The Inn

  "Well with that, I'm beat, let's go get some dinner at the Inn Aliza"

  The moment Master murmured those words, the world shifted for me. Dinner at the inn. A simple request in any sane universe, yet inside me it hit like someone yanked a cord tied to my spine. My ears flicked high, tail tightening its spiral around his leg until the tip hooked behind his knee with a little territorial twitch. The lounge air still buzzed with tension, politics, noble threats and the promise of blood, but his voice cut through it like a warm blade sliding under my ribs.

  I rose with him, the motion fluid and predatory, my body still humming with mushroom tea and caffeine that turned every heartbeat into a bright crack of lightning. The crimson couch let go of my weight and my tail followed his step, coiling, dragging, refusing to break contact even for a breath. My claws clicked softly on the lounge floor as I padded along at his side, a shadow with ears and a pulse.

  The guildhall lights dimmed behind us as we stepped out of the lounge. The hallway beyond felt colder, quieter, like the world itself was holding its breath after hearing Vellan’s confession. My ears twitched at each faint echo. Scraping boots, a mutter of recruits somewhere behind a wall, the creak of timber settling with the night damp. Every sound painted itself in sharp lines across my skull.

  I stayed pressed against Master’s side, shoulder brushing his arm, tail wrapped snug around his leg like a living tether. The bond hummed with that slow, steady rhythm only he ever had. Calm even after chaos. Predictable in the way a glacier is predictable. Dangerous in a way he never apologised for. It grounded me, even as the caffeine made my thoughts dance like sparks thrown off a whetstone.

  Tamsin followed behind us, boots softer than a whisper, her posture straight as a spear. She moved like she was escorting two wild animals through a civilised building and praying neither of us decided to test the furniture. Her crossbow hung loose at her side again, though she kept glancing at Master, then at me, like she was trying to decide which one of us was the more unstable element.

  Outside the guildhall the night air slapped against my face, cool and damp. The rain had stopped hours ago, but the streets still shone like polished obsidian. Lanterns cast pale gold pools across the cobbles. Somewhere further off, a wagon rumbled. An argument drifted from a tavern window. The world felt too slow compared to the pace inside my skin.

  “Dinner,” I purred, my voice low, bright, too sharp. “Yes. Good. Before I eat someone instead.”

  Master gave no visible reaction, but the bond pulsed with the faintest hint of amusement. That was enough to make my ears tilt forward, pleased.

  We crossed the street toward the inn where Gresha and her Black Fang wolves had taken rooms. Even from here I could smell goblin. Iron and leather and the faint musk of marsh reeds that clung to anyone born in Mire. The inn shone warm through its shuttered windows, the scent of roasted meat drifting into the street on a lazy breeze.

  My stomach growled loud enough that Tamsin glanced over with a raised brow. I flicked my tail in a sharp little warning twitch. She wisely looked ahead again.

  Inside, the inn was half full. Lanterns burned smoky and bright. A bard in the corner strummed a lute like it owed him money. Goblins packed one table near the hearth. Black Fang, unmistakably. Iron armour scraped, heavy boots thumped, rough laughter snapped through the room like thrown stones.

  And at the centre of them sat Gresha. Feet on the table. Tankard in hand. Yellow eyes bright, wide, and already hunting opportunity. Her grin split her face when she saw us enter.

  “Boss,” she barked, raising her mug. “Cat. Elf.”

  My tail twitched in a violent little flourish at the word cat, but Master stepped forward and the bond steadied me again.

  “Gresha,” he said. “We will talk tomorrow. Tonight we eat.”

  Her grin widened. “Aye. Eat now. Kill later.”

  Perfect goblin logic.

  We took a table near the window. I slid into the seat beside Master rather than across from him, pressing thigh to thigh, tail curling beneath the table around his ankle again. My pupils were still wide as moons. My ears twitched constantly at every scrape of chair, every clink of tankard. The entire room felt loud and slow at once, like a dream trying to decide if it was nightmare or fantasy.

  When the serving girl approached, my claws drummed on the table and she flinched. Good. She should. My eyes stayed unblinking, wild, fixed only on Master, waiting for him to order. Whatever he chose, I would eat it. Raw meat, cooked meat, venison, bread, anything. Hunger clawed at my ribs in bright little jabs.

  Master spoke calmly, ordering for both of us with the same measured tone he had used to intimidate a noble into obedience moments earlier. The girl fled with the order as fast as her boots could carry her.

