Page 10 of Mate Night Snack
Seer blood.
It was rare. Usually dormant. Most who carried it didn’t even know. But the Veil did. It saw through things. Pulled them in. Chose who could stay and who got lost in the woods until they turned around or broke.
He’d have to report it to Varric. The Council would want to know.
But not yet. Not until he made sure she didn’t come back here on her own.
Emmett turned from the stones and started walking. The path reformed behind him, faint and familiar. His wolf stirred low in his chest, pacing the way it always did after a threat passed but not far enough.
She’d looked at him with fire in her eyes.
Not fear. Not confusion.
Challenge.
It scraped something raw inside him.
Back at the cabin, the shadows clung long after the sun had set. He dropped his jacket on the hook by the door and pulled a clean thermal over his head. His shoulder ached from where the old scar still pulled tight on cold days. The rogue attack that earned it had happened during the worst of the unrest, after Ashwin’s pack shattered, before Emmett came to Hollow Oak.
Maeve always told him the town saved him.
He wasn’t so sure.
Sometimes it just felt like a cage made of pine and smoke and second chances with limits.
The kettle on the stove whistled. He poured the water over loose chamomile in a chipped mug and leaned against the counter, eyes unfocused.
He didn’t let people in.
Not really.
He didn’t let people close.
But Katniss Greaves didn’t ask permission. She crashed in like a storm and left everything louder than it was before.
Too sharp. Too curious. Too damn pretty.
She smelled like oranges and stubbornness.
And something about that scent had his instincts bristling for reasons he didn’t want to name.
It didn’t mean anything. Probably.
He brought the mug to his lips and stared through the kitchen window at the edge of the woods.
“Stay out,” he muttered to the dark.
He wasn’t sure who he meant, but he knew that tea wasn’t what was going to cut it. Not tonight. Maeve’s tavern sounds like it has what he may need, so he grabbed his flannel and headed back out the door.
5
KATNISS
Katniss waited until the inn was quiet.
No footsteps. No creaky floorboards overhead. No Miriam humming through the walls or clinking dishes in the kitchen below. Just the low whirr of cicadas beyond the open window and the whisper of night air curling through the lace curtains.
She tied her boots slow, quiet. Slid her recorder into her satchel. No mic tonight. No notebooks.
