Page 9 of The Guarded Monster’s Truth

A coffee mug appears at my elbow.

I didn't hear him come in again. I look up and he's already gone, his back disappearing into the hall.

The coffee is black. No sugar. Exactly how I've taken it at every meal this week.

He noticed how I take my coffee. Seven days of meals, and at some point between the first one and this one, he memorized it.

I lift the mug. It's strong. Bitter at the edges. I drink and write in my notebook: He watches everything. Noticed how I take my coffee and brought it without a word. Never asked. Just knew.

I carry the mug back to the guest room and sit on the bed with the window cracked. A motorcycle rumbles into the lot. Brothers talk on the porch below. Above me, through the ceiling, the low hum of electronics. Steady, constant. Whoever lives upstairs doesn't sleep early.

I work through the coffee and two more pages of notes. Brush my teeth, change into a t-shirt, and get into bed pulling the blankets up. The recorder sits on the nightstand, switched off.

Chapter 4

Bruiser

The infrared feed picks her up at 12:04 a.m.

A heat signature in the residential wing, moving from the guest room toward the kitchen. She pours water from the pitcher I refilled two hours ago. Stands at the window with the glass in her hand, face angled toward the gate, and the thermal rendering strips her to an orange silhouette against the cool blue of the glass.

She stands there for ninety seconds. She doesn't try to leave. She goes back to bed.

Ten days. Ten days of watching her and I know her routines. Notebook on the left side of whatever surface she's working on, recorder on the right, pen behind her ear. She drinks her coffee black and finishes it before it cools. She gets up twice in the night—once for water, once to stand at the window and look at nothing. She eats when she remembers to and forgets when she's deep in a lead.

The surveillance is professional. The part where I refill the water pitcher before she wakes up is not.

Knox catches me in the hallway at 7 a.m.

He doesn't speak. He stands at the junction where the residential wing meets the common area, coffee in one hand, and his head turns from me to the doorframe Ava leaned against an hour ago when she asked Finn where the mugs lived. Then back to me.

I've seen that expression before. He wore it for six straight months while Rex scent-marked Holly and told everyone it meant nothing.

"You're marking her."

"Just doing my job, being friendly."

Knox takes a drink of coffee. No rush. "Every monster in this building can smell you on her. The job didn't include marking her."

I don't answer, because the facts aren't in dispute. Ten days of walking her through this compound—hand on her lower back through doorways, fingers on her elbow in the halls, my palm catching her arm when she tripped on the garage threshold—and my body has been putting scent on her skin the entire time. Involuntary and biological. A minotaur's body makes claims before the conscious mind weighs in, and mine started claiming her from the first day.

Knox doesn't push. He nods once and heads toward the kitchen.

Breakfast is loud. Finn at the stove with eggs he'll overcook because admitting he can't handle a skillet would end him. Rex drops into his chair sideways, boots propped on the seat next to him. Colt reads from his phone with his glasses pushed down his nose, and Garrett eats standing in the corner near the window, plate balanced on one massive hand. Steel and Chain argue about the water heater. And Diesel leans against the wall with his arms crossed, trying to look like a man who belongs at this table.

Ava comes in with her notebook and her recorder and scans the room.

Eight brothers. One open chair at the head, which belongs to Knox. Two in the middle with their backs to the door. One on the far end, angled toward the wall. And one on the outside edge, the seat that gives a clear sightline to both the kitchen exit and the hallway.

She pulls the chair out, sits, and accepts the burned eggs Finn slides across the table with his best grin.

"Chef's special," he says. "Don't tell Jess. She thinks I'm getting better."

Ava picks up a fork and cuts into the eggs without looking at the rubbery edges. "Your secret's safe."

I stand at the counter with my mug. She's watched me take the same position in every room, and this morning she left the exit seat open without making it a thing. In eight years, not one of the brothers has done that without being asked.

Finn asks her about the Founder's Day setup. She answers, pen moving across the page while she talks, and the table takes her in the way it takes in anyone who shows up and doesn't try too hard. I grip my mug and watch her laugh at something Rex says, and my chest tightens in a way I don't have a name for.