Page 4 of Owl’s Cherished Mate

He wasn’t tense, just focused. I’d never known him to take notice of someone so intently before.

It was new behavior.

That had been weeks ago, and nothing had changed since. She came in to study, my owl settled, I ignored him as best I could, and then she left.

The front door swung open, and I didn’t need to look up to know she was here. My owl was already aware of her presence. It was almost as though he could sense her.

Against my better judgment, I looked up anyway.

It was her. She had her bag slung over one shoulder, and was wearing jeans and a faded green sweater with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her dark hair was in its usual braid, though a few strands had pulled loose around her face. She looked tired, but she always looked tired. Today, though, something sharper had settled into her features and movements. Her jaw seemed more tense, and her eyes swept the room without really seeing it.

I tracked her as she went straight to her corner table. She sat down, unzipped her bag, and pulled out her laptop.

Mrs. Pike caught my eye and gave me a look.

I ignored her.

The next couple of hours passed the way they usually did. The high schoolers left around five. The retired fisherman folded his newspaper and shuffled out a few minutes later. A woman came in to return a stack of romance novels and check out a new stack for the week. Mrs. Pike helped her while I finished the spine repair I’d been working on.

Through it all, the woman at the corner table didn’t move. She typed, paused, read something on her screen, and typed some more between jotting things down in her notebook. Once, she rubbed her temples with both hands and stared at the ceiling like she was trying to keep herself from screaming. Then she dropped her head down and got back to work.

I found myself tracking her the way my owl tracked movement in the dark—not by looking directly at her, but by staying aware of where she was at all times. The soft tap of her fingers across her keyboard. The occasional sigh. The way she shifted in her chair every twenty minutes because those wooden library seats were terrible and I’d been meaning to request padded replacements for over a year.

Mrs. Pike started gathering her things, and my attention shifted to her. Must be five. That was when her day ended.

“I’m heading out,” she said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. She paused beside me and lowered her voice. “Try talking to her. She looks like she could use a friend.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Pike.”

“Goodnight, Gray.” She patted my arm the way she always did—like I was still the twelve-year-old boy who used to come in after school and read for hours at one of the tables—and then headed for the door.

The library got quieter after she left. It was just me and the woman at the corner table now.

I liked this part of the day.

The last stretch before closing, when the space felt less like a public building and more like somewhere private. A pocket of stillness in a town that, despite its size, always seemed to have something going on.

At six thirty, I started the closing routine. Checked the back rooms, made sure the windows were latched, and began shutting down the public computers. I was about to make the fifteen-minute warning announcement when the woman’s phone buzzed.

She picked it up and glanced at the screen.

The change in her demeanor was immediate. Her shoulders went rigid, and her lips pressed into a thin line. She stared at whatever was on that screen, and I watched her cycle through exhaustion, then alarm, then something hot and furious.

All in three seconds.

“Son of a bitch,” she hissed and then froze. Her eyes found mine across the room, and pink spread up her neck and into her cheeks. “Oops. Sorry.”

“For what it’s worth,” I said, keeping my voice low. “You didn’t offend me, but the books are very sensitive. You’ve probably traumatized at least a dozen of them.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, and a ghost of something that might have been a smile if it had been given enough room to grow formed.

“I didn’t mean to⁠—”

“Offend the books?” I cut her off. “Too late. The poetry section is already filing a complaint as we speak.”

There it was. A real smile, followed by an almost-laugh. She pressed her lips together to stop it, but it had already slipped free.

“I’ll try to keep it down,” she said.