Chapter Eight
Riona
The coat is still on the arm of the couch where I left it last night.
I noticed it this morning when I made coffee.
I noticed it again when I moved from the kitchen to the living room with my mug and found somewhere else to sit.
I’ve been noticing it all day in the peripheral way you notice something you’ve decided not to look at directly—the way it takes up space, the way the sleeves still hold the shape of being pushed up by someone trying to free her hands.
It’s enormous. It smells like cedar and something deeper, and I know this because I wore it for hours yesterday, and apparently that’s long enough for a scent to become a problem.
I make a grocery list I don’t need. I reorganize a bookshelf that was already organized.
Sometime around two I sit down to read and manage four pages before I realize I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for twenty minutes and the coat is in my direct line of sight and I have a gathering to go to in five hours with the man who owns it.
I put the book down.
The thing is, I want to go. That’s what I keep running into every time I try to talk myself into a manageable level of calm.
Not dread, anticipation. The kind that hums low and doesn’t leave.
I’ve been interested in men before. I know what that feels like.
This is something with more gravity than that, and it arrived before I had the chance to decide whether to let it.
The thing is, I’ve spent a very long time being careful about exactly this kind of thing.
The coat sits on the couch. I sit on the other side of the room.
At 4:43, I pick up my phone and call Kendra.
She arrives twenty minutes later with a bakery box she doesn’t need an excuse for and stops two steps inside my door.
Her eyes go straight to the coat on the couch.
She doesn’t say anything. She sets the box on the counter, takes off her jacket, and sits down at the opposite end of the couch from the coat with the careful deliberateness of a woman making a point.
“That’s not yours,” she says finally.
“No.”
“Whose is it.”
“It’s not a question when you say it like that.”
“Whose is it, Riona.”
“Vraag’s.” I open the bakery box. “He gave it to me yesterday because I was underdressed for the cold snap. His physiology handles temperature better than humans, so it was the logical—”
“He gave you his coat.”
“It was practical.”
“He gave you his coat,” Kendra says again, in exactly the same tone, because she has known me for eleven years and she understands that the way I use the word practical is a tell.
I hand her a pastry and sit down. We both look at the coat for a moment.
“It’s the second thing,” I say. “He gave me his poncho a couple of weeks ago. In the rain.”
Kendra nods slowly. She already knew about the poncho. I told her about it the same way I told her it was nothing—quickly, with my eyes somewhere else.
“And tonight,” she says.
“He’s picking me up at seven. It’s a clan gathering, the First Frost Feast. It’s a cultural event, I’ve always wanted to—”
“Riona.”
“It’s genuinely a cultural event.”
“I’m sure it is.” She looks at me steadily. “And you’ve been home alone all day walking past that coat.”
I don’t answer, which is its own answer.
“You’re doing the thing,” she says. Not unkindly.
“I’m not doing the thing.”
“You’re building the case for why you should cancel.”
“I’m not going to cancel.”
“I know you’re not. But you’ve been building it anyway, just in case you change your mind.” She tilts her head. “How long have you been home?”
“Since yesterday after school.”
She looks at the coat. At me. At the coat again.
“He’s not your father,” she says quietly.
There it is. The thing I’ve been not saying to myself all day, the shape underneath all the reorganized bookshelves and unread pages.
“I know that.”
“Do you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve accepted two pieces of clothing from a man who noticed you were cold and solved it—without being asked, without making a production of it—and your response has been to spend twenty-four hours looking for the catch.”
“My mother said my father was like that too,” I say.
“Genuinely attentive. Genuinely good at noticing what she needed before she said it. And then one day she had nothing that was hers, and he left, and she didn’t know how to read a utility bill.
” I pause. “I made a decision at seventeen that I would never be her. That I would always be the person who could leave if I needed to.”
“And you’ve kept that promise,” Kendra says. “You know exactly what your bank account looks like. You know what your life looks like without someone in it. You’ve been running your own life for fifteen years.” She pauses. “That doesn’t go away because someone hands you a coat.”
“It’s not the coat.”
“I know it’s not the coat.”
We sit with that for a moment.
“He’s different,” I say finally. “That’s what I can’t get past. Every other person I’ve been interested in, I stayed in control of how much I let it matter.
