation."
"Excavation doesn't usually involve near-miss rockslides." He reached down and took her arm to pull her to her feet. She let him, but the look she gave him when she was standing could have peeled paint. "We need to get you out of here."
"We don't need to do anything. I need to document what just happened before the readings degrade, and you need to be somewhere else."
"Stephanie, look at this site." He gestured at the destruction around them. "This isn't stable. Those cracks are still settling and you've got a hole in the ridge face that wasn't here yesterday. You can't work in this."
"I've worked in active seismic zones. I've worked on sites during monsoon season in Southeast Asia. I've excavated ruins while mortar rounds hit a hillside two miles away." She pulled her arm free and stepped back. "I appreciate the concern, but I know what I'm doing."
"I'm not questioning your competence. I'm questioning your survival instincts."
"My survival instincts are excellent. They're the reason I was behind the oak and not under the slab." She bent to retrieve her tripod, and the ground chose that moment to shudder again.
It was smaller this time, a tremor rather than a jolt, but it sent fresh cracks racing across the basin floor and knocked a shower of loose stone from the ridge face.
Stephanie braced herself against the oak and rode it out with the practiced balance of someone who'd done this before.
Criss grabbed the back of her jacket on instinct and hauled her away from the ridge face toward the tree line.
"Stop." She twisted out of his grip, eyes blazing. "Do not grab me."
"There are rocks falling three feet from your head."
"And I can see them just fine without you dragging me around like luggage.
" She planted her boots and squared up to him with the particular fury of being underestimated one too many times.
"I didn't ask you to come here. I didn't ask for backup, for protection, or for a tiger shifter to show up and start making decisions about my safety. "
"I heard the ground shake. I heard you. What was I supposed to do, keep walking?"
"Yes. That's exactly what you were supposed to do.
" She stepped closer, and up close the gold in her hazel eyes burned.
"I have permits. I have council authorization.
I have ten years of fieldwork and a track record that got me access to one of the most sensitive sites in this town's history.
And I did all of that without anyone holding my hand. "
"Nobody's trying to hold your hand."
"Then what do you call hauling me across a dig site by my jacket?"
He opened his mouth but had nothing to say. She had a point, and he hated that she had a point. "I call it reacting to someone being in danger."
"You call it control. You call it deciding you know better than I do about a situation I've been managing for days.
" She shoved her journal into her jacket and started collecting her scattered equipment with sharp, efficient movements.
"This is my site, Criss. My work. My risk to take.
And if I want your help, which I don't, I'll ask for it. "
"I'm not trying to control you."
"Then stop acting like you have a say in what I do."
He felt his tiger bristle, the animal reacting to the challenge in her voice, the refusal to yield.
Every alpha instinct he had was screaming at him to stay, to secure the perimeter, to put himself between her and whatever the hell was happening under this ridge.
She was in danger, his body knew it the way it knew how to breathe, and walking away felt like swallowing glass.
"I'm not leaving you here alone with the ground cracking open," he said, and even he could hear how it sounded. Not a request. An order.
Her face went flat. "Then I'll leave. I need to review my notes anyway."
She shouldered her field pack, collected her camera and tripod, and walked past him toward the trail without breaking stride.
He stood in the wrecked basin surrounded by fractured stone and watched her disappear into the trees, her back straight and her pace unhurried, not running from him but dismissing him, which was worse.
Every fiber of the animal strained toward the trail she'd taken, demanding pursuit, demanding proximity.
He stood there until the sound of her boots faded, and the basin went quiet except for the settling stone and the slow drip of water into new cracks.
He'd handled that badly. He knew he'd handled it badly. And the worst part wasn't that she was angry. It was that she was right.