  I leaned into him, cheek brushing the cloth of his tunic, purring in low, simmering waves.

  “This town,” I murmured, voice soft and dangerous, “has no idea what is coming.”

  My tail slid higher around his leg, possessive and greedy.

  “Writs. Blood. Goblins. And us.”

  I closed my eyes just a moment, letting the bond warm the underside of my skin.

  “Dinner first,” I whispered, lips curling. “Then planning. Then tomorrow we show this city why it should never ignore the things that live in its shadows.”

  The purr deepened, vibrating through the chair.

  “I am starving. For food. For the night ahead. For whatever him decide next. Lead me, Master. I follow.”

  Master instead stands, he walks over to the bard and I see instant coin in the bard’s palm, I felt the room pivot around him like gravity had chosen a favourite. My ears twitched first, always faster than thought, catching the opening rise of his voice before my brain even mapped the words. Familiar melody. Familiar cadence. Silverbrook.

  A low growl rippled up the back of my throat. Not anger. Something tighter. Stranger. Possessive pride mixed with agitation, because hearing that song here, in this rotten grey hollow hall full of cowards and half-measures, felt like lighting a torch in a room soaked in oil.

  My tail curled tighter around Masters leg beneath the table the second he returned, the tip tapping once against his boot in slow, deliberate rhythm. I did not blink while watching him stand in front of the bard. I followed every line of his frame, the way his cloak settled, the faint shift of his shoulders as the song rose.

  The room changed with the music.

  The goblins went quiet, which goblins never do without reason. Black Fang members lifted their heads, ears pointed toward the sound like hounds catching a scent from home. Even Tamsin froze mid-motion, crossbow half lifted as the first mournful “oh noooo” threaded through the inn.

  My heartbeat flipped under my ribs.

  The bard sang the tale of the West Forest the way it should be sung. Not polished. Not courtly. Raw and old and carrying the weight of roads drenched in history. Silverbrook’s song. Oakwood’s pride. The Vanguard that mattered. Not this grasping, pathetic Grey Hollow branch terrified of its own shadow.

  I rose from my chair without meaning to, feet silent on the tavern floor. The tea still throbbed in my blood, making everything sharpen into a single point: him standing there, the bard singing our home’s anthem, and every head in the inn turning toward him because even the stupid ones could feel the shift.

  My tail lashed once, bright and dangerous, before settling again in a slow serpentine sway. The verses rolled out like a blade being drawn.

  The tribes. The lords. The burn of old wars. The forest reclaiming what was hers. The Vanguard riding when cities crumbled and greed rotted kingdoms. And beneath it all the refrain.

  Oh nooo, oh nooo, the West Forest won't forget…

  I felt that line like a hand closing around my heart.

  Because she doesn’t forget. The West Forest remembers everything. The blood we spilled. The people who hunted us. The lords who betrayed their own roads. The roads him cleaned. The villages we saved. The guild him rebuilt with his bare hands while the rest of the kingdom tore itself apart.

  Here in Grey Hollow, a place that pretends at authority and fails even at that, his song filled the air like a punishment. Some of the patrons shifted uncomfortably. They knew enough to recognise a powerbase when it sang about itself. And the words were not praising them.

  I moved to him, slow as a stalking shadow, and slid behind him, pressing myself against his back, arms sliding around his waist. My tail wrapped his leg again, tight and claiming, purring rising like a quiet threat. My ears tipped forward, fully alert, catching every note, every breath, every hitch in the crowd.

  When the bard reached the final lines, the ones that taste like roots and iron and oaths carved in bark, I lifted my chin and spoke quietly up against his shoulder.

  “They hear it,” I purred. “They feel it. They know exactly who him are and where him come from.” My claws brushed his hip, gentle but unmistakably possessive.

  "You know I doubt they've even heard of Silverbrook, The West Forest is a barony away afterall and these people, they never get out of their circles. To them inner politics mean everything. Animals fighting for scraps as always".

  The plates suddenly hit the table and the scents rose all at once, thick and sharp and comforting in the way only travel food ever is. Salted fish. Fresh fish. Mire beast jerky that still smelled faintly of marsh and violence. Steam curling up from my refilled mushroom tea like a mischievous ghost. Water I would not touch but appreciated you ordering anyway because you always do.

