Page 8 of Mate Night Snack
“I never said it was. But I’ve got a missing girl from the 1990’s, a half-dozen evasive locals, and a clearing that feels like it remembers something ugly. You want to explain why this place hums like a live wire?”
“Turn around.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t belong here. And I’m done repeating myself.”
“I asked a question?—”
“And you won’t like the answers.” His voice dropped, a low growl beneath the words. “So stop digging where you don’t understand the dirt.”
Katniss bristled. “You don’t get to tell me where I can stand.”
His eyes darkened, storm-grey and set, his hair falling slightly into his eye giving him a more deadly look then it should have. “I do when where you’re standing’s soaked in old blood and worse things that haven’t had names in years.”
They locked eyes for a beat too long. And then, without touching her, without raising his voice, he took a step forward. That was all.
Something in the air snapped tight.
“You’re leaving,” he said. “Now.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but the look on his face wasn’t up for debate. The command in it thrummed through her bones, ancient and wild and impossible to ignore.
Heart pounding, she backed away.
Not because she was afraid of him. Because whatever lived behind his eyes, whatever was stirring nowwasn't just him.
Katniss turned and pushed through the trees, branches slapping her arms, the clearing disappearing faster than it should’ve. Her boots hit the path again only after she broke through a curtain of vines she didn’t remember walking past on her way in.
She looked back once.
He was still there, standing like stone in the clearing, watching. Not moving. Not following.
Her breath came fast. Her hands shook. She didn’t get answers. She got chased out. And she’d be damned if that didn’t make her want them even more.
Whatever he was guarding out here, it wasn’t just a place.
It washimself.
And now Katniss wasn’t sure which mystery she wanted to solve more—the missing girl, or the man walking two steps ahead with the weight of the woods on his shoulders.
4
EMMETT
Emmett didn’t move until the sound of her boots disappeared.
Even then, he stayed where he was, rooted to the edge of the clearing like the old stones might come alive and drag him back to the past he’d buried here. The wind whispered through the trees, stirring the moss in slow waves. The air still carried her scent, tangled in the underbrush: citrus, ink, and heat.
Too damn sharp for her own good.
He hadn’t meant to snap at her like that. Hell, he didn’t even raise his voice. But the second she’d stepped past the veil of trees and intothis placeshe stopped being just a problem.
She became a danger.
Not just to herself. To the whole damn town.
Emmett’s hands curled into fists at his sides. The old markings on the stones still shimmered faintly. He didn’t need to touch them to know they pulsed with memory; pack blood soaked into the roots, bones long since turned to earth.
