Page 154

Threk was hired on the spot.

He shadowed Griff for two nights, watching, and learning. And then, left to his own devices, he made an impression—literally—when he slammed a rowdy shifter through a table.

"Too much," Griff muttered, dragging Threk aside by the elbow after he'd flattened a drunken leopard shifter across two bar stools and a table. "We don't break the furniture. We glare at the furniture until it behaves."

Threk blinked, towering over the man like a confused boulder. "Glare?"

Griff nodded, sage and deadpan. "Exactly. Menace it into submission. Less paperwork. Like this."

Griff took it upon himself to become something like a mentor. Or a gruff, foul-mouthed father figure who cursed at him when he refilled the wrong tap but then quietly shoved protein bars into his coat pocket with a grumble of "Eat, dammit—you're still half ribs."

He taught him things—how to tap a keg, how to throw someone out without cracking ribs (unless absolutely necessary), and how to tell the difference between a drunken flirt and a legitimate threat.

And Threk listened. Earnestly. Like Griff was a prophet, and the bar was his mountain temple.

Ryn, however, was less impressed.

"Your bear is like a toddler with muscles," she muttered to Seren one night as Threk tried—again—to navigate the tight kitchen without knocking over a stack of glasses. A very very mellow comment... for Ryn. "Big, clumsy, always hungry, and smells like wet moss."

Seren tried not to laugh. "He's learning."

"He nearly sat on a witch yesterday."

"She hexed his shoelaces together. I think she wanted his attention."

Ryn straightened before shrugging. "Still. I bet he eats soap."

To be fair, he had tried that once.

Yet later that same evening, as Threk passed by with a tray tucked under one arm and a quiet focus on his face, Seren caught Ryn watching him.

Just a glance.

Then—deliberately subtle—Ryn leaned the tiniest bit closer as he passed... and took a long, slow inhale.

Seren's brows lifted.

Ryn turned and met her look with a glare sharp enough to gut a stag.

"Say one word," she hissed. "I'll rearrange your face."

Seren raised both hands in mock surrender, biting back a grin.

She didn't say anything.

But the smirk lingered all night.

Another time, he'd tried to hand her a drink that had been left at the bar.

She'd looked at it with narrowed eyes, then at him, and drawled, "Why does it have fur all over it?"

Still, she watched him. Seren saw it in the glances, in the way her tone turned less cutting when he wasn't looking. And Threk—Threk looked at Ryn like she was a mystery he wanted to unwrap with teeth and patience.

Seren tried not to notice.

She had enough on her plate.

Her afternoons were spent tutoring Threk in halting Wolven and thick-accented English, drawing letters in chalk on their shared balcony wall. He was better with shifting—eventually able to melt into his bear form with ease, and then shift back again without panicking. She'd taken to walking him to the edge of the forest after work, letting him run under the open sky while she snapped photos of birds and branches, of quiet still things.