"Thank you." The words come out stiff, like she's not entirely comfortable expressing gratitude to someone who was her mortal enemy less than an hour ago. She pauses, then adds, "And thank you for the truce."
"You're welcome." I gather my tools, sliding them back into their case with practiced efficiency. "I mean it, Quinn. I'm not trying to make your life difficult."
"Could've fooled me."
I look up at her, catching the faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth despite her sharp tone. She's still dirty from our earlier collision, white powder clinging to her strawberry-blonde hair and dusting across her cheeks. She looks like she's been rolling in fresh snow, soft and frosted and completely at odds with the fire in her voice.
"The bone saw stays on my side of the wall after seven-thirty," I remind her. "But if you need anything?—"
"I won't."
"But if you do," I continue, ignoring her interruption, "I'm next door."
Something flickers across her face, too quick for me to identify. "Noted."
I take that as my dismissal and head back to my shop, where an afternoon's worth of work waits. Custom orders, inventory checks, the endless rhythm of breaking down animals into the precise cuts my customers demand. It's meditative work normally, the kind that lets my mind go quiet and focused. But today I keep catching myself pausing, listening for sounds from next door. The faint chime of her bakery door. The low hum of her commercial ovens. The bright, clear sound of her voice greeting customers.
I'm being ridiculous.
I focus on trimming a rack of lamb, removing the silver skin with careful precision. The knife moves like an extension of my hand, the blade sharp enough to glide through the membrane without catching. This is what I'm good at. This is what I understand. Not complicated human women who look at meatlike it's a personal insult and fight with industrial fans and aggressive pop music.
The work settles me somewhat, and by the time I close up for the evening, I've almost convinced myself that the truce was the right move. Professional. Mature. Exactly what two adult business owners should do when they share a wall.
The next morning, I'm up at four-thirty like always, moving through my opening routine in the pre-dawn darkness. I deliberately wait until seven-thirty before firing up the bone saw, honoring our agreement even though it throws off my entire workflow. The saw's absence creates a strange pocket of quiet in my morning, and I find myself working around it, reorganizing tasks to fill the time.
At seven-forty-five, Quinn's lights flick on next door. I can see the glow spilling into the shared alley through my back windows. She's later than usual—normally she's here by five, just like me. I wonder if the disruption to her wedding cake yesterday set her back, if she's scrambling to catch up on orders.
Not my problem, I remind myself. We have a truce. Professional distance. No meat gifts, no territorial overreach.
I make it exactly three hours before I catch myself walking past her front window for the second time, ostensibly heading to my truck for supplies but really just checking to make sure she's there, safe, moving through her bakery with that focused energy I've started to recognize.
This is pathetic.
I'm acting like a juvenile Orc with his first crush, finding excuses to orbit around her space. My brothers would never let me hear the end of it if they knew. Especially Grak, who married a human woman himself and spent months insisting he understood the species before finally admitting he had no idea what he was doing.
But Quinn isn't Grak's wife. She's nothing like Sera, who was quiet and bookish and practically gift-wrapped her affection in clear, unmistakable signals. Quinn fights like breathing, throws meat back in my face, and Googles Orc courtship customs to understand why her neighbor is leaving premium cuts on her doorstep.
She Googled it.
The memory of her furious admission sends a warm satisfaction curling through my chest. She was bothered enough by the gesture to research it. That means something, even if she won't admit it.
"You're staring."
I blink, realizing my assistant Tomas is watching me with poorly concealed amusement. The kid is nineteen, studying culinary arts, and working here to learn proper butchery techniques. He's good with a knife but terrible at subtlety.
"I'm thinking," I correct him.
"About the baker next door?"
"About inventory."
"Right. The inventory that happens to be visible through her front window." Tomas grins, showing the gap between his front teeth. "You know the whole neighborhood is talking about your war, right? Mrs. Appleseed from the tea shop has a betting pool going on how long before one of you snaps."
"There's no war. We have a truce."
"A truce," Tomas repeats, like he's tasting the word. "Is that what we're calling it?"
"We're not calling it anything. Get back to work."