This one, I don’t know how I got here. Three weeks and I’ve worn his clothes twice, and I’m getting dressed to go to a clan gathering tonight, and somewhere in the last twenty-four hours it stopped feeling like a decision I was making. ”
Kendra looks at me for a long moment.
“Maybe that’s not a warning sign,” she says. “Maybe that’s just what it feels like when it’s actually right.”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“Go get dressed,” she says. “What are you wearing?”
“The burgundy maxi dress. I thought it was appropriate without being—”
“Good. Wear the gold earrings, not the silver. And do something with your hair.” She stands up, brushing pastry flakes from her lap. “I’ll clean up in here.”
I’m halfway down the hallway when she calls after me.
“Riona.”
I stop.
“You’re allowed to let someone hand you a coat.”
I take longer than necessary getting ready, which is how I know I’m nervous. Normally I make decisions and move on. Tonight I change my earrings three times, and settle on the gold ones because Kendra said so, and she’s right about these things.
By ten to seven, I’m as ready as I’m going to be. I come back down the hallway to find Kendra on the couch with the bakery box, the coat still at the other end, looking perfectly at home in my living room.
“You look gorgeous,” she says.
“You just want to stay and see him.”
She doesn’t deny it. “I came over to help you get dressed and provide emotional support. Seeing the seven-foot orc in whatever he wears to a clan gathering is simply a bonus.”
The doorbell rings.
My pulse does something inconvenient.
“I’ll get it,” Kendra says, already moving.
“Kendra—”
But she’s already opening the door.
The silence that follows lasts exactly two seconds.
“Well,” Kendra says, her voice admirably steady. “Hello.”
I can’t see his expression from where I’m standing, but I hear the slight pause before his formal, “Good evening.”
Kendra steps aside, gesturing him in with a sweep of her arm as if she’s presenting him to an audience.
As he crosses the threshold, she turns to me over her shoulder and mouths the words “oh my god” with the intensity of a woman who has seen something that has rearranged her understanding of the universe.
I give her my most warning look.
She responds by mouthing “hunk” and then arranging her face into perfect innocence before turning back to Vraag. “I’m Kendra. Riona’s best friend. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Kendra.” I say her name as though it’s a full sentence.
“All good things,” she adds, entirely unrepentant. “Have a wonderful evening.” She retrieves her bag with the efficiency of someone making a tactically perfect exit.
The door closes behind her.
Vraag looks at me.
“Your friend is—”
“Yes,” I say. “She is.”
A beat of silence, and then I actually look at him.
Gone is the security uniform. Instead, he wears what must be traditional orc attire: a deep green tunic, fully closed and tailored to his frame, the heavy fabric embroidered along the collar and sleeves with intricate geometric patterns.
It fits closely enough to leave nothing to the imagination—broad chest, powerful shoulders, a narrow waist made more pronounced by the wide leather belt cinched low on his hips.
Dark trousers fall straight over heavy boots, and wide silver ceremonial bands circle his forearms. Beneath them, just visible at the wrist, something else: four narrow bands of darker metal, almost black, each one stamped with small precise markings.
Not decorative. Something older than that, and more deliberate.
I want to ask about them and don’t. The overall effect is…
formidable. Not armored, exactly—but unmistakably designed for a body built for strength and endurance.
A short cape is draped over one shoulder, secured with an ornate metal clasp.
The fabric is richly textured in shades of green and brown, with symbols I don’t recognize woven into the border.
He’s nothing like the careful, contained figure from the school hallways.
He’s someone stepping fully into himself.
“Good evening,” he says, his voice deeper than usual. His gaze travels from my face down to my dress and back up again, lingering just long enough to send warmth curling through my stomach. “You look… well chosen.”
I laugh, despite my nerves. “High praise indeed.”
His gaze settles on me the way it does when something pleases him and he hasn’t decided whether to show it. “I mean, you look beautiful. The color honors the seasonal transition we celebrate tonight.”
“Oh!” I brighten, pleased by the unintended appropriateness of my choice. “That was completely accidental, but I’m glad it works.”
He doesn’t look away; the quiet intensity of it is enough to quicken my pulse. “Very much so.” His voice is so deep it rumbles.
