Chapter 11
Holly
Rex Flynn is in my bed at seven in the morning with his arm locked around my waist and his face buried in my hair. His chest rises against my spine. His breath moves across the back of my neck in slow, even pulls, and his forearm weighs heavy across my stomach like an anchor chain.
He mumbles into my hair. Low, guttural, a sound that rolls through consonants I don't recognize. Old orc. The language nobody taught him but his blood remembers anyway.
I exhale. Let my hand settle over his forearm. His skin runs hot, the way it always does, heat that radiates through the sheet between us. He pulls me tighter without waking up, his fingers curling against my ribs like he's checking I'm still here.
His arm tightens once more and then loosens, and his breathing shifts from deep sleep to the shallow pulls of a man surfacing. He stretches behind me, one long roll of muscle from shoulder to hip, and his lips find the back of my neck.
"Morning, trouble." His voice drags like gravel on pavement.
"Morning."
I slide out of bed before I can talk myself into staying.
The floorboards creak under my bare feet and I fill the kettle and set two mugs on the counter while Rex finds his jeans on the floor and pulls them on without buttoning them.
He pads into the kitchen scratching the back of his head, hair sticking up on one side, jaw unshaved.
I hand him the orc-shaped mug I found at the thrift store in Coos Bay, the one with the lopsided tusks and a handle where the arm should be.
I bought it because it made me laugh. He drinks from it without comment, which makes me laugh harder.
He leans against the counter and drinks from it like he's lived here for years.
The morning light through the window catches the gold tusk caps and throws a coin-sized reflection onto the cabinet behind him.
He tells me about the scouts he's been watching while the coffee steams between us.
"Bloodstone scouts have been watching the town." He takes a sip. "Two SUVs rotating positions on Route 7. Telephoto lenses mounted in the back seats. They've been photographing the Anchor, Holly. The bar. Your building."
I set my mug down.
He takes another sip and his eyes stay on mine over the rim.
"That's why I left. I thought if I put distance between us, they'd follow me instead of sitting outside your window.
Knox told me I was an idiot." A breath. "He was right.
I can't protect you from three hundred miles away. I can't protect you by not being here."
"So you came back."
"So I came back."
I set my mug on the counter and pull my laptop from the stack of contact sheets on the kitchen table.
The email sits in my sent folder, timestamped two nights ago.
Every photograph from Dale Rickman's rally outside Betty's Diner.
Every face, every license plate, every printed sign with its block letters and its scrubbed-clean language.
"While you were gone, Humans First had a rally in the main street. I sent Knox the photos from the rally."
Rex's mug stops halfway to his mouth. He looks at me over the rim.
"He needed to know someone organized thirty people to march outside Betty's front door. I took the shots."
He sets the mug down.
"I need to get to the clubhouse." He pushes off the counter. "I need to get Knox to call Church. The scouts and now Rickman's group at the same time—two fronts."
"Go."
He crosses the kitchen. His hand catches the side of my face, thumb against my cheekbone, and he presses his lips to my forehead.
The rain clears by noon and the sun comes through hard and cold, February light that turns the harbor silver and puts shadows under every overhang on Main Street. I grab my camera bag and head out.
The harbor first. I shoot the fishing boats rocking at their moorings, the net floats piled on the dock, the gulls banking above the breakwater.
Then the storefronts: Frank's barbershop with the faded pole, Morretti's with the chalkboard specials, the hardware store with its hand-lettered OPEN sign that's never been updated.
I'm building the show. The collection for the Anchor's walls.
The camera gives me a frame and the frame gives me a reason to look at this town as the place I chose.
Not Rex's town. Not the club's territory.
Mine. The harbor I run past on mornings when my head gets loud.
The storefronts where people know my name.
The lighthouse in the distance with its rusted railing and its light that still works because someone climbs up there every few months and changes the bulb.
I move along the waterfront toward the community center and spot Dale Rickman before my lens does.
