Page 93 of Hush

And if calm doesn’t work, I’ll pout. I am not proud, but I have assets, and I intend to use them.

By the time I’m heading back to the cabin after a late patrol, I’ve already rehearsed the conversation six different ways and ruined them all, which leaves me with precious few last-minute options.

Version one is very sensible and includes phrases like “mutual trust” and “communication,” which makes me sound like a pamphlet Parker would steal from the county health fair and read out loud in a terrible accent.

Version two is more direct, something like, “I want you, and if you don’t stop acting as if I’ll break, I’m going to lose my mind,” which is at least honest but possibly less constructive.

Version three is just me walking into his arms, putting my mouth against his throat, and letting the bond translate the rest.

That one has promise.

The air is cool, spring leaning toward summer but not quite there yet. The trees crowd close around the last curve of the trail, and the porch light glows ahead through the branches, small and yellow and human. Onyx is somewhere to my left, hidden deeper in the woods, though hidden feels generous when I can feel him through the bond like a warm hand resting low in my chest.

He’s not intruding. He hasn’t been, not since I told him I needed patrol to be patrol and not a guided romantic surveillance mission. Still, he’s close enough that the back of my neck knows him.

I’m just stepping into the clearing when I see the car, and my body stops before my mind does.

Silver sedan. Clean in a way nothing should be clean after making it up this road. City-clean. Out-of-place-clean. There’s a scratch along the back bumper that my brain identifies before I can stop it, because I once spent an entire Saturday pretending I knew how to buff it out while she stood beside me laughing and drinking iced tea.

For one stupid second, time folds. Then it spits me back out when I see Hannah standing on the porch.

My ex-fiancée has one hand wrapped around her purse strap and the other tucked against her elbow like she’s cold, even though the evening is mild. Her hair is shorter than it was when I left, cut just above her shoulders, and she’s wearing the blue sweater she used to throw on when she wanted to look soft and harmless after a fight.

It’s almost funny how little my body responds compared to how much I thought it would.

Five months ago, maybe this would’ve gutted me. Now, my first thought is that she’s standing too close to my door. My second is that Onyx has gone very, very quiet in the trees.

Then his scent drifts in, Labrador tea and cold stone and warning. My pulse gives a startled kick because the emotion coming through the bond isn’t simple jealousy.

It’s territorial, yes, but layered under that is possessiveness. He remembers what she did to me. He knows the scent of the grief I carried when he first found me. To Onyx, she’s the old wound showing up at my threshold and asking for hospitality.

Hannah sees me and steps down from the porch like she has the right. “Lucas.”

Her voice hits some memory in me, but the memory doesn’t open. It just lies there, dead and flat, a thing I used to mistake for home.

“What’re you doin’ here?” I ask, and my voice comes out calm enough to surprise me. There’s a little twang around the edges, more Sweet Rivers than city tonight, probably because this place has sanded me back toward myself. “You didn’t call.”

“I did,” she says, giving me a small, wounded smile. “You stopped answering.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe you should’ve taken the hint.”

Her expression flickers, but she pulls it back quickly. I used to know those flickers like the weather. Guilt first, then irritation, then the choice to look sad because sad worked better on me than angry.

“I know I should’ve warned you,” she says, hugging herself tighter. “I just needed to see you. I couldn’t keep doing this through voicemail.”

“We weren’t doin’ anythin’ through voicemail,” I tell her, walking closer but stopping at the bottom of the steps. She is on my porch. I stay in the dirt. It feels important. “You were talkin’. I wasn’t answerin’.”

Her gaze moves over me, and I see her notice the changes. The beard a little fuller. The ranger uniform dirtier than city-Lucas ever let himself get. The mark peeking out from under my collar, obvious if you know what you’re looking for. Her eyes catch there, and I feel Onyx’s attention snap to the same place through the bond.

I glance toward the tree line without turning my head. There, between two pines, something darker than shadow watches. Easy, I think back, before remembering I don’t really know how to send properly unless I’m emotional.

But Onyx’s answer comes immediately, too controlled to be calm. She stands at mate’s den.

Yeah, I noticed.

She wants inside.

Not happening.