Chapter 214: She Said Good Boy and Ruined Him

THORNE’S POV

Thorne had seen Dove look pleased with herself before, but the hunting lesson had left something different in her face. She sat at the picnic table with one foot tucked beneath her, arguing with Edrik about whether refusing to clean an animal counted as abandoning half the job.

"I cleaned vegetables," she said. "They died with much better manners."

Edrik leaned back, laughing. Thorne watched her take another bite and felt an absurd amount of pride over a rabbit neither man had shot.

She had stopped when the first shot was unsafe. He kept returning to that. Wanting something had not made her careless, and being afraid of getting it wrong had not made her quit. She had come back annoyed, sweaty, and determined to try again.

He loved that about her. He loved plenty of things he had no intention of listing while she still held a fork.

After dinner, he carried the dishes to the outdoor sink. The cabins stood behind him in a row, their porch lights running from a generator near the office. Dove followed with a towel tucked under her arm and a stubborn expression that meant she had already decided what he was going to let her do.

"You cooked. I can wash."

"I was going to rinse them."

"Then rinse, handsome. I’m not standing here holding this towel for decoration."

He moved over. She fit beside him, her hip brushing his thigh every time she reached for a plate. He could have finished in half the time alone. That did not make him want her to leave.

She caught him taking a strip of leftover meat from the serving dish.

"That is tomorrow’s lunch."

"It was a very small piece."

"You’re a very large thief. Put it down."

He did, mostly because she was trying not to smile. Her free hand came up to scratch behind his ear, and he lowered his head into it without thinking.

"Good boy," she murmured, pleased with him.

The words reached places no blow had ever managed to touch.

Across the yard, the keeper’s brother stopped talking. Thorne saw the man notice his lowered head, Dove’s hand in his hair, and the tail he had apparently forgotten to keep still. Let him look. Thorne had spent enough of his life being watched for signs of weakness. This was not weakness. This was his wife touching him because she liked him close.

Dove noticed the staring too. She kept her hand where it was. The brother leaned against the railing and offered to finish the dishes if she would share a drink afterward.

"I’m already spending the evening with someone," she said. "You can tell by the husband."

Thorne bared his teeth just enough to end the invitation. Her fingers kept moving behind his ear. He wanted to turn and press his mouth to her palm.

"Do you need the sink?" she asked the keeper’s brother.

The man shook his head and found somewhere else to look.

Thorne laughed under his breath. She glanced up at him, pleased by that too, and he wanted to carry her into the cabin before either of them remembered the dishes.

Instead, he rinsed the pan.

He was a grown man. He could survive a little waiting, even if Edrik appeared at the lodge doorway and grinned as if he knew exactly what was happening.

"Cal invited me to eat with the drivers," the bear said. "Apparently there is a second dinner."

"You just ate," Dove told him.

"And yet I believe in myself."

She laughed and told him to bring back anything worth stealing. Edrik touched her chin, kissed her cheek, and left with the easy confidence of a man who knew he was coming home to them.

Thorne liked that too. He had not expected sharing a life to feel this different from simply tolerating another man’s presence. Edrik could irritate him on purpose, steal food from his plate, and still be the person he trusted to hold Dove when his own hands were occupied.

There were things he wanted just for himself. Tonight was one of them. That did not mean he wanted Edrik gone.

A figure shifted beside the campground road. Dark hair, horns, a body too still to belong to someone admiring the trees.

Ash had moved closer to the supplier’s truck, but remained beyond the parking lot. Edrik saw him on the way to the lodge and kept walking. Thorne watched long enough to make sure Ash understood he had been noticed.

Then he turned back to Dove.

"Ash is still here," he said quietly.

Her hands stopped over the plate. "Still by the gate?"

Thorne showed her without making her step out into the yard. She looked across the space, found the dragon, and exhaled through her nose.

"Does he have a hobby that isn’t being a pain in my ass?"

"Not one he’s shown us."

"Are you going to go over there?"

"Only if you want to leave, or he comes closer."

She studied his face. He let her see the truth of it. Ash was strong, but Thorne no longer measured every decision against what the dragon might think of him. He had a wife beside him and a life he wanted to keep.

Dove looked back at the road, then deliberately returned to the dishes.

"I’m not giving him my evening."

Relief moved through Thorne with a warmth he had not expected. He did not want to spend it fighting either. He wanted her laughing against his shoulder and complaining about the mattress before falling asleep halfway through the complaint.

He wanted mornings with her. Enough of them that he stopped counting each one as something he could still lose.

She finished the last plate and bumped his arm. "Where did you go?"

"Thinking about tomorrow."

"The generator?"

"And going home. I still want to check that address from my old workers."

Her expression softened without becoming pity. "Then we will. After we get back."

He nodded. The uncertainty about his father lived quietly beneath other things, even good things. Dove did not tell him it would all work out. She had learned that he did not need a promise she could not make.

Instead, she set down the towel and slipped her hand into his.

"Come on. You can think about tomorrow after you’ve paid attention to me."

Thorne looked toward their cabin. "I thought you wanted the dishes finished."

"I have changed my priorities. Try to keep up."

She stopped on the cabin step and tugged him down until her mouth brushed his ear.

"Now let’s find out whether you listen that well indoors."

Thorne put his hand over hers on the door handle. Ash could watch him go inside. He was not getting another second of this evening.