He stands outside the entrance tacking flyers to the corkboard. HUMANS FIRST COMMUNITY MEETING—WEDNESDAY 7PM. The fist logo centered above the text.
I raise the camera and start shooting.
Dale notices. His hand pauses on the thumbtack and his head turns, and he watches me through the viewfinder for two full seconds before he crosses the street.
Up close, his eyes sit deep under heavy brows and his smile is the kind you see on men who run HOA boards and report their neighbors' fence heights. His cologne reaches me before his voice does, cedar layered over antiseptic.
"Still taking pictures for your orc little friends?"
I ignore him and keep shooting. The shutter clicks.
He leans in and lowers his voice.
"I know what you are. The whole town knows." His lips barely move. "You're just an orc whore. You spread your legs for a monster and call it progressive." The smile doesn't change. "You're not brave, sweetheart. You're a fucking punchline."
My stomach turns over. Not from shock. This is a man who has practiced being hateful in private his entire life.
I lower the camera. Look him dead in the face.
"That's a great quote. Want to say it again where someone can hear you?"
His smile holds but he doesn't repeat it. He knows how this game works: the ugly words stay in the margins, and the public face stays clean enough to print on a flyer with a community center logo.
He walks away. His sport coat catches the wind and flattens against his back.
My hands stay steady on the camera. My back teeth ache from clenching, and I stand on the sidewalk breathing through my nose until my heartbeat slows.
I text Rex. Dale Rickman just cornered me outside the community center.
I'm fine. He's a coward. I don't type what Dale called me.
Rex doesn't need the specifics to react, and I handled it.
But the afternoon feels soured now, the light flat and uninteresting through the viewfinder.
I pack the camera into my bag and head back toward the Anchor.
The next morning I take the long way home from the post office, cutting down the side street behind the bar. The air smells like rain and salt and the pavement is still dark from overnight drizzle.
I'm almost at the back stairs when a dark SUV idles past the alley mouth and stops.
I recognize it from Rex's descriptions. The engine runs smooth and quiet, too new for Nightfall Cove, where every truck on the road has a rattle or a knock that locals identify by sound.
The passenger door opens. An orc steps out.
Broad across the shoulders, taller than Rex by three or four inches.
Scarred along the bridge of his nose and down one cheek, old marks layered over older ones.
His clothes fit too well for a town where the dress code stops at clean flannel.
Dark jacket, dark pants, boots with a shine.
He moves the way big men move when they've never had to step aside for anyone.
He speaks to me in orcish first. A short phrase, rough-edged, with an upward lilt at the end I recognize as a question even without understanding the words.
"English," I say.
His head tilts. The accent is thick but the words are clear. "You are the one who belongs to the Road Captain."
"I don't belong to anyone."
His gaze drops to my neck. He looks at where a claiming mark should be and isn't, and his whole posture relaxes.
"Unmarked." He says it flat. Observational. "Unclaimed. Among my people, that means you are unprotected." His eyes come back to mine.
My skin crawls. Not because he's wrong.
"If the Road Captain valued you, you would carry his bite." He folds his arms. "You do not. That tells us that you're available."
"I'm not available to you or anyone else. Mind your own business." My voice comes out even. "Get back in the car and go back to the black mountains."
He grabs my arm and turns my head, tilting my neck into the light. Confirming what he already knows. His fingers are cold and his grip is impersonal. I bring my arm up and knock his wrist sideways, breaking his hand off me, and step back far enough to put air between us.
"Touch me again and you'll find out what the women in this town do to uninvited hands."
The scout's mouth twitches. He's amused. I'm a human woman half his size and we both know I can't match him if he decides to close the distance again. I'm standing in the alley behind my bar in my town and I'm not backing up another inch.
He closes the distance in one stride and grabs my face this time, harder, his thumb pressing into the hinge of my jaw.
The roar of a Harley fills the alley. Rex rounds the corner fast enough that the rear tire breaks loose on the asphalt. He kills the engine and is off the bike and moving before the exhaust stops popping.
