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"I know."

"Which means Ashkar will see it."

"I know that too."

Tom set the report down and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Steph, I can't guarantee your access stays open after this. A structural collapse of this scale... the committee has grounds to suspend permits pending a safety assessment."

"Then I'd like to continue working until they make that decision."

He looked at her and took a deep breath. "I'll process it…eventually."

She thanked him and left. She had to get back to the site and document everything the collapse hadn't buried. But she didn't go to the ridge. Not yet. She went to the Book Nook instead, because the thing that had been circling her brain since dawn wasn't archaeological and the only way she could give the dig the focus she needed was if she was able to put this to rest.

The Hollow Oak Book Nook sat at the end of a cobbled lane off the main square, its front window crowded with leather spines and a fat orange cat that watched the street with the disinterested authority of something that had been alive longer than it should have been. Inside, the shop smelled like old paper, beeswax candles, and the faint ozone tang of magic that clung to texts with active enchantments.

Lucien Vale was behind the counter, angular features sharp in the lamplight, dark hair falling to his shoulders. His forest-green eyes tracked her the moment she walked in with the fluid attention of a predator.

"Miss Ward." His voice was low, unhurried. "You look like a woman in search of something specific."

"Shifter bonds," she said, because she didn't have time for the dance. "Fated mates. Whatever you have that's comprehensive."

One dark eyebrow lifted. "Academic interest?"

"Personal research."

"Those are rarely the same thing." But he was already moving, pulling himself from behind the counter with the silent grace of his panther nature. He led her to a section near the back, shelves packed tight with volumes that hummed faintly when she passed. "Shifter bonding theory is spread across several traditions. Are you looking at a particular species?"

"Tiger."

Lucien pulled three books from the shelf without hesitation. "Start with the Ashworth text. It covers recognition markers, bonding stages, and the physiological changes that accompany mate identification. The Vellacourt is more cultural, pride dynamics, claiming traditions, the political implications of bond formation. And this one," he set a slim, unmarked volume on top of the stack, "is the one most people don't know to ask for."

"What does it cover?"

"What it feels like from the non-shifter's side." His green eyes held hers. "The bond isn't one-directional, Miss Ward. If a shifter has recognized their mate, the mate feels it too. Even humans. Even those who don't have a framework to understand what they're experiencing."

She took the books to a table in the back corner, the cat relocating itself to the chair beside her as if supervising. She didn’t want to waste her time here, but she had heard of shifter bonds before and there was something in the way she felt she couldn’t ignore. Especially after the way she felt Criss’s emotions shift from lust to need last night. And then how he fought them instead of giving in. So, for the next three hours, she read.

The Ashworth text was clinical, thorough. It laid out the stages of tiger shifter mate recognition with the detached precision of a textbook. Stage one: scent identification. The shifter's animal locks onto a specific individual's scent and categorizes it as distinct from all others. Stage two: proximity drive. The compulsion to be near the identified mate, often experienced as physical restlessness or directional pull. Stage three: protective escalation. The shifter becomes hyperaware of threats to the mate, reflexive shielding behaviors manifest without conscious decision.

Stage four: recognition acceptance. The point where the shifter's human consciousness catches up to what the animal has known from the beginning. This stage, Ashworth noted, was often accompanied by significant emotional resistance, particularly in shifters who associated vulnerability with weakness.

She thought about Criss running through the dark in tiger form because the ground had shaken a quarter mile away.

The Vellacourt text covered claiming and marking. In tiger pride tradition, the bond wasn't complete until both parties consented to a physical mark, a bite placed during intimacy that carried the shifter's essence into the mate's bloodstream. The mark was permanent. Irreversible. It bound the pair at a level that transcended physical proximity, allowing shared sensory awareness, emotional resonance, and in some documented cases, a lifespan extension for the non-shifter mate.

It also required the mate's explicit, informed consent. Ashworth was emphatic on this point: a claiming mark placed without full understanding from both parties was considered a violation of pride law, punishable by exile.

She thought about Criss holding back. The restraint she'd felt during their intimacy, that careful, leashed quality behind his eyes. The tenderness after the roughness. The way he'd kissed her forehead like she was something precious he was afraid to break.

He hadn't been pulling away from her. He'd been pulling himself back from something he wanted so badly it was costing him to refuse it.

The slim, unmarked volume confirmed it. Written by a human woman who'd been mated to a wolf shifter for thirty years, it described the bond from the receiving end in language that made Steph's hands go still on the pages. The pull. The heightened awareness. The sense of someone else's emotional state bleeding into your own, faint at first, growing stronger with proximity. The way your body responded to their presence before your mind registered they were there.

She'd felt all of it. Every stage. The scent of cedar and spice that she couldn't scrub from her memory. The irritation at the Griddle & Grind that had been too sharp, too specific, more like recognition than rejection. The way her body had known he was there at the dig site before she'd seen or heard him. The adrenaline-soaked certainty after the collapse that the only thing she needed in the world was his skin against hers.

She closed the book and pressed her palms flat on the table.

This was not what she'd come to Hollow Oak for. She'd come for the dig. For the work. For the chance to uncover something that mattered, to prove that her career was more than a series of grant applications and field reports that nobody outside academia would ever read. She had not come here to develop a bond with a tiger shifter who flirted like breathing, who had saved her life twice in as many weeks.Yet, she was here, in the Book Nook researching bonds instead of out at her site.