Chapter 5 Groundwork Has a New Regular (And He Is Not Casen Wolfe)

I have a system now.

Morning coffee at Groundwork before my shift — I order from Petra, I sit at my corner table, I do not look at the counter unless I am ordering, and I leave exactly when my mug is empty. It is an efficient system. It protects my peace. It works perfectly until the morning it stops working, which is the morning I walk in and find someone sitting at my corner table.

My corner table. The one with the window and the good light and the specific angle that lets me see the river between buildings.

Occupied.

I stand in the doorway long enough for Petra to notice, give me a look that says I know, I'm sorry, it was like that when I got here, and go back to steaming milk.

The person at my table is a man I have never seen before in Caldenveil, which is notable because Caldenveil is the kind of city where you start recognising faces quickly. He is tall even sitting down — long legs stretched under the table, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup, the other turning a phone over and over in a way that suggests he is thinking rather than checking it. Dark hair. Jaw that could cut something. A coat that costs more than my monthly rent, worn the way expensive things are worn by people who didn't have to think about buying them.

He looks up.

His eyes are a very specific shade of dark amber — warm and sharp at the same time, like the last hour of afternoon light — and they find me immediately, the way eyes do when they've been trained to track movement.

"I think this is your table," he says.

His voice is low. Unhurried. The voice of someone who does not rush anything.

"What makes you say that?" I ask.

"The barista looked at me like I'd committed a crime when I sat down. And then she looked at the door." A pause. "And now you're standing at the door."

I look at Petra, who is deeply fascinated by the coffee machine.

"It's fine," I say. "I'll find somewhere else."

"You don't have to." He moves his coffee and his phone to one side of the table — a gesture that is not scooting over, not an invasion, just a clean and uncomplicated offer of space. "There's room."

I should say no. My system does not include sharing my table with strangers who have dark amber eyes and coats that cost too much and voices that are doing something I refuse to name to my composure.

I sit down.

My wolf, who has been steadily grey and quiet for weeks, raises her head.

His name is Rael Voss.

I find this out because Petra brings me my usual and says, with the energy of someone enjoying herself enormously: "Zoya, this is Rael. He's been coming in every morning this week. Rael, this is Zoya. She's here every morning. You've been missing each other by about ten minutes."

"We've been corrected," Rael says, and looks at me.

"Apparently," I say.

He does not try to make conversation after that, which I appreciate more than I would have expected. He goes back to his phone — actually checking it now, some kind of document — and I go back to my book, and we exist in the same space without either of us requiring anything from the other, which is a very particular kind of comfortable that usually takes people months to find.

I leave when my mug is empty.

He doesn't ask for my number.

I walk upstairs to the tea house thinking about dark amber eyes, which I am not going to do, and which I do anyway.

Delara notices immediately because Delara notices everything.

"New energy," she says, setting my apron on the counter.

"I shared a table with someone."

"And?"

"And nothing. He was at my table. I sat down. We didn't bother each other."

Delara has the expression of a woman who has heard this particular kind of sentence before and knows exactly what it means.

"His name is Rael Voss," I add, because apparently I am going to say it out loud.

"Voss," she repeats, thoughtfully.

"Do you know him?"

"I know of the name." She is quiet for a moment. "Old family. Very old money. He has a building on the east side — one of those glass-and-stone towers that went up a few years ago. People say he moves between cities. Doesn't stay anywhere long."

I think about the coat. The phone with the document. The way he held his coffee like someone accustomed to waiting on his own terms.

"He seemed — present," I say, which is not a word I would normally use and which is also exactly right.

"Some people are," Delara says. She goes back to the counter. "Be present back."

Ozzie's response, when I mention it that evening, is: "Describe him."

"Tall. Dark hair. Good coat. Amber eyes."

"On a scale of Casen to completely out of Casen's league—"

"Ozzie."

"I'm asking for calibration purposes."

I think about it honestly, which I told myself I wasn't going to do. "Different category entirely," I say. "Casen is—" I pause. "Casen looks like someone who was made to lead something. Rael looks like someone who already owns it."

Ozzie is quiet for a moment.

"Zoya," he says, with great seriousness.

"What."

"Go back to that table tomorrow."

I throw a cushion at him. He catches it and looks smug.

My wolf, from somewhere in my chest, wags once.