I pour the cold coffee down the drain and make a fresh pot. Normal Sunday. Ledgers, coffee, Lily asleep upstairs with a book tented on her chest. I'll check on her in an hour. She reads until two a.m. on weekends and thinks I don't know, and I let her because I did the same thing at twelve and it made me who I am and I'd be a hypocrite to stop her.
The knock comes at nine.
Knox fills the porch the way he fills every doorway. Wide, unhurried. Reeve rides his hip, boots kicking against Knox's thigh, babbling at the rain like he's got opinions about it.
"Coffee?" I hold up the pot.
"Sarah cut me off at two cups." He steps inside.
I pour him a mug. He takes it black, same as me, same as every orc I've known. He settles against the kitchen counter and setsReeve down. The kid toddles straight for the table leg, grabs it, and bangs his palm against it twice.
Knox drinks. Sets it down. He doesn't do small talk. Fifteen years of brotherhood and the man has never once led with small talk. He just says it.
"So, Sarah says you stayed at the library for twenty minutes yesterday."
I keep my face neutral. "I pick Lily up every Saturday."
"Pickup takes five minutes. Sign the sheet, collect the kid, leave." He glances down at Reeve, who's moved on to slapping the chair leg. "You stayed twenty minutes. You hate the library."
"I don't hate the library."
"You hate being anywhere you can't control the variables. Libraries are full of variables. Strangers, noise, open floor plans. You stayed twenty minutes because Ellie Frost was wearing a green dress and you couldn't make yourself leave."
My hand tightens on my mug. "Sarah told you about the dress."
"Sarah tells me everything." The bond between them hums through every word Knox speaks about his mate. I used to have that hum. I remember what it feels like to carry someone else's heartbeat alongside your own. I also remember what it feels like when it stops. "That's what mates do."
I set my mug on the counter. "Knox."
"Maren wouldn't want this, brother. Eight years of being alone."
The name lands flat against my chest. Not pain—duller than that. Pressure in a place that never healed right. Knox says her name like he has a right to, and I guess he does. He carried her coffin. He sat beside me at the grave for forty minutes withouta word, and then he said, "She'd hate the flowers," and he'd been right. Maren hated lilies. The funeral home put lilies on everything.
"Your daughter already loves this woman," Knox says. "And your nose already knows." He pins me with the steady look that runs this club, the one that strips every argument down to its skeleton. "The only part of you that's fighting is the part that thinks loving someone new means betraying Maren."
Reeve drops the teething ring. It bounces off Knox's boot. Neither of us picks it up.
"I can smell her emotions." I haven't said this out loud before. The words come out flat. "When she's nervous, she goes sharp. Citrus. When Lily makes her laugh, it turns warm and bright, and I can pick it up from the stacks. When she sees me—" I stop. Press my thumb into the side of my cup. "She can't hide it. I know what it means and I've been pretending I don't."
Knox nods. No surprise on his face. "How long?"
"Since September."
"That's six months of pretending, Colt."
"I'm aware."
He picks up Reeve's teething ring, wipes it on his shirt and hands it back to the toddler. Reeve shoves it into his mouth and resumes his work. "I'll see you at Church. One o'clock."
He lets himself out. The kitchen feels smaller without him. Her scent drifts through my head like a song I can't stop humming, and I don't open the bedroom drawer.
Lily comes downstairs ten minutes later, hair in a knot on top of her head, the Butler tucked under one arm. "Was that Uncle Knox?"
"Yeah, get dressed. We're heading to the clubhouse."
She's ready in five minutes.
Church meets at one. The clubhouse smells like motor oil and pine cleaner and the pulled pork Dawson made this morning, and underneath, the layered scents of every brother who's walked through these doors. Orc musk, minotaur warmth and the metallic edge that clings to anyone who's ridden hours through coastal wind.
