Page 6 of Wraith’s Promise

"I'm pretty good with kids," I say, which feels inadequate but is also true.

Mariah leaning against me like this, trusting me completely within minutes, is both the highest compliment I could receive and the most likely thing to break my heart wide open if I let it.

I can't let it.

Dean crosses the room and crouches down beside us, gently scooping Mariah up even though she's clearly awake and just pretending she's not. "Naptime, baby girl. No arguments."

"Not tired," she mumbles into his shoulder, but she's already wrapping her arms around his neck, Captain dangling from one hand.

"Sure you're not." He carries her to the bed, settles her under the purple comforter, tucks Captain in beside her. "Quinn's gonna be here when you wake up. She's staying with us now. In the room down the hall."

"Really?" Mariah's eyes crack open slightly, checking my face like she needs visual confirmation. "She's staying forever?"

"For a while," Dean says, and I appreciate that he's not making promises he can't guarantee. "But yeah, she'll be here every day."

"Good," Mariah says, satisfied, and closes her eyes again.

Dean straightens slowly, jerking his head toward the door. I follow him out into the hallway, and he pulls the door behind us, leaving it open just a crack.

We stand there for a moment in the quiet hallway, and I'm suddenly very aware that we're alone now, no five-year-old buffer between us, just two people trying to figure out what they've agreed to. Living in the same house changes things. Makes this more intimate somehow, more complicated.

"Guest room's this way," he says, moving down the hall. I follow, and he pushes open a door near the end, revealing a simple but clean space. Full bed with a gray comforter, nightstand with a lamp, dresser against one wall, small closet. There's a window overlooking the backyard, bars on it like every other window I've seen in this house, decorative-looking but functional. "Bathroom's across the hall. Shared, but it's just the three of us so it shouldn't be an issue."

"This is great," I say, and mean it. I've slept in much worse. Deployed, I slept in tents and temporary structures and once in an abandoned building with half the roof missing. This is practically luxury. "Thank you."

"You can bring your stuff in whenever." He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, and I recognize the posture now as his default thinking position. "There's food in the kitchen, help yourself to whatever. I'm usually up early, gone to the clubhouse by eight most mornings for a few hours, back by lunch. You'll have her mornings and evenings, I'll cover afternoons when I can."

"What about nights? If something happens at the club?"

His jaw tightens slightly. "Then you're the first line of defense. Gun safe's in my room, code is—" He rattles off six numbers. "If anyone comes through that door who isn't supposed to be here, you get Mariah into my room, lock the door, arm yourself, and call me. Don't try to be a hero."

"I spent six years in the military, Dean. I know how to handle a threat."

"I'm sure you do." His eyes are steady on mine. "But this isn't the military. This is my daughter. Protocol is you keep her safe first, yourself second, everything else distant third. Clear?"

"Crystal."

He's trusting me with the most important thing in his world. I'm accepting that responsibility knowing exactly what it might cost.

"She's great, by the way," I say, because it seems like the thing to say and because it's true. "Mariah. She's really great."

"She is." His voice has gone softer. "Her mother said she was too much. Too loud, too demanding, too exhausting. Said motherhood wasn't what she signed up for and walked out when Mariah was barely two."

The anger that rises in me is immediate and familiar, the same anger I felt when Ranger first told me this story yesterday on the phone. "She was wrong," I say flatly. "About all of it."

Dean looks at me for a long moment, and I watch something change behind his eyes, some decision being made in real-time.

"I need you to understand something," he says. "I don't do anything halfway, especially not when it comes to her. If you're gonna be in her life, living here, seeing her every day, you're gonna be in it for real. She'll get attached. That's who she is. And if you decide a month from now that this is too much, that she's too much, and you walk away—"

"I won't," I interrupt, and there's more force in my voice than I intended. "I'm not her mother, Dean. I don't make promises I'm not going to keep, and I don't walk away from kids who need me."

He studies my face like he's searching for cracks in the foundation, places where my certainty might crumble under pressure. I let him look. I've got nothing to hide on this front.

What I can't tell him is that I'd give anything to be someone's mother, that every child I protect or care for or teach is me trying to fill a hole that can't actually be filled, that sometimes when I hold other people's kids I have to actively fight back the grief of knowing I'll never hold my own. That's mine to carry. Not his. Not Mariah's.

"Okay," he says finally, and something in his shoulders releases. "Okay. Welcome to the chaos, Quinn Nash."

"Happy to be here," I say, and realize with some surprise that I mean it.