Page 25

No dream residue, no pounding pulse that feels tied to someone else’s stride, no scent wrapped in my sheets. The room smells like old wood, cotton, and the faint trace of last night’s coffee cup on the nightstand.

Just the cabin. Just me.

In fact, I feel better rested than I have been since before I got here. For a second, I think maybe the dream happened, and my brain immediately dropped the memory of it before I could hold on, the way dreams normally do. I close my eyes and try to grab the tail end of whatever usually slips through my fingers when I wake… but there’s nothing there. Just blankness—a dead patch where something should be.

My stomach sinks so fast it feels like I missed a step.

That reaction annoys me on principle because I should be relieved. Any sane person would be relieved. I spent months waking up unsettled, overheated, and confused, breathing in a scent that shouldn’t exist inside my bedroom.

Then last night I saw the thing those dreams belonged to.

No dreams should mean peace. No chasing should mean I finally get my damn sanity back. So why am I lying here feeling hollow?

“Seriously?” I mutter at the ceiling, already irritated with myself. “That’s where we’re at now? I feel empty ‘cause I’m not bein’ stalked anymore?”

I push up onto my elbows and scrub a hand down my face. The room feels too clean and ordinary. No tension hums under my skin, no strange awareness stretches from me to the trees outside. I’m just a guy in a cabin, waking up for work, and somehow that feels wrong.

He’s… gone, isn’t he?

I sit there in the dim light with that idea pressing in from all sides, and my chest tightens. It’s fucking ridiculous. He isn’t mine to lose. He isn’t anything to me except a creature in the forest who told me I’m his mate, and then I ran. He took the hint, and that should be the end of it.

But it doesn’t feel like the ending I want, and that realization sits ugly inside of me.

Eventually, habit drags me out of bed. I get ready for the day while trying not to think about antlers, claws, and what it means when something out of legend takes its scent back.

My eyes keep flicking toward the front door, even though I tell myself I’m not looking. I’m not. I’m a grown man with a badge, a radio, and enough responsibility to keep people alive in places where one bad decision can turn a pleasant day into a rescue mission. I’m not standing in my kitchen, anxious over whether an antlered forest creature left more arts and crafts on my steps.

After making a second batch of coffee—after burning the hell out of the first pot—I carry the mug to the front door with a knot in my throat.

I don’t expect the porch to be empty when I open the door.

Not just one bundle gone—both of them.

Seeing nothing there hits so stupidly hard that I actually step out onto the porch and look around, as if the wind might have moved them. I check the side of the porch, the bushes, the gap near the railing where leaves collect—nothing.

Did that… did he take them back?

Jesus Christ, why the fuck does that hurt?

A week ago—hell, yesterday morning—I would have called that a win. Creepy unexplained offerings removed from my doorstep? Problem solved. Today the emptiness where they sat lands like a shut door.

I stand there with coffee cooling in my cup, staring at the empty step like an idiot. He left those things and watched me refuse them. He showed himself, called me ‘mate’ inside my head, and I ran like my ass was on fire. Then he took them back.

A sick little twist of guilt hits me in the gut.

“I didn’t…” I start, then shut my mouth because I’m outside at six in the morning, talking to a missing bundle of plants.

But I didn’t mean to reject him. Not cruelly, at least. Not with the intention of sending him away. I was in shock; anyone else would be too. I saw a seven-foot cryptid in my woods, and my first coherent thought was to run the fuck out. It felt like a fair response, especially after he called me mate—what does that even mean?

But if he took my panic for refusal, if those bundles disappearing and the dreams falling silent mean he stepped back because I told him no…

My throat works as I swallow again.

Why am I not thinking about this like a rational human? Why am I feeling bad for insulting something that could easily kill me? What if he thinks I rejected him and comes to get me anyway?

These questions churn in my head as I walk back inside the cabin. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way, why the thought of a massive cryptid being wounded by my rejection hurts me this much. I don’t even think he would take me, to be honest. Nothing about him gave off a feral, possessive vibe. But then… the missing persons—

I lean back against the door and close my eyes.