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Behind me, Silas clears his throat. “I disposed of it in a case.”

“That’s not what disposed means.”

“It is a flexible word.”

“You moved them up here today. While I was in the shower.”

“The desk drawer was inadequate.” He comes to stand beside me and looks down at the case. Nobody has ever looked at a five-dollar hair clip the way he is looking at mine, like it’s the finest thing he’s ever held. “They were the first things of yours I had. My dragon felt they deserved better.”

I look at the Fabergé eggs on the shelf behind us. Then at my chewed pen, sitting in the center of the table like the crown jewels.

It hits me then, and it has nothing to do with biology. This ancient, impossible, outrageously formal man has been quietly collecting my garbage since the night I arrived and treating it like the most precious thing he owns. Because to him it is.

Nobody has ever made me feel quite like this. Wanted? Sure. Appreciated? Occasionally. I’ve had men buy me flowers and take me to expensive restaurants and tell me how beautiful I look.

But this man has a house full of treasures collected over a hundred and seventy years, and he’s put my chewed-up pen in the place of honor. He doesn’t just want me. He notices me. Every insignificant little thing about me.

And somewhere between the stolen hair clip and the ridiculous blankets and the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention, I’ve fallen for him. Hard. Not because he’s my mate. Because he’s Silas.

Oh, God. I love this impossible man. I might cry. I can feel it coming.

Instead I think about Mara in the coffee shop and her secretive grin. Don’t run. And if you ever do, make sure you want to get caught.

I look up at Silas. He is standing very close. His scent is warm and dark and his eyes are on my face, and they have gone fully gold.

I want to get caught. I have never wanted anything more.

“Silas,” I say. “What happens if I run?”

He goes absolutely still. Not a muscle moves. Not a breath. The gold in his eyes brightens until it’s almost painful to look at.

“Nina.” His voice has dropped into a register I have never heard from him, low and rough and nothing like a man in a waistcoat. “Do not ask that unless you want the answer.”

“Mara said to make sure I want to get caught.”

“And do you?”

I step back toward the door. Slowly. He tracks the movement the way I imagine something with wings and claws tracks a rabbit.

“Count to thirty,” I say.

“Nina—”

I run.

I take the stairs two at a time, cross the great room in my socks, and stop at the door long enough to pull on my boots, my fingers fumbling with the laces. Outside, the lodge’s gravel walking path curves past the porch and along the trees. I saw it from the window this morning. I can give him a chase without disappearing into the wilderness. I burst onto the porch into the cold.

Behind me, from somewhere upstairs, I hear him counting. Out loud. In that voice.

“Four. Five.”

My heart is going like a drum. I am laughing, a little hysterically, and running along the gravel path toward the tree line, my breath clouding in the air.

“Nine. Ten.”

The trees close around the maintained trail. Firs and cedars rise on either side, their trunks wider than I am, with old snow gathered along the gravel edges. The light is going amber and blue. It is January in the Cascades, and I have no intention of wandering farther than the path that loops behind the lodge. I know exactly where I mean to turn around.

Then I can’t hear him counting anymore.