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The breeze lifts her hair off her neck, revealing the ink below her ear, the tattoo a stranger once told her to cover. I want to put my mouth right there. I want to know what sound she’ll make when I do. The thought hits me so hard I have to lock my knees.

I haven’t wanted a woman in years. I’d stopped thinking I ever would again. Now every breath I take is full of her, and the orc in me has decided, and it does nothing halfway. If I let myself have her, I won’t be playing. It’ll be for keeps.

“If I didn’t know better,” she says quietly, tilting her head, “I’d say you were actively keeping people out of this forest. So what are you hiding up there, Ranger? A secret wife and kids? A body or two?”

A laugh catches in my throat, and I swallow it, because I hear what she’s doing. She’s fishing. That’s a good sign. A woman who didn’t care wouldn’t bother.

“The ground’s unstable past the switchback,” I say.

She doesn’t push. She just waits, like she’s got all the time in the world.

I don’t answer. After a minute, she sighs, takes out her notebook, and writes. She doesn’t have to show me. The list on her wall just got another card.

How long can I keep this up? She’s smart, and she misses nothing. She’s already matched my handwriting to the maintenance log. Eventually, she’ll line up the closure signs and the boundary repairs and the blank on that survey, and she’ll walk straight to it on her own.

We keep climbing. Past the second switchback, the trail narrows and gets rougher. We’re getting close to the interior now, too close for my liking. I’m about to turn us back when the breeze shifts.

I stop and take a long breath through my nose.

Hemlock. Wet earth. Wren’s soap and the warm salt of her skin. And under all that, sharp and wrong, there’s cologne. Cheap and strong. It doesn’t belong anywhere near here.

“Someone’s past the closure,” I say, pointing at the mud beyond the sign. A line of fresh footprints leads off the trail and up through the ferns.

Wren crouches and examines them. “Hikers?”

“One person. Recently.” I study the slope. “And they don’t know this ground.”

“How can you tell?”

“They’re following a deer track. It looks like a trail from down here, but it cuts straight across the wettest part of the hill.” I point up at the slope, dark from last week’s rain. “It’s been holding water for days. If someone wanders onto the wrong patch, it’ll give way under them.”

She stands up. “Then let’s go.”

We find the trespasser standing in a patch of ferns, camera to his face.

James is halfway up the slope, aiming his lens into the trees.

So far, he hasn’t noticed us. He hasn’t even looked up.

A growl starts deep in my chest. I shut it down. I don’t care why he’s up here. Right now, he’s a man standing under a slide, and getting him out is my job. Everything else can wait.

Wren lifts her arm and waves it over her head. “Hi, James!”

He jumps and turns. “Oh. Hey, Wren. Holt.” His smile slips when he sees my face. “I’m just snapping a few pictures.”

“You’re past a closure,” I say. It comes out rough, and he steps back.

“The consultant wants the interior overlook for the brochure. He said if I could get the angle⁠—”

“James.” I point up the slope at the long crack across the hillside and the bulging earth beneath it. “Look up.”

“That’s not good,” he says.

“No,” Wren agrees, cheerful and firm. “All this rain has made the whole slope unstable, so this area’s off-limits. Let’s get you back to the trailhead, okay?”

He looks at the crack again and nods. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

We walk him all the way down. Wren keeps him laughing.