Chapter 11
Isla
The fox enclosure door hangs open on one hinge.
I kneel in the dirt where I built it six springs ago.
The wire mesh peeled off the frame in long strips, the posts bent at angles that took a crowbar and time.
The latch I fabricated from an old gate hinge sits in the grass three feet away, tossed like a bottlecap.
Empty. I moved the rehab animals last week—the fawns and the flight-cage raptors to a friend near Garrett's, the owl and the hawk and the sick kit to the compound.
But the fox family under the stump stayed.
They weren't mine to move. And seeing what someone did to the place I built for them lands in a different part of my chest than knowing the rehab animals are safe.
Garrett stands thirty feet back near the truck. He hasn't said anything since we pulled in. He offered to carry equipment, I told him no, and he leaned against the tailgate—gave me the space I asked for and the security I didn't.
I stand. Wipe my hands on my jeans.
The twelve acres take an hour to walk. I photograph what Diane couldn't see from the road.
The raptor mews, gutted. Perches knocked loose, the flight-conditioning line snapped at both anchors.
Old feathers on the floor from the last bird I housed here.
I framed these walls myself, shingled this roof in two days of August heat.
Inside, my surgery table lies tipped on its side, the drainage pan dented flat.
My hand-lettered intake log, the one I've kept since the first season, soaked through with motor oil someone poured across the desk.
Six years of entries. Species, dates, outcomes, release coordinates.
The fawn pen's windbreak ripped down. Feed bins stomped in. My tool rack, the one I mounted with lag bolts I drove myself, pulled off the wall and scattered across the ground.
At the north fence, the fox den sits torn open. Not the enclosure—this one the vixens dug themselves, three seasons of mothers choosing my twelve acres because nothing hunted here. Snare wire loops through the grass around the entrance. The kits are gone.
Everything I put into a life that someone else decided didn't need to exist.
I find Garrett at the truck. He opens the passenger door without a word. I climb in without arguing about it.
The coast highway runs south. Garrett drives steady and quiet and doesn't require conversation, that's exactly what I need right now. I watch the tree line scroll past the window and I replay the conversation in the kitchen.
He made four calls before he even told me what happened. My stomach still turns when I think about it. Standing in his kitchen in his shirt while he talked past me to the phone, his voice flat and efficient, the same tone I heard in conference rooms for eleven years.
But the longer I sit with it, the less it fits.
The firm organized around me because I produced results and results justified the structure. My manager scheduled my calendar because an optimized Isla generated more revenue. They didn't care what I wanted. They cared what I yielded.
The firm managed me to keep me productive. Thomas managed me because he couldn't stand still and watch me hurt.
Those aren't the same thing. They aren't close, and I walked out of his kitchen treating them as identical, the look on his face when I left carried a weight I've spent the last few hours pretending I didn't see.
Garrett pulls through the compound gate. The lot sits quiet under the security floods, bikes parked, the garage dark.
"Thanks for the ride."
He nods. I close the door and he pulls the truck forward to the garage bay.
I push the side door of the garage open and find him on the workbench stool, glasses off, eyes closed. Elbows on his knees, hands loose between them. Without the glasses his face changes, and the exhaustion sits in every line. He hasn't moved from this stool in hours.
I stand in front of him.
He opens his eyes.
"You tried to fix things without even telling me what happened."
His gaze holds mine. Brown, tired, nothing hidden. "I did."
"Because you're scared."
He's quiet for a long time. His hands hang between his knees and the tremor lives in his fingers still, faint enough to miss if I weren't looking for it.
"Because I thought if I moved fast enough, I could fix it before it hurt you.
Get Knox on surveillance, get Colt running plates, line up a crew—have the whole thing handled before you even had to see what they did to your place.
" His voice stays level but the effort to keep it there shows in his shoulders.
"I told myself I was protecting you. But I wasn't asking what you needed.
I was deciding for you. And I see that now.
" He's quiet for a beat. "I should have woken you up.
Told you what Diane said. Asked you what you wanted to do.
Made the plan with you, not around you."
I let the words sit. "You know why I left the firm.
You know what it did to me, having people make decisions about my life without asking, trying to control every little thing I did.
" He nods, slow. "That's what it felt like in your kitchen.
And I know that's not what you meant. But it's what I felt. "
I step closer. His knees bracket my hips and I put my hands on his jaw, his fur warm and coarse under my palms. "Stop managing me and start asking me.
I don't need you to call a bunch of people.
I need you to ask me. Ask what I want. Stand next to me while I do it.
" His pulse hammers under my thumbs. "I chose you, Thomas. Not your plan. You. We're a team."
He stands. The stool scrapes back and he grips my waist and pulls me against him, and the noise that comes out of his chest isn't a word.
The purr hits first, low and continuous, the vibration running through my ribs where his body presses against mine.
I slide my hands up his jaw and find his horns.
My left hand wraps around the intact horn near the base, and the purr drops the way it did two nights ago, deep enough to reach my spine. My right hand finds the broken one.
The sound changes.
A different sound, rough and fractured at the edges, the purr splintering into a noise that carries every year he's held still. His body locks, every muscle rigid, his breath gone shallow against my forehead. His fingers tighten on my waist hard enough that I'll feel it tomorrow.
