CHAPTER 6 — Moonbrook Has Rules

The next morning tasted like normality, trying too hard. Sunlight slid across my lilac wall as if it had every right to be cheerful, as if I hadn’t spent the night with my nerves stretched thin as thread. Listening for the slightest sound from the garage, replaying a pair of deep blue eyes that didn’t belong to any ordinary wolf… or any ordinary man.

I padded into the garage in socks, clutching my tea like a talisman. The thrush was awake.

Not fully lively. Still subdued, still wrapped and boxed into dim warmth but her chest rose and fell in a steadier rhythm. When I lifted the cover slightly, she blinked at me, offended by the light, and made a soft clicking sound like a complaint.

Relief loosened something in my ribs.

“Good morning, little drama queen,” I whispered.

I checked her splint, her feet, her breathing. Then I set a tiny dish of softened food nearby and watched her peck once, hesitant, before turning her head away like she was pretending she hadn’t done it.

I smiled, small and private.

Life. Fragile, stubborn life, had a way of making me believe in tomorrow even when I didn’t want to.

My phone buzzed while I was washing my hands.

A text.

Colt: I can swing by today. Porch first. Around 4.

I stared at the screen longer than necessary, my thumb hovering. The sensible part of me, the part that loved quiet and hated complications, wanted to say no. I could hire someone. I could learn slowly. I could keep my world small and controlled.

But the porch was unsafe. The back lock was old. And I’d seen the way he’d held the bird, with gentleness.

I typed back:

Me: Okay. Thank you. I’ll be here.

A pause.

Then his reply:

Colt: Don’t go into the woods.

I exhaled slowly, staring at the words until they blurred.

It wasn’t even a question. Just a line drawn in the sand.

My fingers tightened around the phone.

Me: I won’t.

It was easier to send than to promise.

Grace arrived near noon with a bag of groceries and the kind of energy that made my house feel less empty just by stepping inside it.

She eyed the fresh sawdust by my porch like it had personally offended her. “You’ve been busy.”

“I’m trying,” I said, taking the bag from her. “The thrush is stable.”

Grace’s face softened for half a heartbeat. The brief tenderness she tried to hide under practicality. “Good.”

We unpacked together. Canned soup, bread, eggs, a ridiculous amount of fruit, and she clicked her tongue at the state of my back door lock.

“That needs changing,” she declared.

“I know.”

“And that window in the garage,” she added, pointing as if she could see through walls. “You latch it at night?”

My stomach dropped so fast it felt like missing a step on the stairs.

“Yes,” I lied, too quickly.

Grace’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t push. Instead, she set a jar of honey on the counter and said, casual as breathing, “Moonbrook has rules, you know.”

I leaned against the sink. “Like what? Don’t judge newcomers for liking sugar?”

Grace huffed. “That’s not a rule. That’s survival.”

I rolled my eyes, and she continued, her voice turning brisk, like she was talking about weather, not warnings.

“You don’t walk alone on the forest trails after dark. You don’t go wandering off path because you think you saw something ‘interesting.’ You don’t pick fights in town because they echo for years. And you don’t listen to those men who like telling stories about monsters.”

My shoulders tensed. “I heard them in the bakery.”

Grace’s mouth tightened. “They’ve always been there, different faces, same foolishness. Every few years, someone gets it into their head that the woods owe them a villain.”

“And the traps?” I asked, keeping my tone light even though my pulse had picked up. “That’s not a story.”

Grace hesitated, a fraction too long. Then she scoffed. “Traps are real. But not because of… nonsense.”

Nonsense. Fairy tales. Myths.

Grace said those words the way you put a lid on a pot you don’t want boiling over.

I studied her face. Grace was a terrible actress when it came to anything that mattered. She could lie politely, sure. But when her eyes went too bright and her hands moved too fast, it meant she was carrying something she didn’t want to set down.

I chose not to push. Not because I didn’t want the truth, because I didn’t want the door it could open.

“People hunt bears,” I said instead.

Grace snorted. “People hunt whatever makes them feel big.”

That landed somewhere tender. Kyle had never hunted animals, but he’d hunted my softness with the same hungry patience.

Grace touched my arm, firm and grounding. “You’re safe here, Nora. Just be smart. Lock your doors. Don’t go into the woods at night. And don’t invite trouble because you feel sorry for it.”

My throat tightened. Because I’d already done exactly that.

“I won’t,” I said quietly.

Grace nodded once, satisfied, as if the promise mattered more than whether it was true. Then she straightened. “Now. Tell me you’ve met someone.”

My cheeks warmed. “What?”

“You have that look,” she said, eyes narrowing with amusement. “The look you used to get when you were about to start a new book.”

“I don’t have a look.”

“You do,” she insisted. “Who is he?”

I spluttered. “No one. A. A guy brought me an injured bird.”

