"You're asking how we knew we were ready. But that's not the problem. You're ready. Anyone in this room can see that." Sarahpauses. "The question is why Colt isn't. And that's his story to tell, not mine."
"Then why are you both looking at each other like you already know?"
Sarah laces her fingers on the table. She takes a breath before she starts, the way she does when the answer is going to hurt.
"Colt claimed Maren," she says. "Well before Lily, before any of it. The bite links heartbeats, feelings, emotions, everything.And the human mate's body changes. You live as long as the orc does—a hundred and fifty years, maybe more.He felt her heartbeat in his chest every day they were together. Her moods, her joy, the way she laughed and the way she cried. That's what the bite does. It makes you carry each other."
I know what she's about to say. My arms tighten around Reeve.
"The bond broke when Maren died," Sarah says. "He literally felt her heartbeat stop inside his chest. He carried that emptiness for years before the scar healed enough for him to breathe without feeling the gap where she used to be."
The kitchen goes quiet.
"Finn asked me during the hurricane," Jess says. "I said yes before he finished the sentence. But Finn hadn't lost anyone. He came to me whole." She lifts her eyes. "Colt isn't."
I hold Reeve tighter. My throat closes.
He felt her die. Not in the abstract, not the way you read about it in a book and cry and close the cover and go make dinner. He felt it happen inside his own body.
I read romance novels. I know what the claiming bite looks like in fiction—usually the last chapter, the grand gesture, the proof that love wins. Nobody writes the sequel where the bond breaksand the survivor has to keep breathing with half a heartbeat for the rest of his life. But Colt lived it. This isn't a romance novel, it's real life.
"So, he's not afraid of the bite," I say. "He's afraid of what happens if it ends."
Sarah holds my gaze. "Now you know."
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I shift Reeve to one arm and check the screen.
A text from Colt:Looked into the Humans First group. County filings show three outside donors over ten thousand dollars each. None local. This isn't just Dale Rickman and a stack of flyers. Someone's bankrolling it.
I read it twice. He's not angry. He's working. That's what Colt does with a threat—he doesn't use his fists, he uses his mind.
I hand Reeve back to Sarah and stand.
"Everything okay?" Jess asks.
"Colt looked into some hate mail I've been getting at the library from Humans First. He's tracing the group's funding."
Sarah nods like she expected nothing else. "He'll find what he's looking for. He always does. He's a smart cookie."
I hug them both. Jess tolerates it for two seconds and then pushes me off with one hand. Sarah holds on longer, her chin on my shoulder, and whispers, "Be patient with him."
My car idles in the clubhouse parking lot. The sun sits low and the air coming through the cracked window smells like pine and gravel dust.
I get it now. He gave Maren the bite and she died, he felt it happen inside his own body, he cares for me and he can't do itagain. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I will have to learn to be happy with either outcome if I want to be with him. I know he cares for me, I can feel it in his hands on my waist, in the meals he cooks, in the way he calls me sweet girl. But the bite is where his courage runs out, and I really do understand why.
He'll get there or he won't, and either way the choice has to be his.
Chapter 10
Colt
The emergency protocol spreadsheet has fourteen columns and I've checked each one twice since eleven o'clock. Fuel reserves, medical supplies, ammunition count, food stores, the cash in the floor safe. And tonight I need the discipline of columns more than I need sleep.
The clubhouse hums low around me at midnight. Rex on the camera bank in Bruiser's office, scrolling feeds. Finn checking the perimeter every forty minutes, his boots on the gravel. Knox at the head of the table, reading Bruiser's latest intel brief, not speaking. Bruiser at his laptop, headset on, monitoring the scanner frequencies he tapped into two weeks ago.
Upstairs, Ellie and Lily.
I close the spreadsheet and open it again.
