Too late now.
The teenage girl near the door looked terrified.
Not just scared.
Haunted.
Rainwater still dripped from her coat onto the tavern floor. Bruises shadowed one side of her wrist, and she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet.
God.
She looked so young.
The marshal—Ava—studied me carefully the moment she saw me.
Recognition flickered instantly across her face.
“You’re Felicity McKenna.”
Not Ward.
McKenna.
My real name hit me hard enough I almost forgot how to breathe.
I swallowed hard.
“Yes.”
The girl beside her stared at me.
Confused.
Scared.
Then her eyes widened slightly.
“You’re the woman from the news.”
Blaze shifted closer to me automatically.
Protective.
Always protective.
“That was a long time ago,” he said firmly.
But Isabel kept staring.
“They said you disappeared.”
Something in my chest cracked quietly.
Because I knew that look.
I’d worn it myself once.
The look of someone realizing survival came with a price nobody warned you about.