  I slid back into my seat beside Master, tail looping around his leg as if terrified someone might steal him between the candle flicker and the first bite. My ears angled towards every corner of the room even as my gaze stayed glued to him. The caffeine still ran wild beneath my skin, a jittery electricity, a lovely dangerous hum.

  “Circles,” I echoed softly, voice curling like smoke. “Little tiny circles they walk in until they die. Born in Grey Hollow, live in Grey Hollow, scrape coin in Grey Hollow, scream in Grey Hollow, rot in Grey Hollow.”

  My claws tapped the table in a steady rhythm. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  “They think this entire world fits neatly between the guildhall and the market square. They think the Oakwood Pact is a bedtime rumour from villages that do not exist. They think the West Forest is a hunting ground and not the spine of a whole barony.”

  I plucked a piece of fish with my claws and bit sharply. The flavour burst in my mouth, rich and soft, salt stinging pleasantly across my tongue. My tail fluttered, pleased, then tightened around you again as if tasting the food made me more territorial instead of less.

  “They do not know Silverbrook,” I purred, licking a fleck of salt from my thumb, “and it terrifies them without them even realising why.”

  My pupils dilated again as I watched you eat, the sight grounding me more than the food ever could.

  “You are right,” I breathed. “They have no idea where we come from. They cannot imagine the Oakwood Pact because the Pact actually means something. It built roads that stay safe. It holds villages together through storm season. It knows what order is because it earned it, not because nobles handed it down on a stamped piece of paper.”

  I lifted the jerky, sniffed it once, then tore off a strip with sharp satisfaction. Mire beast. Gamey, dense, a hint of bog fern in every chew. My tail thumped lightly against your boot.

  “But they heard the song tonight,” I continued, leaning against your shoulder, my voice lowering until it was almost a rumbling growl. “And even if they did not know the names, they felt the weight. They felt a forest older than this pathetic little town breathing down their necks.”

  My ears twitched towards the door as a patron hurried past outside, boots splashing in the gutter water.

  “People like these,” I said, licking the taste of jerky from my teeth, “never travel farther than their own fear. They do not walk baronies. They do not see landscapes change beneath them. They do not negotiate with goblins or stare down nobles. They do not survive the places you survived.”

  My tail curled higher around your thigh.

  “They have never seen Silverbrook’s great hall floor. Never smelled the pine smoke of Oakwood chimneys. Never watched an entire Merchant Pact rise when Nobles failed. They live in holes and call them kingdoms.”

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  I leaned closer, letting my breath warm the line of your jaw.

  “They do not need to know our forest,” I murmured. “They will learn soon enough.”

  Then I tore another bite of fish, wiped my lip with the back of my hand, and grinned at you with that wild caffeine-slit-pupil brightness.

  “Eat, Master,” I purred. “You will need your strength. Tomorrow you speak with goblins. The night after, we tear out the Fighters Guild’s heart. And this city is going to learn where power actually comes from when it’s not locked inside its own tiny circles.”

  I slid closer to him at the sound of his voice, the cadence slow and dry and stained with that familiar noir fatalism that lived under his skin like second heartbeat. His words curled through the air like cigarette smoke in a rain-slick alleyway, cynicism wrapped in warmth so sharp it could cut glass.

  Relax my dear wife…

  My ears twitched at the way he said it, quietly, like he was telling the night itself to behave. From my seat beside him I drank the sound, the tone, the shape of it, and let it roll into the version that lived in my head whenever I watched him look at a storm without blinking.

  I spoke softly, wrapping my tail tighter round his leg.

  “Master tells me to relax,” I purred, watching him with that unblinking, caffeine-bright stare, “like a man brushing ash off his coat after walking through a crime scene. Says him and I will have a decent night, that tomorrow we go deal with a bunch of animal pretence pretending they are something more than vermin with badges.”

  I brought the fish to my lips, tore a bite with deliberate slowness, letting the salt sting the edges of my mouth.

  “He says we go home to Mire Point after,” I went on, voice dropping lower, darker, “back to the place that actually earns the word settlement, not this Grey Hollow slop pit that calls itself a guild town.”

  I leaned in, cheek sliding along the rough linen of his tunic, purring with a sound that did not match the softness of the gesture.

  “And he’s right,” I murmured, claws tracing lazy circles along his thigh under the table. “The goblins have probably finished every trap, every barricade, every delightful little building they promised. Black Fang does not sleep when there is work to be done. And he… he is smug because it means he got exactly what he wanted.”