I don't pull my hand away. I run my thumb along the jagged edge where the horn ends rough instead of curving smooth, and the breath he lets go sounds like it's been locked in his chest for years. "Isla." My name comes out broken.
His mouth finds mine and the kiss lands with everything he's held back. He drags his hands down my hips and lifts me onto the workbench, I wrap my legs around him and pull him between them. His mouth moves down my neck, my throat, and the purr fills the garage.
I keep hold of his horns. Both of them.
He peels my shirt over my head and his mouth follows, his breath hot against my skin, and every time my fingers move on the damaged horn the noise out of him gets rawer, more wrecked.
He unhooks my bra and cups my breasts, his thumbs drag across my nipples and I arch against him.
My jeans and underwear come off with his help, his fingers pulling at the button, my hips lifting off the workbench so he can get them down my legs. His follow.
Then he drops to his knees.
The workbench puts me at the right height and he doesn't hesitate.
His mouth finds my pussy, my hand flies to his horn and grips.
His tongue drags flat against my clit and my thighs fall open, my other hand braces behind me on the workbench because I need something solid.
He licks into me slow and deliberate, his hands wrapped around my thighs, pulling me closer to the edge.
I can feel the purr against my skin where his mouth presses, the vibration running through every nerve I have.
My fingers tighten on his horn and the sound he makes between my legs sends me over.
The orgasm hits hard and sudden, I clench around nothing, my hips rolling against his mouth while he works me through it.
He stands. Strips what's left of his clothes. The length of his cock presses against my inner thigh and my hips rock forward before I can think about it. I pull him closer with my legs.
He pushes into me in a single slow stroke and the fullness of him makes my nails dig into his shoulders.
The workbench shifts under us. He moves deep and steady, his hips rolling, his forehead pressed to mine, and every thrust drives a moan out of me that I don't try to muffle.
My hand slides back to the break in his horn and the sound he makes shatters the rhythm, drives him faster, harder.
His hand returns to my clit, circling in time, and the second orgasm pulls me under before I can brace for it, clenching around him in waves that drag a growl from his chest so raw it vibrates through the workbench and into my bones.
He follows me over. His hips drive deep once more and hold, and I feel him come inside me, his whole body shaking. His face buries in my neck and the growl dissolves into a purr that shakes through both of us.
We stay like that. His weight braced on his arms, my legs around his waist, my hand still on the damaged horn.
He finds his flannel on the floor and puts it on me himself, buttoning it slow, his fingers still unsteady.
Then he pulls on his jeans and lifts me off the workbench like I weigh nothing, one arm under my knees, the other around my back.
I loop my arms around his neck and press my face into his chest where the purr still rumbles.
The compound air hits cool against my bare legs.
He carries me across the lot toward his apartment, and the purring doesn't stop, this low constant thing that vibrates through his ribs into mine.
Jax steps out of the clubhouse door with a cigarette and his eyes drop to my legs and Thomas growls—short, guttural, nothing human in it.
Jax lifts both hands and backs away without a word.
He carries me up the stairs and through his apartment and lays me down and follows, settling over me, his forehead dropping to mine.
The purring fills the room, low and constant.
I put my hand over the rough edge of his horn.
It sits warm under my palm. He leans into the touch.
After a while he rolls onto his back and pulls me into his chest, my head under his chin.
"Her name was Rachel."
I don't move. I don't know where this is going.
"She was my mate. Human. We had ten years.
I asked her to marry me at a rest stop off I-5, she said yes but the ring didn't fit.
I'd sized it wrong. She laughed, put it on her pinky, and said she'd wear it there until we got it fixed.
" His voice drops. "We were driving home and a logging truck crossed the center line on a blind curve and hit us head-on.
Her side. My horn broke on the windshield frame.
I came to and I couldn't get the door open.
I could hear her breathing but I couldn't get to her. "
His arm tightens around me. I feel the shake in his hands where they press against my back.
"The paramedics got her door open in three minutes but she had died ninety seconds before they even got there.
" He closes his eyes. "I became a medic because I held her and I didn't know how to keep her alive.
At Bloodstone, I felt swelling in Knox's abdomen before he knew it existed.
He's alive because I spent fifteen years making sure I'd never be useless again. "
His voice cracks on the last word. I reach up and touch his face.
"I've been arriving on time for fifteen years.
Saving people. Getting there first. And I couldn't believe any of it counted because the one time it mattered most—" He stops.
His breathing goes uneven against the top of my head.
"You're human. You know that terrifies me.
Loving a human woman again, knowing what it cost the first time.
How fragile you are, how easily I could lose you too.
" His arm tightens around me. "But I love you more than I'm afraid of losing you.
And that's the first thing that's been stronger than the fear in fifteen years. "
I lean up and press my lips to the jagged edge of his broken horn.
What comes out of him carries no word. The purr fractures and breaks apart. His face drops to my shoulder, his arms pulling me tight, and whatever he's carried alone since that highway pours out of him into my shirt, my skin and the quiet of the room.
"I love you too, Thomas," I say. "Life's too short and I'm done pretending I don't want everything with you."
His arms tighten. The purring steadies. His breathing slows against my neck.
Outside, the compound sits quiet. Somewhere in the makeshift enclosure, the barred owl sleeps with one wing tucked. She'll need a proper mews soon. I'll build her one. I'm good at starting over.
We'll start in the morning.