Chapter 7 Chapter 7

Roan POV

My mother runs Marrow Creek Sanctuary, a shelter here in town that never really closes, holidays included. Taking in strays, patching them up, finding them homes, that's the visible part, the part with a donation jar and a newsletter. What I do with the rescue crew is the part nobody puts in a newsletter: going after the ones too far gone to just wander into a shelter on their own. The fighting rings out past the county line. The hoarding situations nobody wants to be the one to report.

I'm not out here roughing anybody up myself, whatever Deacon likes to joke about. That's not my job. That's Bishop's.

Bishop is my cousin on my father's side, and about the only person in this family who makes my quiet look loud by comparison. He doesn't come around the shop in daylight, doesn't come to family dinners, doesn't say more than a dozen words to anybody in a given month. What he does is disappear into the woods for days at a time and come back with a dog nobody thought could be saved, or with information on somebody running a fighting operation that ends up, very quietly, not running anymore. I don't ask how. I've learned not to want the specifics.

I haven't seen him in real light in over a year. We communicate almost entirely through texts and a shared drop point behind the shelter, where he leaves a dog or a location pin and disappears again before I ever get eyes on him.

I put money in his account every month whether he asks for it or not. Partly because he's earned a share of what this family built. Partly because of what happened to him when we were kids, a bad stretch with our uncle that none of us caught in time, that none of us talk about, that turned him into exactly the kind of person who now spends his nights making sure nobody else's kid or nobody else's dog goes through anything like it unnoticed.

I push that thought down where I keep the rest of the things I don't examine too closely and head for the shop.

The camera feeds from the trail cams didn't catch anything worth noting last night. Neither did the feeding trap by the river, though we've had eyes on a limping stray out there for going on three weeks. skittish, smart enough to smell the trap for what it is, hungry enough to circle it anyway. I get that. Some of them would rather stay free and starving than trade the fear they know for a cage, even a kind one.

My phone rings before I make it out the door.

Sasha.

I answer because ignoring her a second time in one week feels like more effort than it's worth.

"Figured if I didn't call, you'd let it die," she says, no hello.

She's not wrong. I don't chase people who've already made up their minds to walk.

"You made your list pretty clear," I say.

"I'm trying here, Roan. Somebody said you were at the Castellans' place with Priya's whole crowd last weekend and that Wren Castellan was hanging all over you."

I go very still, coffee cup halfway to my mouth. "Wren's Deacon's sister. She's family. Whoever's telling you that story needs a new hobby."

A pause, some of the edge coming out of her voice. "Okay. Sorry. I just, could we try again? What are you doing tonight?"

"Refilling the traps by the river after work. You're welcome to come sit with me while I do it."

I mean it as an olive branch, the actual shape of my life instead of a version cleaned up for a date. If she wants in, that's the door.

"You want me to come stand in the woods and watch you bait a trap? Roan, come on. Take me to an actual restaurant. Let me see you out of a work shirt for once." A beat, her voice dropping half a register. "We could come back to my place after, if it goes well."

I close my eyes for a second. Part of me wants this to be easy, wants to be the kind of man who can hand a woman a nice dinner and a good night and call it enough. But she said, not two weeks ago, that I don't give enough, that I'm too closed off, and now the one time I'm handing her the actual, unfiltered center of my life, she wants to trade it for a tablecloth.

"I can't tonight. Bishop watches the feeds after dark on weekends, if that stray shows, somebody needs to already have food out or he loses the whole week's work."

"Can't your cousin do that himself?"

"He doesn't handle the food. Only goes out after dark. It has to be set before sundown."

"That's ridiculous," she says, light and dismissive, like she's talking about a scheduling conflict and not a person. "I'm sure he'd understand if you told him you had plans."

Something in my chest goes tight and cold. She doesn't know Bishop. She doesn't get to call anything about him ridiculous.

"I've gotta go," I say. "Work."

"Of course you do." The disappointment in her voice matches something in mine, just not for the same reasons. "Come by after, if you want. Shower first, though. You always smell like the shop."

I hang up and put the phone in my back pocket with no intention of showing up at her place tonight, or most nights. I have that much left of myself, at least.

I'm heading for the truck when it buzzes again. Not Sasha.

Wren: Any chance I can come with you tonight? I need out of this house before Deacon makes me help him practice his terrible best-man toast for the wedding he's not even in yet.

I stare at the screen longer than the message warrants. It's nothing, she's tagged along on trap runs a dozen times over the years, since she was sixteen, since before either of us had any reason to think twice about it. Except I'm still standing here in the driveway a full ten seconds later, feeling something I don't have a clean name for and don't especially want to go looking for one.

Me: Pick you up at six.

I put the phone away and don't examine why my hand isn't quite steady doing it.