  I smiled sharp and sweet.

  “A task to keep the Duo busy. Something to chew on. Something to tighten the leash around a whole city and make it dance for him while he watches with that quiet detective’s smirk he always gets whenever the pieces finally fall where he predicted they would.”

  My tail curled higher, purr vibrating through both of us.

  “He plays it like a noir monologue,” I said. “Tired. Detached. Cynical. But I can feel the satisfaction humming through him. The city bows without realising it. The writs landed in his hand. The night is his.”

  I nuzzled into his jawline, voice turning silk and threat.

  “So yes… we have what we wanted. Rest tonight. Violence tomorrow. And Mire waiting after that.”

  Tamsin had been pretending not to listen. She always did that thing where she stood a little apart, arms folded, like distance might save her from whatever storm Master and I carried with us. But the moment she heard the way he spoke, that tired noir drawl edged in cynicism, that off hand dismissal of Grey Hollow as “animal pretence,” the way he said we would return to Mire Point like it was inevitable gravity instead of a choice, her ear twitched.

  And the moment I repeated it, purring through his words in my own twisted cadence, her eyes narrowed like she was seeing something she had not let herself see before.

  She finally spoke.

  “You two are…” she began, then stopped. Resetted. Tried again. “You are something else.”

  I turned my head slowly, deliberately, like a wolf deciding if something had just challenged the pack. My pupils were still blown wide from the tea, and when they landed on her, she froze for just a fraction of a second.

  “Something different?” I purred, tail sliding a little higher around Master’s leg. “Different how, ranger.”

  Tamsin exhaled through her nose, steadying herself the way disciplined soldiers do when they accidentally step into a deeper river than they expected. “Not normal,” she said. “Not… standard. You carry yourselves like you come from a different world entirely. Like you’re running a private war while the rest of us are still trying to figure out what table we’re supposed to sit at.”

  I laughed. A soft, dangerous, delighted sound.

  “Master does not sit at tables,” I said. “Tables sit at him. I mean he is my Master after all.”

  Tamsin pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering something in Elven that smelled like equal parts admiration and dread.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said. “The way he talks. The way you respond to him. The way you two move like everything here is beneath you. Like this hall, this guild, this whole city is too… small. Too shallow.”

  She shook her head, looking between us.

  Master didn’t look up from his plate. He didn’t need to. His silence was its own monologue, its own dismissal, its own detective line delivered between smoke drags in a rain-smeared alley.

  I purred louder.

  “He is a force,” I said. “I am the shadow around it.”

  Tamsin let out a rough laugh.

  “Gods,” she said. She pointed a finger between us. “You two aren’t a team,” she said. “You are a phenomenon. A storm front disguised as a couple. Anyone who stands too close gets swept into the wake whether they want to or not.”

  My grin sharpened.

  “Tamsin,” I purred, “you say it like it is a bad thing.”

  She looked back at Master, at the noir cynicism curled under his dark eyelids, the calm detachment, the way he ate his meal like the entire city’s fate were already a solved case and her shoulders slumped in reluctant acceptance.

  “It’s not bad,” she said. “It’s terrifying.”

  I leaned into him, claws tracing patterns on his thigh, tail wrapped like a warm steel cable around his leg. “Good,” I whispered.

  

  The moment his voice broke the lull, it snapped through the air like a match struck in a cellar full of fumes. One second he was quiet, eating, detached in that distant noir way of his that made him look like a man reading case files only he could see. The next, he spoke as if emerging from some long internal corridor he’d been walking alone.

  “You know,” he said, tone flat and thoughtful in the most concerning way, “Alderians have a habit of breeding with everything. Think about the amount of half breeds.”

  Tamsin froze mid chew.

  My ears flicked high, pupils narrowing to thin, delighted slits, because I felt the absurd direction of that thought before the words even landed.

  He turned his eyes on me. Looked me up and down, slow as a man examining a puzzle he wished he had not opened. The kind of look that carried equal parts disdain for the topic and amused self awareness that it had crossed his mind at all.

  Then he shook his head once.

  “Now that,” he muttered, dry as grave dust, “is a rabbit hole I’d rather not indulge in.”

  Tamsin choked on her fish, coughing into her sleeve as if she’d inhaled an entire existential crisis.

  “Alderian's habit, breeding, with, everything” she sputtered.

