Chapter 211: He Was Absolutely Not Following Her

ASH’S POV

The gate guard stopped six feet from Ash and held out the replacement duty sheet. Ash had not realized he was crushing the old one until he tried to let go.

Paper stuck to his damp palm. Dove’s truck had been gone for hours.

"Your leave starts now," the guard said. "Five days. Try coming back with the same number of limbs."

Ash looked at him. The guard’s attempt at humor died there.

Beyond the freight gate, he stripped behind an empty shed and secured his clothes, food, and water in his travel bundle. His body changed against the dust. Wings spread over the yard, and a driver abandoned his argument halfway through a word.

Ash launched before the man remembered to breathe.

He followed the road toward the service station, beating hard against air that offered no relief from the heat. She had gone without telling him where she would sleep. Without asking him whether the road was safe. Without once looking back to see whether he would come.

He drove his wings down harder.

At the station, smoke covered the western road. Ash landed beyond the abandoned car wash, shifted, dressed, and found a clerk stacking bottled water inside the open doorway.

"The passenger truck. Cal’s. Where?"

The clerk nearly dropped a bottle. "East. I think. No, east. They asked about the diner."

"The fox was with them?"

A nod, followed by a glance at Ash’s horns. "She bought lunch. That’s all. I didn’t bother her."

Ash had not accused him of anything. The explanation made him want to know what there was to explain.

He leaned closer. The clerk backed into his shelves.

"Which diner?"

The man gave him the turn, the low bridge, and the faded red roof. Ash left him still holding the same bottle. Outside, he drank from his own supply before flying again. He could follow roads, not scent through miles of hot air, and losing time on the wrong turn would have driven him out of his skin.

He found Cal’s truck behind the diner’s fence at dusk.

Through a window, Dove sat between her husbands with a plate of food in front of her. She stole something from Thorne. The panther caught her wrist, and she laughed, reaching with the other hand.

Ash’s jaw locked.

He knew what she looked like frightened. He knew her anger, the lift of her chin before she told him to go away. This face, open and wickedly pleased with herself, belonged to other men.

Edrik bent close to her ear. She kicked him under the table. He laughed and kept his hand against her knee.

Ash wanted that hand off her.

The urge was so immediate that his foot moved before he stopped it. He stood outside the fence with his shoulders rigid and his pulse hammering in his throat. She was eating. Nobody was hurting her. Walking in there and dragging the bear away would make her look at Ash, certainly.

He could already hear what she would say.

He rented a bed in the back room and slept badly. At dawn, he heard Cal start the truck and was outside before the other lodgers stirred. He flew above the road, keeping the canvas roof in sight between the trees.

The campground had a gravel lot, a store facing the entrance, and cabins stretching toward the lake. Ash landed beyond the last cabin and dressed with impatient hands. By the time he reached the road, Thorne was lifting Dove down from the truck.

Her skirt rode up against his forearm.

Ash stopped walking.

She wore a pale crop top and a loose skirt instead of the clothes he remembered clinging to her in the cold. Bare knees. The soft curve above them. Her hand on Thorne’s shoulder while the panther took his damn time putting her down.

Heat crawled up Ash’s neck for reasons that had nothing to do with the weather.

A supplier beside the gate gave a low whistle.

"Now there’s a reason to stay another night."

Ash turned his head. The man was broad, loud, and smiling at Dove as though her arrival had improved his chances of getting anything he wanted.

"Don’t," Ash said.

The supplier’s smile faltered. His eyes traveled up Ash’s body, paused on the horns, and dropped again.

"Wasn’t speaking to you."

"You are now."

The supplier found a crate that urgently needed moving. Ash watched until he picked it up, then moved beneath the trees beside an old campground bench.

Across the lot, Edrik met his eyes. The bear said something to Thorne, and both men looked toward him. Neither hurried over. They knew he was following. They also knew whose hands Dove would take if he crossed the lot.

She went inside the store and came back looking directly toward the gate. Thorne had told her. Her mouth tightened. Then she turned away, dismissing him with a movement smaller than a shrug.

Ash planted his hand on the bench back.

A wooden counter appeared beneath the porch awning. Glass enclosed deep shelves at one end. Dove checked buttons, a tray, a hatch. Ash stared. The stall he remembered had become a whole damned shop, and she had done it while he was elsewhere wondering how to bring her back.

She reached up to move the awning. A narrow strip of skin showed above her skirt, and two men beside the porch stopped pretending to study the merchandise.

Ash’s fingers closed.

The bench back broke with a crack that silenced the nearest conversation. Wood split around his fist. He barely felt it.

One man stepped off the porch. The other looked from the broken board to Ash’s face and followed.

Let them be afraid. He was tired of watching men weigh their chances with her.

Dove glanced toward the sound, saw him, and went back to setting up her shop. No concern. No call for him to come over. Thorne touched her waist, and she leaned into him as naturally as breathing.

Ash let the broken wood fall.

He had crossed miles to make sure she was safe. That was what he had told himself, and he could still force the words into his head.

Then the loud supplier put down his crate and walked toward her with a little wrapped gift.

Ash stepped away from the bench.