Page 81 of Fang Fatale

I touch the braid.

“Thanks to my... impromptu hairdresser.”

One corner of his mouth twitches upward.

The mind boggles at the years of practice it must have taken to achieve that level of composure.

“You could've had a concussion,” he says. “I needed to keep your head steady.”

His eyes drift back to the braid.

“And the braid seemed... practical.”

I fold my arms.

“Practical.”

“I needed something to do with my hands while you slept.”

“Oh, sure,” I deadpan. “Very practical. Especially the feather.”

For one impossibly small moment, something soft slips through the cracks in his expression.

“You were shivering.”

His voice drops almost too low to hear.

“I couldn't warm you up.”

A beat.

“So... I did the only thing I could think of.”

My heart quietly forgets how it's supposed to work.

He clears his throat.

“I thought...” Another tiny pause. “...I thought it might make you laugh when you woke up.”

It did.

More than that.

It made me feel...

...looked after.

He doesn't say anything else.

He simply lingers in the doorway one heartbeat longer before tipping his head and disappearing down the hall.

The silence he leaves behind feels oddly warm.

I stare at the empty doorway.

It's not that I didn't know men could be gentle.

It's that I didn't know someone who'd spent his life hunting monsters could choose gentleness so instinctively.