  I purred. Loud. Sharp. Wickedly entertained. My tail coiled tighter round his leg, like commentary.

  “You walked straight into that one, Tamsin,” I crooned. “Master speaks one stray cynical thought and look at you. Breaking.”

  She glared at both of us. “He cannot just say things like that out loud. Not in public.”

  “He can,” I said smugly. “He did.”

  Her expression twisted through three stages of horrified realisation.

  “Do you understand,” she rasped, “how many implications, how much history, how much questionable biology.“

  Master took another calm sip of his drink.

  “Exactly why I’m not indulging in it,” he said. “Leave that particular madness to scholars and drunks. But I don't want to even know how cat girls for one were made.”

  I leaned onto his shoulder, voice a low pleased hum.

  “Let him be,” I said. “If he starts thinking too hard about half breeds, he’ll eventually start thinking about catgirls. And then he’ll start thinking about why we exist at all. And then we’ll lose him down an academic pit so deep he’ll forget to eat.”

  Master’s jaw twitched in that subtle way he had when he was dangerously close to smiling.

  Tamsin put her face in both hands.

  “This is the most cursed dinner conversation I’ve ever survived,” she muttered.

  I nuzzled into Master’s side, eyes bright and gleefully unhinged.

  “It is delightful,” I said. “Chaos. Confusion. Philosophy that should never have been spoken aloud.”

  I let my claws stroke slow circles along his thigh.

  “And him,” I purred, “sitting there like a detective who knows exactly what rot lives beneath the city but refuses, wisely, to lift the floorboards.”

  Tamsin let her hands drop, staring between us like she was witnessing a myth and a disaster at the same time.

  “You two,” she said again, hollow and sincere, “are not normal.”

  Master lifted his cup, unbothered, noir calm settling over him like a long coat in a dark alley.

  “Normal,” he said, “Animals will be animals afterall, even if they believe they're above them.”

  And I purred in agreement.

  Then Gresha’s ears perked the instant Master spoke, that sharp goblin alertness snapping across the table like a trap resetting itself. The Black Fang goblins behind her paused mid drink, mid argument, mid chewing, all of them turning in that single predatory motion goblins have when they sense their war leader has been addressed.

  Master wiped his eyes, fingers pressed to his temples like a man regretting the entire concept of biology itself.

  “You know,” he sighed, voice dripping with tired noir fatalism, “goblins are one of the few races that aren’t half breeds.”

  My tail flicked in amusement. His tone carried that seen too much, knows too much, wants none of it energy, the way he sounded when cases took him places no sane man wanted to go. Tamsin muttered something under her breath that sounded like a prayer for mental stability.

  Master didn’t indulge any of it. He simply pressed on, voice flat and resigned as he looked toward Gresha.

  “Anyways. Gresha. I’m guessing you lot still have the common room fully booked. So looks like him and I will be taking the cellar tonight.”

  The reaction was instant.

  Gresha barked a laugh so loud the inn’s rafters vibrated. Her boots slammed back onto the floor. The goblins behind her cracked into cackles and snorts, banging cups against the table like this was the height of comedy.

  “Cellar?” she spat between laughs. “Aye, boss. We took the whole bloody room. Paid the innkeep double and threatened him with a latrine duty curse if he even looked at the door the wrong way.”

  Another goblin chimed in. “Captain said this place too fancy. Needed break in the straw bed for comfort.”

  The whole table howled.

  I purred, sliding closer to Master, tail sliding up his calf in a slow possessive coil.

  “Master in a cellar,” I said, amused. “The noir detective reduced to sleeping between wine barrels like a tragic poet exiled by goblins.”

  His expression was so dry it could have dehydrated a swamp.

  Gresha wiped a tear from the corner of her sharp yellow eye. “Boss, if you want, I can kick out the merchant family we stuffed into the attic. They cried a lot but goblins sleep better when there’s screaming nearby.”

  Master stared at her.

  “No,” he said, tone as flat as snowfall on corpses. “The cellar is fine.”

  “It is humour you know,” Tamsin muttered. “Goblins are… theatrical.”

  “No,” Gresha said proudly. “We are practical.”

  The goblins nodded in agreement. One raised his mug. “To practical solutions. And to the boss sleeping next to pickles.”

  My purr became a soft, wicked hum as I leaned into Master’s arm.

  “Him does look good in dim lighting,” I murmured. “Cellars suit him. Shadowy. Damp. Full of questionable history. Like his soul.”

