Three threats. Three directions. And Nina is standing in the middle of all of them because of me.
I press my palms flat on the oak. The grain bites into the calluses and I focus on the texture because the alternative is putting my fist through the table. I've broken enough things in my life. I promised myself when Knox gave me this seat that I wouldn't break anything that belonged to the club.
She should take the Seattle contract.
The thought drops into me like a stone. She mentioned it once, early on, a throwaway line. A six-month stint at a teaching hospital, good money, a city where nobody knows her and nobody painted her workplace because her boyfriend spent fifteen years in a cage. She laughed it off.I'm not going anywhere.And I believed her because I needed to believe her.
I stay in the empty room, staring at the table, working through every angle I can find, looking for one that ends differently.
There isn't one.
If the Kuznetsovs come back, they won't stay in a waiting room. If the orc clan escalates, the letters will become bodies. If Humans First decides the graffiti wasn't enough, she's the human working at the monster clinic beside the orc's pregnant mate. She's a target because of me. Every thread of danger in this town traces back to me.
I leave the clubhouse. I ride home. The forest road winds through Douglas firs dusted white, the afternoon light thin andgrey, and the cabin appears in the clearing the way it has for years—except the windows glow now. She's inside. I can see her through the glass, moving between the counter and the stove. The ache in my chest is so sharp I pull the bike to the edge of the trees, kill the engine, sit in the cold with my hands on my knees.
I have to do this because doing nothing is how you lose people. Keeping threats from the people you love is how you lose them—Knox proved that when he hid the clan photographs from Sarah and Jess.
But removing myself from her life is different from hiding information. Removing myself from her life removes the reason anyone targets her at all.
I get off the bike.
Her bags are in the guest room closet. I know this because I carried them there the night she moved in. Two duffels and a roller, the kind a woman who moves every twelve weeks learns to pack tight. I pull them out. I open her drawers. I fold her scrubs, her sweaters, the sleep shirt she stole from me that still smells like both of us. The toiletries lined up on the bathroom shelf beside mine. It takes fifteen minutes. I pack it all. Every one of them guts me.
I set the bags by the front door.
She comes out of the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder and sees the bags and stops.
"Garrett?"
I can't look at her. One glance and the words will dissolve, I'll cross the room, press my face into her hair, the purr will start, and every bit of resolve holding this together will collapse.
I stare at the floorboards. My hands hang at my sides. The cabin holds the silence the way it held it before she arrived—total, airless, a quiet that used to feel like safety and now feels like suffocation.
"Garrett, what is this?"
"The Seattle contract." My voice comes out flat. Dead. The version of my voice that belongs to the pits, the one I used when the handlers asked if I could fight again and the answer was always the same regardless of the injuries. "You should take it and go now."
Her face changes. Not hurt, not yet. Confusion first, her brow pulling together, the dish towel sliding off her shoulder onto the floor.
"What are you talking about?"
"He sat in your waiting room." Every word costs me, and not the way words usually cost me. The words come out easy for once. That's the worst part. My voice works fine when it's being used to destroy something. "Watched you work. The Kuznetsovs know your name, your schedule, your face."
"I know. Knox told me. The club handled it."
"The club handled two scouts. The family has dozens."
She crosses the room. She reaches for my arm and I step back. One step. It takes everything I have. Her hand falls.
"Don't." Her voice drops low. "Don't you dare shut down on me."
I pull the silence over me the way I pulled it over me in the pits—a blanket, a thing between me and the world that nothing can penetrate. I learned it at ten years old, kneeling on concrete with the muzzle strapped to my face, and I've never hated myself for knowing it the way I hate myself right now.
But she'll leave if I make it cold enough. She'll leave and she'll be safe, and nothing else matters.
"You packed my bags." She says it like she's testing the words, turning them over. "You packed my bags and you won't look at me. You don't get to decide this for me." Her voice rises. "You don't get to make me safe by making me leave."
The purr is dead. I choked it out the moment I lined her duffels in the hallway, and the absence fills the room louder than the sound ever did. She feels it. I can tell because the anger drains out of her face and what replaces it is worse—she knows exactly what I'm doing.
