“Yes.” She nods.
“Good.” I press my lips to the top of her head.
A pause. “Decker.”
“What?”
She pulls back far enough to look up at my face. “You don’t have to tell me what any of it means. I know you’re not—” She stops. Tries again, careful with it. “I just want to know we’re okay. Right now. You and me.”
I look at her face. The sky-blue stare, direct and open. The glamour down.
“We’re okay,” I say.
She nods, presses back in. Her ear settles against my chest. The tension in her shoulders drops; it takes a moment, then it’s gone. Her breathing evens out slow against me. The rut sits banked—still there, just lower.
It will ease. Two more days, maybe three. The drive thins out, and this cave goes back to being what it is—a hold point on a mountain while Vanya pulls a thread down in the valley and thefile with Grace’s name on it stays open. None of that finished while we were wrapped up in each other. It’s all still down there, waiting.
My bear,she said.
Nobody has ever called me theirs. I built a life where nobody could—no clan, no elder seat, no council I answered to. She said “my bear” without noticing she’d done it, and instead of the old urge to shake loose, there’s this: my face down in her hair, holding still so it lasts.
Viktor’s call is due tonight.
I’ll stand out on the dark slope with the phone he gave me and hear whether the thread has moved. What I won’t say—not to him, because he already knows, and not to her, because she can’t know—is the rest of it. Her sister isn’t waiting in a cell. She’s stock in the trade Faine warned us about, and one wrong move gets her drained instead of found. Sangrey blood carries a price. Grace is wearing it right now, warm against my chest, and she has no idea.
If she knew, she’d be down this mountain by dark, offering herself as the trade. She’s already walked into one trap for her sister with her eyes open.
Tonight I’ll find out if we’re any closer. She’ll read my face the second I come back through past the boulder.
I’d better make sure I tell her what she wants to hear.
Chapter 27
Grace
The den feels bigger without him in it. He went down the mountain again after midday for food.
Bear rut.I mull the words over. It should sound…biological. Instead, I like it. There’s something satisfying about being the obsession of something big and focused and so damn good with his mouth.
But we need provisions. The rut burns through energy—what he stocked to last us days was gone by this morning—so there was no argument to make. Still, he stood at the entrance longer than he needed to before he left. The urge doesn’t want him anywhere but here. He went anyway, with a wad of cash tucked in his back pocket and promising he’d be back soon.
The cold crept back within the hour. I get up and move around, keeping myself busy.
Months of midnight phone calls taught me to dread being alone with my own head. This isn’t that. I’m sealed in amountain with one exit and no plan, and I’m fine. I notice it and leave it alone.
The first time he left me alone in here, I went through his stuff looking for a way out. Today I cross the cave, and my feet aren’t hunting anything. I want to look at his things because they’re his. That’s the whole reason, and I don’t examine it too hard.
He doesn’t own much. The pack sits in the corner, packed close and practical—water, rope, a field kit. A thermal still folded at the bottom that he’s never touched, because the bear runs hot enough without it. A knife on the ledge in plain leather. Everything dense and ordered, nothing extra. A man who packs like he’s ready to move in ten minutes.
His jacket is on the low rock near the cot.
I pick it up. Canvas, worn smooth at the collar. His scent comes up first, then mine underneath, and I can’t find where his ends and mine starts anymore. Days of shared heat have run them together.
I press the jacket to my face and hold it there.
Then I go through the pockets.
Left chest: a strip of road map, torn clean, a highway I don’t recognize. Left side: two keys on a plain ring. Right side: a wallet. Brown leather, worn, basic. I open it. A licence. A single card in a name that isn’t his. Some notes. A hardware store loyalty card.
