Page 22 of Ranger's Honor
Her mouth is slack. Her eyes wide. But it’s not fear in them—it’s finality.
The world contracts to a pinpoint of anguish as I roar her name, but the sound distorts, warping around me until it becomes someone else’s scream entirely. The horizon splits apart. Blood pools under her. A shadow falls across her body, and I lunge—but it’s too late. The shadow swallows her whole, leaving nothing but fire in its wake.
I lunge forward, roaring her name, but the dream rips her away before I can reach her. Screams. Fire. Blood. Not hers, but it could’ve been. I lunge for a shadow that vanishes the second I reach it, and then...
I jolt upright, breath coming hard, body damp with sweat. My heart pounds like I haven’t left the fight behind. My wolf’s already awake, tense under my skin, restless and alert in the wake of a dream that still lingers like smoke.
But then—her scent. Warm and steady. It wraps around me, anchoring me in something real. The pressure in my chest eases. My pulse slows. My wolf stills, ears flicking forward, recognizing safety in her nearness.
The world shrinks to the scent still clinging to the pillow beside mine—soft heat, wild earth, a breath of citrus. Just that. Just her. And suddenly, I know where I am again. Not in the wreckage of memory, but here. Now. In her house. Guarding her bed from the shadows I can’t quite outrun.
A memory surfaces—Kari standing barefoot in the doorway that first night, face fierce and chin high, calling me on mybullshit before I could bury it. That flash of defiance, that spark—I clung to it when I shouldn’t have. I still do. Not because it soothed me, but because it cut through everything. She cut through everything.
It’s not the fight that defines me—it’s the woman who refuses to let me hide from it.
I breathe in her scent again. It permeates her home. Warm skin. Honeyed citrus. Earth and something more, something that only lives as a part of her. It’s enough to hold me steady. To keep the past from dragging me under.
Kari.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and scrub a hand down my face. The ache in my side reminds me I made it back in one piece. Barely. My ribs protest as I stand, but I don’t stop moving. I can’t. The house is too quiet. My nerves are still too frayed.
I pad through the hall barefoot, the floor cool beneath my feet. Every creak of the old wood makes my muscles coil tighter. I pass her room—door cracked open. She’s curled on her side, hand tucked under her cheek. Peaceful.
I don’t deserve that view. Not when all I can feel is the sting of how close I came to losing her. Guilt claws at my insides, sharp and relentless, dragging up memories I’d rather keep buried. That dream wasn’t just a warning—it was a reckoning.
Instead of lingering, I move down the stairs to the front door. Lock—secured. Deadbolt—clicked. I check the window latches next. Then the back door. Then the perimeter via the security panel I installed two days ago.
It still doesn’t feel like enough—not when every instinct screams that the threat isn’t over, that shadows don’t always wait for dawn. Not when the image of Kari bleeding out in my dream still clings to the edge of my vision.
By the time I make it to the kitchen, an encrypted text from Gage appears.
Target IDs clean. One potential ghost tag—warehouse cameras burned at 0321. Could be your guy. Working on trace. Sit tight.
Sit tight. Yeah, sure.
My jaw clenches. I respond with a quick tap and drop the phone face down on the counter.
He was there. I know it.
I should wake Gideon. Tell him. But it’s not time yet.
Movement catches the edge of my vision. Kari.
She steps into the kitchen, wrapped in a long T-shirt that skims her thighs, the faded cotton molded to her like a second skin—worn, thin, and criminally soft-looking. It clings to her curves with every subtle change of her position, dragging my gaze lower than it should go. One bare hip peeks out where the shirt has managed to work its way up, the sight of it leading my mind into dangerous territory. Her legs are bare, long, toned, and tempting as sin.
Her hair’s a tousled halo, wild from sleep, catching faint strands of gold in the low light. There’s a pillow-crease on one cheek, her mouth still kiss bruised from the night before. But it’s her eyes—stormy and sharp beneath those heavy lashes—that cut straight through me. She doesn’t look confused or groggy.
She looks like a woman who’s just caught her mate trying to bury a secret in silence in the backyard.
And I feel it—the way my chest tightens, the way heat coils low and hot just from the sight of her like that. Wild and soft. Sleep-mussed and barefoot, she watches me with laser precision—rumpled but sharp-eyed and alert.
She doesn’t have to say a word. My pulse is already tripping. It shouldn’t hit me this hard, but it does. A visceral punch straight to the chest. Everything about her, from that sleepy blink to the quiet challenge in her posture, rattles the steel cage I’ve welded around myself and threatens to blow it wide open.
"You check the locks or patrol the entire coastline?"
I don’t answer. Her gaze sharpens.
"You’re not just spooked," she says quietly. "You’re hiding something."
