"Already done," Rhys says without looking up from his tablet. "I also added a surcharge for your personality."
The room fills with laughter. It's a rough, tired sound, but it's real. It chases the last of the shadows from the corners.
I lean my head back against the cushion. My body aches in a hundred different places. My hands are raw, and the cabin can wait until morning.
I look at Aris. She's asleep, finally succumbing to the exhaustion. Her hand is still gripping my shirt, anchoring her to me.
"We made it," I whisper to her.
Around us, Reid argues and Rhys types and Finn laughs at them both, the noise of my family filling a room I don't have to guard.
For the first time in ten years, I'm off duty. I close my eyes and listen.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ARIS
The first thingI register is the smell.
For the last two weeks, my mornings had been an assault on the senses: damp wool, stale tent air, pine resin, and the sharp, metallic tang of adrenaline. Waking up meant checking the perimeter, reaching for a knife, and mentally calculating how many calories I had left to burn before the cold set in.
But this morning, the air is thick with something else entirely. Yeast. Rich, dark coffee. Bacon grease. And the unmistakable, sugary scent of cinnamon rolls baking in an oven.
The second thing I notice is the heat. The guest room at Crystal Creek Lodge isn't just livable; it's cozy past all reason. The silence is the soft, living quiet of an occupied house, nothing like the heavy, waiting hush of the predator-filled woods.
And the third thing, the anchor keeping me tethered to the earth, is the man I'm sleeping on.
I'm sprawled across Nash, my leg hooked over his under the heavy quilt, my face pressed against the soft cotton of his t-shirt. I can feel the steady, rhythmic thump of his heart against my cheek.
We had crashed in the same bed, old habits from the tent dying hard. Or maybe it was a mutual refusal to let go of the onlything that had kept us alive during the siege. That was Thursday. We slept through Friday entirely, surfacing only when Mags left soup outside the door.
I shift slightly, trying to stretch a leg, and immediately regret it. My body feels like it's been dropped from a moving train. My shins throb from the scree slope, my arms feel like lead, and my back muscles seize up in protest.
A low groan vibrates through Nash's chest.
"Don't move," he mumbles. "If you move, I have to acknowledge that I have limbs. And right now, I'm pretty sure my left arm has resigned."
I prop my chin on his chest, looking up at him. Nash is watching me, his hazel eyes heavy-lidded but clear of the tension that has lived there for weeks.
"Your left arm did carry me down a ravine," I point out, my voice raspy. "It deserves a pension."
"It deserves a sling," Nash corrects, his hand drifting up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers are rough, calloused, but his touch is so gentle it makes my chest ache. "How are you? Scale of one to ten. One being 'fine,' ten being 'call the medevac.'"
"Solid six," I lie. It's an eight. "I smell food. Real food. Unless I'm hallucinating from starvation."
"You're not hallucinating. You're hearing the sound of my brothers destroying Mags' kitchen."
As if on cue, a loud crash echoes from down the hall, metal hitting tile, followed by a shout that sounds distinctly like Reid.
"It adds flavor! It's rustic! It's cowboy cooking!"
"It's charcoal, Reid!" Rhys's voice shouts back, sounding exasperated. "You are serving us literal carbon. You're trying to poison the witnesses."
"Carbon is the building block of life, brother! You're welcome!"
I laugh, the sound rusty but real, burying my face in Nash's shirt. "Is it always like this?"
"No," Nash sighs, staring at the ceiling with the look of a man accepting his fate. "Sometimes they use power tools."
