Page 9 of Guardian of Talon Mountain

Not hard. Not violent. But with enough force to make my breath hitch. His palm wraps around my bicep, warm even through the layers, grounding and furious all at once.

“You don’t get it.”

I lean in, tilting my chin up to meet his eyes. “Then make me understand.”

The air between us thickens, sharp with friction—like the hush before a lightning strike. Every molecule bristling with challenge.

His jaw flexes, throat working as he reins himself in. For a second, I think he might kiss me—or snap. Maybe both. His fingers flex once on my arm before he lets go, stepping back with a muttered curse.

“There are things in these woods I can’t explain. And now you’re out here following phantom trails with a damn target on your back.”

“Chris followed this path,” I say quietly.

He exhales, raking a hand through his dark hair. “And where did that get him?”

I flinch. He notices.

“Bryn,” his voice softens just enough to cut. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Especially not to a brother who might already be...”

“Don’t.”

The word is sharp. Final. Laced with the kind of pain I don’t bleed in front of strangers.

He closes his mouth, but his eyes stay on me. Searching. Like he’s trying to piece together how I’m still upright with so many fractures in my armor.

“You came up here to protect me,” I say after a moment.

He shrugs. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.”

Silence blooms again. Different now. Charged, not cold.

I look back toward the broken camera. “Something’s off, Caleb. Poachers and weather might be part of it, but these tracks—something about them is wrong.”

He nods, his expression grim. “I saw more like them to the west. They circle around the base trail and vanish near the ravine.”

“Same direction Chris marked.”

He doesn’t argue. I reach for the map again, but Caleb catches my wrist before I can unfold it. His grip is firm, fingers locking around mine with a quiet intensity that steals the breath from my lungs. Heat pulses through the contact, a tether yanking me out of my thoughts and directly into his gravity.

“If you’re hellbent on chasing ghosts,” he says, voice low and rough, “then you’re not doing it alone. Understand?”

My mouth goes dry, nerves bristling as heat coils low in my belly like a lit fuse, slow and insistent. A shiver slips down my spine as his gaze holds mine, and I swear the air around us contracts, humming with the promise of something just beneath the surface. I manage a single, shallow nod, pulse thudding in my ears.

His thumb glides across the inside of my wrist—slow, absentminded, almost reverent. The touch is light, but it sparks a current that shoots straight up my arm, tightening every nerve beneath my skin like a drawn wire.

“Good.”

He releases me and steps back, scanning the tree line, every muscle in his body taut like he’s expecting something to lunge from the shadows. The hush deepens around us. Not silent—too strained, too alert. The kind of quiet that means we’re being watched. Like the mountain itself is bracing—silent, still, and waiting for something to break.

And if there's someone out there watching us? They’re watching. Waiting. Aware that we’re closing in.

“We’ll go another hundred yards,” he says. “Then we circle back and regroup. I want eyes on Pete’s..."

"Pete?" I ask.

"Yeah, he's an outfitter based out of Glacier Hollow. Used to run drop sites deep in the woods—regular spots until something spooked him bad enough to pull out. He claimed he shut them all down, but I’ve got doubts. If someone’s hauling freight through this stretch, they’re using paths I haven’t seen in years."

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