Chapter 218: The Dragon Was Not Invited

ASH’S POV

Ash heard her laugh through the trees and stopped beside the campground’s empty wash shed.

The cabin sat across a narrow strip of grass, its porch lamp throwing a yellow square over the steps. Curtains covered the windows. Thorne’s shadow crossed one of them, large enough that Ash knew him before Dove spoke his name.

She sounded pleased to say it.

Ash gripped the shed’s doorframe. He had spent the evening telling himself he would leave once everyone settled. They were settled. Their door was closed. The bear was eating with the drivers, and nobody had approached the cabin since Dove pulled the panther inside.

He stayed.

The timber creaked beneath his palm. He opened his hand before it broke and drew a slow breath through his nose. That brought her scent with it, faint beneath hot wood and lake mud, and made leaving harder.

Across the grass, Dove said something he could not make out. Thorne answered. Her laugh changed, quieter now, and the sound pulled painfully beneath Ash’s ribs.

He knew what a closed door meant. He knew who had the right to be on its other side.

Neither fact moved his feet.

The door opened briefly. Dove stood in the warm light with her hair loose and her skirt brushing her thighs. She reached for the water bottle they had left on the porch rail. Thorne appeared behind her, one hand resting at her waist while she leaned back to say something to him.

Ash could have walked over in seconds.

He could have said her name. Made her turn. Made the panther take his hand away long enough to look at him.

Then she lifted her face toward Thorne, smiling, and the door closed again.

Ash looked down at his own empty hand.

He remembered her weight in his arms in the snow. He had carried her because she would have died otherwise, and for too long he had treated that as the beginning of something she owed him. Now another man carried her because she wanted to be carried. The difference had become a wound he kept touching.

Footsteps crunched beyond the shed.

Ash turned without moving from the shadows. The supplier from the gate came along the narrow path between cabins, still carrying the little wrapped gift Dove had refused beside her shop. He had tried again after dinner. Ash had heard her second no from across the lot.

Apparently twice was not enough.

The supplier stopped beneath the porch lamp and looked at the closed curtain.

Ash stepped out of the shade.

The man froze. His gaze dropped to Ash’s hands, then moved up to his face. Good. He remembered the bench.

"She told you no," Ash said.

"Wasn’t asking you."

"You keep saying that."

The supplier swallowed. "A woman can change her mind. Maybe she wanted the other two out of earshot."

Ash crossed the grass before the man finished speaking. He caught him by the shirt and drove him back against the wash shed, far enough from Dove’s window that she would not have to see it.

The supplier’s gift fell. Ash felt the man’s ribs fight for space beneath his grip.

"She’s inside with her husband," Ash said. "What part of that made you think she wanted you?"

The man grabbed at his wrists. Ash held him easily.

"You’re out here too."

For a moment, neither moved.

The words were true enough to hurt. Ash looked past him toward the warm window, saw Thorne’s shadow beside Dove’s, and felt something in him go cold.

"Then you should have stayed away from both of us."

The supplier reached toward his belt. Ash caught the movement and ended the struggle before the hand reached it. When he let go, the man fell against the shed wall and stayed there.

Ash stood over him, chest rising slowly.

Inside the cabin, Dove laughed again. She had heard nothing. Ash looked toward the covered window, waiting for the curtain to move, then hated himself for waiting. Even now, some ugly part of him wanted her to come out and look at him.

He had wanted the supplier gone.

Now he was.

Ash dragged him behind the unused shed, clear of the walkway. The wrapped gift lay where it had fallen. He picked it up, saw a little carved bird inside the cloth, and closed his hand until the thin wooden wings broke.

When he looked back, Edrik stood at the end of the path.

The bear took in Ash, the disturbed dirt, and the leg visible beyond the shed. His expression changed very little.

"Walk away from the window," Edrik said.

Ash’s shoulders tightened. "He followed her."

"So did you."

The answer landed in the same place as the supplier’s words. Ash looked at the bear and wondered how easily he could put him against the wall too.

Then Dove’s voice came from the cabin, calling something to Thorne. Edrik’s attention flicked toward it, his face changing in a way Ash hated because he understood it.

"She’s having a good night," the bear said. "Don’t make her remember you instead."

Ash wanted to hit him. He wanted to be inside that room. He wanted so much, so violently, that standing still took more effort than the killing had.

He moved back toward the trees.

Edrik stayed between him and the cabin, watching until Ash reached the road. Only then did the bear turn toward the shed. Neither man had agreed on what would happen in the morning.

From the road, Ash could still see the lamp through the branches. The window remained covered. Dove and Thorne had their privacy, and every reason in the world to forget he existed.

He could not make himself forget them.

The rage had a taste, like pennies and smoke, and Ash can’t stop swallowing it down.

He shouldn’t be here. He knows he shouldn’t be here, crouched between the trees across the road like some kind of animal, but that’s exactly what he is right now, isn’t he. An animal. He can feel the bark biting into his shoulder where he’s pressed against the trunk, can feel the cold seeping up through the soles of his boots, and none of it matters because all he can focus on is the window across the road and the shapes moving behind the curtain.

He hears her laugh again. That giggle. Soft and low and real, not the fake little laugh she gives at the bar when some idiot tries to buy her a drink, but the one that means she’s actually happy. The one he used to be able to pull out of her.

Thorne’s voice rumbles through the glass, too low for him to make out the words, but he doesn’t need the words. He can hear the warmth in it. He can hear the way it dips at the end like he’s nuzzling into her hair while he says it.

Ash’s hands curl into fists at his sides.

He could leave right now.