I have the absurd thought that if we stand here another second, I might forget how to breathe.
He hesitates, then reaches into a pocket inside his tunic. The pause itself draws my attention; Vraag is not a man who hesitates without reason. When he draws his hand back, he’s holding a small object that glints softly in the porch light.
“Before we go,” he says, slower now, more careful. “I want to offer something, if you wish to accept it.”
A faint tension curls low in my stomach, the kind that comes when something ordinary tilts unexpectedly toward significance.
He opens his palm. Resting there is a simple piece of jewelry: a smooth, dark stone carved with subtle angular markings, suspended from a braided leather cord. It’s unadorned, almost severe—but the moment I see it, I’m acutely aware that it isn’t casual.
“At clan gatherings,” he continues, his voice measured, “outsiders may feel… unanchored. Wearing a clan token marks you as wanting to be here, someone interested in our ways.”
My pulse kicks. Not alarm… awareness. A sharpening, like my senses have quietly come online.
He gazes at me steadily. “It is not required. If you would rather not, I will take no offense.”
Something about the way he says that—plain, unequivocal—loosens a knot I hadn’t realized had formed in my chest. He isn’t assuming. He isn’t deciding for me. He’s waiting. I’ve spent a long time being wary of men who don’t wait. The fact that he does shouldn’t matter this much. It does anyway.
I take the token from his hand, surprised by its weight. The stone is warm, as if it’s already absorbed heat from his skin. The leather smells faintly of cedar and smoke—not overpowering, just present.
“And this marks me as… what, exactly?” I ask, though my voice comes out softer than I intend.
“As a guest,” he says carefully. “Under my responsibility for the evening.”
Responsibility. The word settles somewhere deep, landing with unexpected steadiness. Not possession. Not control. Care.
I glance up at him, searching his face for expectation—and find none. Only restraint. Only quiet attention.
A strange, fluttering mix of nerves and warmth spreads through me as I lift the cord and slip it over my head. When the stone settles against my skin, it’s immediately solid, grounding, unmistakably there.
The sensation surprises me. It’s almost… reassuring.
His breath leaves him slowly, as if he’s been holding it. Not satisfaction—relief.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
In the car, as he drives, I steal glances at his profile.
Without the stiff posture he maintains at school, there’s something more natural about his movements, as if he’s more comfortable in his own skin surrounded by the trappings of his culture.
We’re talking—about the gathering, about what to expect, about the clan structure—when the orange glow of a warning light appears on the dashboard.
Vraag sees it immediately. He’s already signaling.
“Oil pressure,” he says, as though this explains everything, which for him it does. He pulls into the next gas station without discussion, the enormous truck easing into the lot with unhurried precision.
“It’s probably fine,” I say.
“Probably is not the same as confirmed.” A moment later, he swings out of the truck and puts the hood up.
I roll down my window. The night air is cold and smells like gasoline and pine.
Vraag stands at the hood in full ceremonial dress—deep green tunic, silver forearm bands, the short cape—examining the engine with the same focused attention he gives everything that might constitute a threat.
I find myself watching him the way I’ve been careful not to at school.
“It needs a quart,” he says without looking up.
“Of course it does.”
He disappears inside the station.
I’m watching the door when a car pulls up to the pump beside us. I don’t register it at first. Then the driver’s window comes down, and Janet Morse from first grade looks across at me from six feet away.
We both go very still.
She takes in the truck. Me in the passenger seat in my burgundy dress at seven on a Saturday night. And then the station door opens and Vraag walks out—all six-plus feet of him in full ceremonial dress, deep green tunic, silver bands catching the fluorescent light—carrying a quart of oil.
There’s nothing to say that either of us would believe. We both know that.
I lift my hand in a small wave.
She nods once. Her window goes up. She pulls forward to the next pump.
Vraag comes back with a quart of oil, tops it off, closes the hood, and gets back in. There's a faint smudge of oil on his thumb that he wipes away on a cloth he produces from somewhere without breaking stride.
“All confirmed,” he says, and pulls out of the lot.
I watch Janet’s car in the side mirror until we turn onto the main road.
The gathering, I think. Just the gathering. Whatever comes Monday can wait until Monday.