He sees the scout's hand on me and the man I know disappears.
His eyes go dark. Not the amber-green I know, not the gold that catches the light when he laughs, not any color I've memorized across months of lying next to him in the dark. Pure black. His pupils swallow his irises until his eyes hold no color at all.
His lip pulls back into a snarl. His spine straightens and his shoulders drop and his weight shifts forward onto the balls of his feet, and a sound rolls out of his chest that vibrates through my body.
"Get your fucking hands off of her."
It's not Rex's voice. It's older and deeper and rooted to the ground beneath his boots. The feral response. I've heard Knox describe it—what happens when an orc's mate faces a threat and the biology overrides the man. Ancient and territorial.
The scout lets go of my jaw. He looks at Rex's eyes, his bared tusks, and whatever he sees there drains the curiosity right out of him.
The scout knows. Among orcs, feral means fated. Rex's biology just announced what he's been too afraid to say out loud. The scout doesn't need a mark on my neck to know what he's looking at. Rex went feral.
He backs off. Says something in orcish, low and directed at Rex, and whatever the words are they lock Rex's jaw so tight the muscle jumps under his skin.
The scout backs toward the SUV without turning around, climbs in, and shuts the door. The vehicle pulls away slow enough to make a point before it rounds the corner and disappears.
Rex stands in the alley with his shoulders heaving. His eyes still black. His hands open at his sides, fingers curling and releasing, shaking with the effort of not chasing the SUV and tearing the door off its hinges.
"Your eyes," I say.
"I know." His voice scrapes. "Give it a minute, they'll settle. Don't be afraid, trouble. I would never hurt you."
"Did someone call to let you know about the scouts?"
"No. I was already on my way. Then I pulled into the alley and saw his hands on you."
I step toward him. He flinches. Not away from me—away from himself. His hands pull back against his sides, his jaw clenches and he looks at his fingers like he doesn't trust what they might do.
"Rex."
"Give me a second." His voice shakes. "I'm not—I don't feel safe right now."
"You're okay, Rex. I know you'd never hurt me.
" I close the distance he opened and press my palm flat against his ribs and his heart hammers under my hand hard enough that I feel it in my wrist. His scent fills the alley—leather and motor oil and underneath it that sharp edge cranked so high it burns my sinuses.
His fingers cover mine. The feral edge still raw in his voice, the black fading from his eyes in slow degrees, amber bleeding back through the edges. "He said you're unclaimed. Unprotected." A breath pulls through his teeth. "He's not wrong."
I hold his gaze.
"Then claim me."
The words land between us. A demand from a woman who's spent six months waiting for a man to stop running, plant his feet and choose her the way she chose this town, this bar, this life.
Rex stares at me as the black drains from his eyes and what comes back is steadier and scarier.
A man who just decided something and isn't going to talk himself out of it.
Sarah appears at the end of the block with Reeve on her hip, Jess beside her. They must have seen Rex drive past the diner window. Sarah takes one look at his face. She puts her arm through Jess's and they keep walking. Some moments don't need an audience.
But Jess catches my eye over her shoulder. Her grin cuts across the distance between us, knowing and fierce, and she lifts her chin at me once before she turns the corner.
Rex's hand tightens on mine. His forehead drops to rest against the top of my head and his breathing evens out, slow and ragged, the adrenaline draining through him in waves I can feel under my palm.
"Holly." His voice comes out rough. "I'm never leaving you again."
"I believe you." My fingers curl into his shirt. "But I didn't ask you to stay, Rex. I asked you to claim me."
"In time, trouble."
His lips press against my hair. His arm wraps around my shoulders and pulls me against his chest, and I stand in the alley behind the Anchor with my camera bag digging into my hip and my face pressed against the heartbeat of a man who ran toward me instead of away.
A man who just showed a Bloodstone scout what feral looks like from the other side.