Chapter 116: Ash Could Start by Listening for Once

Dove let the carrier into the front room and closed the outer door before asking anything else. Thorne stood beside her chair. Edrik stayed near the window, close enough to listen without turning the conversation into an interrogation.

"Tell me what happened when you gave it to him," she said. Her fingers had tightened around the cards she was still holding. She set them down before she bent one in half.

The carrier had returned toward the Warren after the Pump Depot, taking their folded message on the route he’d already planned. He reached Ash six days later. By then, the dragon had learned that Garran had forced Dove out while he was away.

"He said Varek told him," the carrier added. "I wasn’t there when it happened. I only know what Ash asked me."

Dove appreciated the difference. She wanted what he had heard, not guesses.

She asked what he wanted to know. Whether she was safe. Whether Thorne was hurt. Where they had gone after Milepost. The carrier had repeated what he knew from the Pump Depot and handed over the message without adding a destination they hadn’t given him.

"Ash was preparing to leave when I passed back through," he said. "Asking after the black panther. He didn’t give me a route."

"I think he wants you," Thorne said, looking straight at her.

Dove stared at him. "As what, a traveling punching bag? He hated everything I did."

"As a mate. He was jealous before we left. He just preferred making it your problem to admitting it was his."

Her stomach gave an unpleasant little turn. Ash wanting her wouldn’t change how he’d treated her, and she hated that somebody might expect her to find it flattering. She asked the carrier whether Ash had actually said that. He shook his head; he had brought questions, not a confession.

Edrik glanced at Thorne. "I’ve seen men act like that. They want the woman, then get angry because wanting her means she can say no."

"Well, he’s going to love me," Dove muttered. "I’ve had plenty of practice saying it."

Dove asked whether Ash knew about her changed hair. The carrier said he’d reported her safe and traveling willingly, as requested, without adding a description or destination. He couldn’t promise nobody else had talked.

"And I didn’t leave because I got bored," she told him. "Garran threw me out. After that, I chose where I went. Keep those things in the right order."

The carrier nodded while she wrote a short answer herself: they were alive; any meeting would be arranged, not sprung on her; no one had permission to collect her. She left out the truck stop, the rented room, and their next road. The carrier could pass it toward Ash through his usual return route, but delivery would take time.

After the carrier left, Dove sat with the abandoned cards in her lap. She looked at Thorne, needing to ask the ugly question before it grew any bigger.

"You don’t want to go back with him, do you?"

"I want to stay with my wife." He drew a chair close and sat facing her. "I don’t miss being ordered around, Dove. I want him to answer for what happened to you. That’s different."

She rubbed the bent corner of a card. She’d expected to feel relieved, but first came anger at having needed to ask. She hadn’t chosen to leave the Warren. Someone had decided she didn’t get to stay, and now another man might decide she ought to be grateful he wanted her back.

"I finally like waking up," she admitted. "I don’t want him turning up and making me feel like that again."

Thorne took the cards before she ruined them. "Then any meeting happens where you choose, with us beside you. He doesn’t get to collect you."

Edrik pulled his chair closer too. "You can also decide you don’t feel like seeing him. Having something to say doesn’t mean he’s owed your afternoon."

Dove looked between them, then held out both hands. She didn’t make a joke when they took them. For once, she wanted to hear the answer without pretending the question hadn’t mattered.

Day Fifty-Six began with a pool wash and the smell of coffee Edrik had fetched while Thorne stayed with her. Dove thanked him before checking Sprout’s delivery: four packs of adult undershirts in useful mixed sizes. Three needed buyers. She set the travel wardrobe bag offer aside and opened a pack for her men.

She kept one pack for four Favor. Thorne needed a clean shirt that hadn’t dried over a chair, and Edrik accepted his without pretending it was too much. The remaining packs sold for coffee, cooking oil, and canned fruit. Storing the oil completed the stationary task.

Practice and sales paid, and the men’s pleased reactions finished her Favor target. Sprout settled the retained shirts before suggesting that difficult conversations could improve emotional returns.

"Can you tell whether Ash actually wants me?" she asked, irritated enough to try it.

"No current interaction is available for assessment."

"Then stop giving relationship advice about people who aren’t here." She folded Thorne’s shirt and set it beside Edrik’s. Whatever Ash wanted, these were the men helping her build a life she liked.

The weather stayed warm enough that customers left their coats open. Dove wore her sleeves pushed to her elbows, and Thorne intercepted a man reaching for the bracelet she’d accepted from Edrik. She finished telling the customer it wasn’t for sale before her husband let him move away.

"Good boy," she murmured, rubbing Thorne’s ear. He looked smug for a perfectly reasonable amount of time before Edrik told him he was making the rest of them look desperate.

Dove caught the bear’s hand as he passed. "You look desperate all by yourself. You’re doing fine."

His smile made her glad she could still tease him with Ash on her mind.

After closing, she asked Thorne for a quiet hour in their room. No plans, no maps, no people asking what she’d decided yet. He sat on the bed and let her put her head against his chest while he combed his fingers through the ends of her hair.

Edrik dropped the inside bar into its brackets and checked the narrow service gap through the window. Their door was sound. Across the yard, Hollis had started arguing with a worker at the public corridor entrance. Dove lifted her head from Thorne’s chest. "Please tell me he isn’t going to become my whole evening."

"He isn’t," Thorne said, but Hollis raised his voice, asking why she needed two men in her room. Dove stood before either man could go outside. Her pleasant hour had lasted barely ten minutes, and she was getting very tired of his voice.

She lifted the bar and stepped into the doorway. Hollis stopped talking when he saw her, but the look he gave Edrik didn’t improve. "You aren’t spending another night bothering us," she told him. "Take a hint before somebody decides to make it hurt." He looked toward his father’s office instead of answering, and Dove didn’t like that at all.