Page 5 of Wraith’s Promise

He appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, "Firecracker, huh?" he says, and Mariah whips around, delighted to have an audience for this conversation.

"I showed her, Daddy. She says he's powerful."

"He looks very powerful," Dean agrees, pushing off the doorframe and crossing to where we're standing. He's close enough now that I can smell motor oil and something clean, like soap or detergent.

He’s not bulky like some of the men I served with who spent all their free time in the weight room chasing the kind of muscle that looks impressive but moves slow. He's lean, wiry, built like someone who's spent years doing physical work that requires both strength and endurance.

Dangerous, I think, and then immediately feel stupid for thinking it because of course he's dangerous, he's in an outlaw motorcycle club at war with traffickers, what else would he be?

But it's not that kind of dangerous. It's the kind where he's three moves ahead before you've figured out you're playing a game. The kind where by the time you realize what he's done, it's already over and you've lost.

I've always been good at planning. The military loved that about me, put me in logistics, in coordination, places where my ability to see twelve steps ahead meant missions succeeded and people came home alive.

But standing in this lavender bedroom watching Dean Porter watch his daughter, I get the sense I'm standing across from someone who thinks the same way I do, who's already mapped out every possible version of how this arrangement could go and is currently deciding which version he's going to let happen.

It should make me nervous. It doesn't. It makes me curious.

"I've got a guest room ready for you," Dean says, casually, but I hear the real question underneath it. Are you actually prepared to commit to this the way you said you were? "Down the hall from this one. Figured if you're gonna be responsible for her safety, you should be close enough to respond if something happens in the middle of the night."

I blink, surprised by how direct he's being. "You sure? That's a lot of trust for someone you just met."

"Ranger vouched for you. That's enough." He glances at Mariah, who's now digging through her toy chest looking for something, half her body disappeared into its depths. "And honestly, I've been running myself into the ground trying to be in two places at once. Having you here, in the house, means I can actually sleep at night knowing she's protected."

"Okay. Yeah. That works for me."

"Her schedule's pretty simple," he continues. "Up by seven, breakfast, usually plays or reads until lunch. Afternoon's naptime but she fights it most days. Dinner around six. Bed by eight, but good luck with that timeline."

"I don't take naps," Mariah announces from inside the toy chest, muffled. "Naps are for babies."

"You fell asleep on the couch yesterday at three PM," Dean says, fond exasperation coloring his voice.

"That was resting my eyes."

I laugh before I can stop myself, and Dean's mouth quirks up on one side in something that's almost a smile but not quite, like he's out of practice with the full version.

"She doesn't go to kindergarten?" I ask.

"Starts in the fall. Right now she goes to a pre-K program three days a week, but I pulled her out temporarily because of..." He gestures vaguely, and I understand. Because of the war. Because it's safer to keep her close than to send her somewhere he can't control every variable.

"Makes sense."

Mariah emerges from the toy chest triumphant, holding a battered copy of a picture book I recognize—Where the Wild Things Are. "Will you read this?"

She's asking me, not her father, and I feel Dean's attention sharpen on me again, watching how I handle this.

"I'd love to," I say, taking the book and settling onto the floor with my back against her bed because sitting on the floor with kids has always felt more natural to me than sitting in chairs above them, talking down.

Mariah immediately plops down beside me, close enough that our shoulders are touching, and Captain the rabbit gets arranged on her lap.

I open the book and start reading, doing the voices the way my own father used to before he stopped being the kind of father who did voices and became the kind who only knew how to communicate through violence. That's one of the only good memories I have of him, the year or two before everything went wrong, before the drinking got bad and the anger got worse, when he'd read to me and Ranger at bedtime and do all the monster voices, growling and dramatic.

I push that memory away and focus on the page in front of me, on the wild things with their terrible teeth and terrible claws, on Max in his wolf suit making mischief of one kind and another.

Mariah leans heavier against my shoulder as I read, her breathing evening out, and by the time I get to the part where Max sails back home, she's warm and completely relaxed against me like she's known me her entire life instead of twenty minutes.

When I finish and close the book, I glance up and find Dean still in the doorway, but he's not watching Mariah anymore. He's watching me, and there's something in his expression that makes my breath catch slightly in my chest.

"She doesn't usually warm up to people that fast," he says.