Distance

Dax disappeared.

Not from the house. He was still there. I heard his truck in the mornings, the rumble of it heading down the drive before dawn. I heard his voice in the halls, low and rough, talking to the patrol leaders. Once, I heard him laugh at something Rhys said, and the sound hit me somewhere under my ribs.

But he was never where I was.

On Monday, I carried Fenris’s coffee into the study and found Dax there, leaning over the desk with a map spread out between him and his brother.

He looked up. Saw me.

And left.

Not rudely. Not fast. He just straightened, said, “We’ll finish this later,” and walked past me without a glance, close enough that his sleeve almost brushed my arm.

Fenris didn’t look up from the map. “Coffee,” he said.

I poured it. My hand was steady. I was proud of that.

On Tuesday, I passed him on the main staircase. He was coming up. I was going down. There was nowhere to go and no way to avoid it, and for one second our eyes met.

Then he looked away, stepped aside to let me pass, and kept climbing.

Like I was staff.

Which I was. I knew that. 

So why did it feel like he’d shut a door in my face?

By Wednesday, I’d stopped looking for him.

That was a lie. By Wednesday, I’d started pretending I’d stopped looking for him. It wasn’t the same thing.

---

“He’s sulking, you know.”

I looked up from the bookshelf I’d been dusting in Fenris’s study. Fenris was out. Rhys was sprawled in his brother’s leather chair with his feet on the desk, which Fenris would have hated, peeling an orange.

“Who?” I said.

Rhys gave me a look of deep pity. “Please.”

I went back to dusting. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mm.” He popped a slice of orange into his mouth. “Big guy. Tattoos. Broods professionally. Has been walking into walls all week because he keeps looking at you and pretending he isn’t.”

“He hasn’t been looking at me.”

“He’s been looking at you constantly. He’s just doing it when you’re facing the other way.” Rhys smiled. “It’s very sad to watch.”

I set down the duster. “Then why is he avoiding me?”

Rhys studied his orange. “Fenris told him to.”

My stomach dropped. “Why?”

“For the alliance.” Rhys said it lightly, like he was reading a line off a card. “Hale’s telling all of Nightreach that the debt girl has the Aurexians wrapped around her finger. If one of us is seen getting too close to you, it proves every word he’s saying.” He shrugged. “So Fenris told Dax to keep his distance. For the good of the pack.”

“That makes sense,” I said slowly.

“Doesn’t it?” Rhys smiled at me. His amber eyes were very bright. “It’s a very good reason. Very sensible. Very Fenris.”

“You don’t believe it?”

He popped another slice of orange into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

“I believe,” he said, “that my brother has never once in his life given an order he didn’t have at least two reasons for.” He swung his feet off the desk and stood. “And he only ever tells you the first one.”

---

Rhys started flirting with me on Thursday.

I didn’t know what else to call it. He was suddenly everywhere. In the library when I was reshelving. On the stairs when I was carrying Fenris’s laundry. In the hall outside the study, leaning against the wall like he’d been waiting.

“Let me take that,” he said, plucking a stack of files out of my arms.

“I can carry it.”

“I know you can. I’d just like to.” He grinned. “Indulge me.”

He walked me all the way to Fenris’s study, talking the whole time. About the house. About the gardens. About a horse he’d had as a boy that bit everyone except him. He was funny. Easy. When he laughed, it was hard not to laugh with him.

At the study door, he handed back the files and touched the small of my back. Light. Brief. Just a guiding hand.

“After you, sweetheart.”

I looked up and saw Dax at the end of the hallway.

He’d stopped dead, a coffee mug in his hand.

He was looking at Rhys’s hand on my back.

Then he turned and walked the other way.

A second later, there was a crack. Sharp. Ceramic.

Rhys sighed happily. “That,” he murmured, “was the third mug this week.”

“You’re doing this on purpose,” I hissed.

He opened the study door for me. “I would never.”

He was absolutely doing it on purpose.

---

By Friday evening, I’d had enough.

I found Dax in the garage.

It was huge, with gleaming black SUVs lined up in a row, and at the very end, under a single bare bulb, the faded red pickup with its dented fender. Dax was underneath it on a creeper, only his legs and boots visible.

I stood there for a moment. Then I kicked his boot.

He rolled out from under the truck. Saw me. Went still.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Why?”

He sat up and wiped his hands on a rag. "Because Fenris..."

“I know what Fenris said.” I crossed my arms. “Rhys told me. The alliance. Hale. All of it.”

Dax looked at the rag in his hands.

“So that’s it?” My voice was steadier than I felt. “One night you’re asking me personal questions in a wine cellar and threatening to cut off Draven’s hand, and now you can’t even look at me?”

“I’m looking at you.”

He was. Finally. And it was almost worse.

“Then tell me,” I said. “If I did something wrong, just tell me what it was.”

Dax stood up. Slowly. He was so much taller than me that I had to tilt my head back to keep looking at him, and I refused to step back.

The bulb buzzed overhead. The garage smelled like oil and cold concrete and, underneath it, him.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said quietly.

“Then why?"

“That’s the problem.”

He said it like it hurt.

Then he dropped the rag on the hood of the truck and walked out of the garage, leaving me alone under the bare bulb.

---

I didn’t sleep that night. I was starting to think I’d never sleep in this house.

It was almost two in the morning when the howl split the dark.

Not one. Many. Long and urgent and coming from the forest to the north.

I sat bolt upright.

Doors slammed somewhere in the house. Footsteps pounded down stairs. Men shouting. Outside my window, floodlights flared on across the grounds, and I saw shapes moving at the tree line. Wolves. Huge ones. Racing toward the trees.

I pulled on my uniform with shaking hands and ran out into the hall.

Staff were gathered at the windows, whispering.

“Rogues,” someone said. “At the north boundary. The patrol got hit.”

I didn’t know how long I stood there. Twenty minutes. An hour. Long enough for the floodlights to sweep the grounds a hundred times.

Then the wolves came back.

Some limping. Some carrying others. Some shifting back to men at the edge of the lawn, bloody and stumbling.

And I saw him.

Dax, in human form, walking on his own, but barely. One arm clamped against his side. Blood soaking dark through his torn shirt.

My heart stopped.

“He won’t let the doctor touch him.”

I turned.

Rhys stood behind me in the hallway. For once, he wasn’t smiling. His hair was wet from the rain, his shirt stained with someone else’s blood.

“Fenris told him to stay away from you,” Rhys said quietly. “He didn’t tell you to stay away from him.”

I stared down at the tin.

Then I closed my fingers around it.

“Where is he?”