Grace’s brows rose. “A good man, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Grace smiled like she’d already decided. “What’s his name?”

I hesitated. “Colt.”

Something flickered across Grace’s face too quickly for me to pin down. Recognition, maybe, or simple interest. Then it was gone, replaced by mild approval.

“Colt,” she repeated. “Well. If he comes around, make sure he wipes his boots.”

“Nan.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “Mud ruins floors.”

But her gaze drifted, briefly, toward the forest line outside my window, and the amusement in her eyes cooled into something else. Something watchful. Then she blinked it away, like it had never been there.

At four on the dot, a dark truck rolled into my driveway as if time itself made room for it.

Colt stepped out carrying a toolbox that looked older than my entire adult life. He wore a black T-shirt despite the chill and dark jeans scuffed at the knees. Up close, the tattoos on his arms looked even more alive. Wolves in motion, inked muscle turning them into a story that flexed when he moved.

He paused on my porch, gaze lifting to the beams, the sagging boards, the loose nail that had almost caught my foot.

Then he looked at me.

“Hey,” he said.

It wasn’t warm, exactly.

“Hi,” I replied, suddenly too aware of my hair. Sark blonde and half tamed, pulled back in a messy clip and the purple cardigan I’d thrown on because it made me feel safe.

His eyes dipped to it for a split second. Noted.

“Show me where it’s worst,” he said.

I led him to the second plank, the one that complained whenever I stepped on it.

He crouched, testing it with a careful press of his hand. The muscles in his forearms shifted, ink moving like shadow water.

“This isn’t just a loose board,” he murmured. “It’s rot underneath.”

“I told you I was fixing it up,” I said defensively.

Colt glanced up, and there was something almost… patient in his eyes. “I know.”

He didn’t say you should have done better. He didn’t say why didn’t you handle this already? He just said I know, like he understood what it meant to start over with too little and still try anyway.

It made my chest feel tight. He got to work without ceremony. Pry bar. Hammer. Nails. Measured movements, efficient and sure. The sound of his tools was strangely soothing. Rhythmic, purposeful, like a language of fixing.

After a while, he handed me a tape measure. “Hold this.”

I did, kneeling beside him, keeping my fingers steady. He didn’t talk much. But his silence wasn’t awkward. It felt… natural.

“What do you do again?” I asked, mostly because the quiet made my thoughts too loud.

Colt drove a nail in with two hard strikes. “Outside work.”

“That’s vague.”

He paused, then gave me a sideways look that might have been humorous if he’d let it live longer. “Forest service. Ranger work.”

“But Moonbrook has rangers?”

He shrugged. “Something like that.”

Suspected half truth again. I watched him a moment, then decided I didn’t care, at least not enough to turn it into conflict. People were allowed their privacy. I’d built my entire move on the need for it.

I stood. “Do you want tea?”

Colt’s mouth flattened, amused and pained all at once. “No.”

“Still not a tea person,” I teased lightly, surprised at my own boldness.

“Still not,” he said.

I eyed him. “Coffee, then.”

His gaze held mine. “Black.”

“Of course,” I muttered, and he made that almost sound again, almost a laugh, swallowed before it could become real.

We worked until the porch looked less like a tired sigh and more like something that could hold me. Colt replaced two boards, reinforced the frame beneath, and pointed out the places I should treat with sealant before the next rain.

At one point, I caught him glancing toward the forest. Not casually. Like he was listening.

“What?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Colt’s gaze returned to me. “Nothing.”

But his shoulders stayed tense. I pretended not to notice because I was tired of being afraid of things I couldn’t name.

When he finished, he wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist and stood, towering over the porch like it had been built for him and not for my small, fragile independence.

“That’ll hold,” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied, and meant it.

He nodded once, like gratitude embarrassed him.

Then his eyes drifted to the side of the house, the garage window, that narrow one near the back.

My stomach clenched.

“Do you latch that?” he asked, voice casual, but his gaze wasn’t.

I forced a shrug. “Yeah. Why?”

Colt held my eyes for a long moment. Then, quietly, “Make sure.”

A chill slid under my skin. I opened my mouth, questions crowding my tongue like birds, but he was already stepping off the porch, lifting his toolbox.

“I’ll check on the bird tomorrow,” he said, like the conversation hadn’t tilted into something sharper.

“Okay,” I managed.

He paused at his truck, one hand on the door, and looked back, just once.

The evening light caught his blue eyes and made them darker, deeper.

“The forest is dangerous to those that don't know it.” He said.

My breath caught. Then he climbed into his truck and drove away, leaving me standing on a porch that no longer sagged, staring at a forest that suddenly felt less like scenery and more like a mouth holding secrets.

Inside, my thrush rustled softly in her box. Outside, the trees swayed as if they were breathing. And somewhere in that green, dark distance, a howl rose, faint, far, almost lost to the wind. Almost. But not quite.