Page 5 of The Steel Beast’s Heart

Chapter 3

Isla

My four-thirty alarm went off two hours ago and I slept through it.

I roll over in the guest room bed and grab my phone off the nightstand. Six-fourteen. I type a text to Steel before my eyes focus all the way.

Did you feed the hawk? Owl splint?

The reply comes in under ten seconds.

Tom: Hawk fed at four-thirty and six-thirty. Owl is stable. Anything else, or can I drink my coffee?

I stare at the screen. He fed the hawk twice, which means he set two alarms overnight, got up in the dark, warmed the Carnivore Care to body temperature, and tube-fed a bird that bites everyone who touches it. And then he went back to sleep and did it again two hours later. And he's giving me grief about it.

I type back: Thank you.

Tom: Go back to sleep.

I don't go back to sleep, but I don't get up either. I lie here with my phone on my chest and the wool blanket pulled to my chin and the guest room quiet around me, and something in my body has let go overnight. Somewhere in the dark my muscles unclenched. My jaw loosened. The locked door and the compound walls and the blanket that smells like cedar did something my own property hasn't managed in months.

I sit up. Steel's shirt hangs off my shoulder, the collar stretched wide from a frame twice my size, the hem pooled across my thighs. I packed two changes of clothes Monday night in the dark. I pull the shirt over my head, fold it, and set it on the pillow. Then I dress in my own jeans and flannel and stand in front of the guest room mirror long enough to twist my hair back and decide that looking human isn't worth the extra five minutes.

The hallway is quiet. I take the stairs down to the common area, and the smell of eggs and coffee hits me on the landing.

Morgan stands at the kitchen counter cracking eggs into a skillet, one hand on the spatula, her pregnant belly angled away from the burner. Toast on a plate, fruit cut in a bowl, two bottles of water lined up beside the stove.

"Morning." She glances over her shoulder. "Sit down, food's almost done."

"You don't have to do that," I say from the doorway.

"The eggs are from Nina's chickens and the bread is from Claire's bakery and I already started, so sit." She doesn't look up from the skillet. "How'd you sleep?"

"Good, actually. First decent sleep I've had in months. I even slept past six, which I don't think I've done since I opened the center."

"Good." She slides eggs onto a plate and sets it in front of the chair closest to me. "I didn't sleep past five-thirty for the first eight months after Ben died. Then I moved into the apartment above The Greenhouse and Chain fixed the lock and something in me just let go. I hated that someone else fixing a lock on my door made me sleep better than I had in years. Like admitting I needed it."

I look at her.

"Eat your eggs," she says.

The eggs are better than anything I've made in months, which isn't saying much because I eat standing up at the intake counter most mornings, usually something from a can. Morgan pours me coffee without asking and it's good, better than the sludge I reheat four times at home, and I drink half of it before I notice she's eating toast off the plate she made for me.

"So, what's your story?" she asks as she eats.

"I worked at an environmental consulting firm in Seattle," I say. "For eleven years."

She stops mid-bite.

"They rewrote one of my impact assessments—a coastal development I'd flagged as high-risk. Put my name on conclusions I never wrote and greenlit the project. When I pushed back, they restructured my role and offered severance with an NDA."

"And you took it?"

"Yeah, I really hated how controlling they were so I took the check and drove north until I ended up here."

Jess comes in through the side door with a baby on her hip. She looks me over once, top to bottom.

"What happened to your hand?"