CHAPTER
ONE
The crate shouldn’t be winning.
It’s a stupid thing to be furious with, a half-busted shipping crate with one warped side and a split slat, but right now it has my full attention and all of my hatred.
I brace my boot against the bottom and haul on the top plank again. The nail screams, wood groans, and the whole useless thing shifts an inch before jolting back into place like it’s trying to evade my efforts.
“Pax.”
“I’ve got it.”
That’s a lie. We both know it’s a lie. The crate knows it too.
Sweat slides down my spine under my shirt, sticking fabric to my overheated skin already dusted with grime. The warehouse is cooler than outside, all shadowed corners and old stone, and a constant faint draft sneaks in through gaps in the patched walls, but I’ve been at this long enough to work my temperature up anyway. Dust clings to my forearms, pale against my warm brown skin, highlighting every scrape and old mark I’ve picked up in this place and my former life. My already damaged shoulder is starting to ache where I slammed it into the edge of the crate trying to force the lid loose ten minutes ago.
Behind me, Varek goes silent in that way that isn’t really noiseless at all. It’s the silence of someone enormous and patient and very much still there. The air changes with him. It always does. Even when I can’t see him, I know exactly where he is.
It’s not just awareness. It’s pressure. While it’s not anything physical—nothing I can point to—the space between us stutters when he’s too close, like the world itself is bracing.
I tell myself it’s just him. He’s big, armed, and not human.
It has nothing to do with me. And it definitely has nothing to do with the bond pulling taut enough under my skin to feel like a warning.
I set my jaw and wedge the crowbar deeper under the splintered plank. “If you say my name like that one more time, I’m setting you on fire.” My voice comes out rough, accent a mess as always—bits of Coventry flattened by years in Australia, with the occasional echo of my dad sneaking through when I’m annoyed.
“You say that often.”
“And yet you keep testing me.”
A faint huff of breath behind me. Not a laugh, exactly. Varek doesn’t laugh often, not the way humans do. But I’ve learned the sounds he makes when he’s amused, when he’s irritated, when he’s pretending very hard not to be either. This one means he thinks I’m being ridiculous.
He’s right, which only makes me crankier.
I shove down hard on the bar. The plank gives with a loud crack, nearly sending me backwards. I catch myself on the crate and glare triumphantly into the gap I’ve made like I’ve accomplished something heroic.
“See?” I mutter. “Handled.”
Varek steps closer, and strain briefly creases his features. It’s gone so fast, I almost miss it. It’s almost like he’s adjusting to something that shouldn’t be difficult for him.
I frown before I can stop myself. Then immediately decide I imagined it, since Varek doesn’t strain. He endures.
I don’t turn again because if I do, I’ll have to look at him, and I’m already in a foul enough mood without adding that problem to the pile.
“Handled,” he repeats.
His voice is deep, rough-edged, too smooth in places it has no right being smooth. English still sits strangely in his mouth sometimes, old consonants clipping hard, vowels lengthening where they shouldn’t. He speaks better now than he did when we first met, but there’s still something “other” in it. Something deliberate. Like every word is chosen and set down with care.
I hate that I notice that.
I hate that I notice everything.
The soft shift of leather when he moves. The brush of claw against stone. The faint metallic scent that clings to his weapons no matter how carefully he cleans them. The darker, warmer scent underneath that is just him, smoke and clean sweat and something mineral and storm-like that I still don’t have a proper word for. The way his presence overwhelms the space without him even trying.
And, worst of all, how bloody beautiful he is. My body reacts before my brain can shut it down. Heat—low, sharp, unwanted—pulls firmly through my gut.
I go still.