  Tamsin groaned. “You are insufferable.”

  “He chose me,” I replied sweetly.

  Gresha slapped the table, grinning with every tooth she owned. “Cellar’s clean enough, boss. We killed all the rats that tried to charge rent.”

  Master exhaled through his nose the way only he can. That quiet, cynical acceptance that life is absurd and the absurdity has long since stopped surprising him.

  He stood anyway. Ready. Resigned. Noir to the bone.

  His fingers tapped his thigh, that slow deliberate rhythm that cut straight through every thought jangling in my caffeine soaked skull.

  COME ON GIRL, COME ON.

  My ears snapped upright before the words even finished leaving his mouth. The bond pulsed once, sharp, bright, like someone plucked a taut string inside my chest. I moved before I realised I was moving, tail coiling tight around his leg as I rose from my chair, slipping into his shadow with that instinctive, possessive glide that lived deeper than breath.

  The goblins saw it and smirked. Tamsin pretended she didn’t see it and failed. The innkeeper ducked behind the bar like my pupils alone were a health hazard.

  But none of it mattered.

  He was walking toward the cellar door, and I followed him like gravity with claws. The wooden steps creaked under our weight as we descended, the air growing cooler, damp stone brushing the edges of my senses.

  The cellar was dim, lit only by a single lantern bleeding gold across barrels, crates and dust. It smelled of earth, old wine, pickled roots, and faint traces of fear from whoever had been locked down here last century.

  He didn’t hesitate. He set the lantern on a crate, unrolled the deer hide bedroll with a practised motion, the leather spreading out across the stone floor like a claimed territory. Deer hide. Warm. Familiar. Smelling faintly of the hunt, of travel, of our world instead of this city’s filth.

  Then he climbed in.

  Just that simple motion, him lowering himself onto the leather, cloak shifting over his long frame, made something hungry and territorial snap awake inside me. My tail flicked in a sharp arc. My breath hitched. My claws flexed.

  Because cellar or throne room or battlefield, when he settled somewhere…

  That place became home.

  I padded forward, the lantern light catching the arch of my spine and the twitch of my tail. My ears angled fully toward him, tuned to the sound of him breathing, the faint rustle of cloth, his pulse steady beneath the noise of the room.

  He looked at me, that worn noir gaze softened only by the decision he’d already made and the floor might as well have vanished beneath me.

  I dropped to all fours for a moment, pure instinct, crawling the last steps until I reached the edge of the bedroll. My hands pressed into the hide. My knees followed. My tail wrapped around his leg again, tighter, because the world was still too large and too loud and too filled with threats that only existed because he was here for them to covet.

  Then I slid in beside him.

  Not gracefully. Not politely. Possessively. With the certainty of a creature returning to what was hers by right. The leather was cool at first, but his warmth soaked into it, into me, into the bond that hummed like a sleeping storm.

  I curled against his side, chest to his ribs, tail across his thigh in a protective loop. My purr started low, involuntary, a sound I couldn’t have stopped if the gods themselves descended and tried. From my place at his side, watching the lantern shadows curl across stone walls, I whispered in that soft, dangerous voice:

  His arm slid around me and the world changed its pulse.

  My ears twitched once. Twice. Then went still. My eyes half closed, pupils narrowing to slow, languid slits. Not sleep. Never sleep. I do not sleep next to him. I hover in that razor thin borderland where instinct rules and consciousness curls in on itself like a cat atop a warm stone.

  Half awake.

  Half asleep.

  Fully alert.

  My body relaxed against him, melting into the curve of his frame as my tail coiled tighter across his leg, tip flicking every few breaths like a metronome measuring danger. My claws stayed soft but ready. My breathing slowed, each inhale synced to his chest, each exhale a soft purr vibrating into the leather beneath us.

  If anything moved down here that wasn’t him, I would be on it before it took its second breath.

  His arm tightened just slightly, barely a gesture, and my body answered with instinctive obedience, curling closer, nuzzling under the line of his jaw as the half dream state wrapped around me like a smoke veil.

  I could feel his heartbeat under my ear. Slow. Steady. Detached. Noir calm carved into bone. The rhythm anchored me so deeply that even half dreaming, I tracked it like a scout tracking footsteps in snow.

  If it quickened, I would wake fully.

  If it stopped. No. It would not. I would not allow it.

  My tail tightened around him again.

  

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  For The Cat

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