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T he biting cold followed Iron around through the no-business-being-this-bustling streets of Aurora, until it settled over the back of his neck like an enemy’s icy breath. On some level, he supposed that was what it was. Time. Failure. The absence of achieving his goals while the world continued to buzz around him in a kaleidoscope of taunting confusion.

A storm was coming, and that was enough of a wrench in Iron’s plans not only to sidetrack his pursuit of the woman from his dreams but make it so every fucking mortal establishment he’d relied on for answers was effectively shutting down for the time being.

Three days. For three days, he’d neither dreamed of her nor anything but her. He’d never been much of a fairness guy. Kind of hard to believe in the stuff when he’d gotten the shit end of the stick for more years than trees existed, but if he had to argue a point, it sure as hell would have been along the lines of addiction logic.

Why would the universe rob him of his months-long nightly thoughts, only for them to consume his every waking moment since and offer up no hope of ever finding her?

The harsh wind picked up to a relentless degree, a lovely side effect of Aurora being built close to the valleys long ago carved out from the White Mountains. Wind tunnels were common enough, but coupled with unseasonably low temperatures and late-winter precipitation that the downtown businesses had hoped was behind them and misery was always the result.

Regardless, his bad mood followed him around like a shroud of despondency for the damned and did nothing to counteract the cheerful scenes of the soon-to-be-dawning spring that some mortals had already adorned their businesses with.

Aurora held all the trappings of a tourist town ready to peel off its winter layer, unwrap its synthetic spring flora (because in New England, true spring was a far cry from Gregorian calendar spring), and welcome customers with the promise of pastels, new merchandise, and seasonal eats. Storefront window displays, which had upheld their commitments to comfort and coziness only a week ago, now boasted products of vibrant colors pledging vibes of rebirth and renewal. The popular boutiques offered boots with noticeably shorter calf lengths while the sports and recreation outlet across from the municipal park had swapped out its skis and winter wear for freaking pickleball rackets and eco-friendly water bottles that could make water taste like lemons or grapefruit or whatever just by adding some calorie-free powders to the water (for an additional charge, of course).

As if squeezing an actual fucking lemon wouldn’t do the same thing, but dead horses and whatnot.

While the shops sat pregnant with spring supplies and sales, the rest of the streets were a clogged congestion of mortals snuffling up last-minute items before everything shut down for the immediate future and the weather decided to make itself known. On any other night, Iron would have applauded the mortals’ efforts for putting forethought into their safety. Tonight, however, his skin itched with the overstimulation of it all: the speedy shuffling of feet on concrete, the air perfumed with the impatience of traffic exhaust, the twitchy honks of drivers both enraged and eager to move two inches from where they’d been a moment ago.

It grated on nerves that Iron had been certain had no nerve endings left to grate down.

Yet more proof that the universe was full of surprises.

Over the past three days, Iron, an immortal sentinel warrior and guardian of the Empyrean, had been forced to resort to combat of the keyboard variety. His investigation into his mystery woman had started with any low-hanging fruit he could find. With Chrome’s help, they’d been able to tap into a multitude of mortal state and municipal databases, but having no idea where to go from there, Iron had started with the ones that included photo entries for each registrant. Though his female’s features were still mostly hazy in his mind, he figured he’d be able to at least pinpoint someone who matched a basic description and start from there.

Yeah . . . no. After days of staring bleary-eyed at image after image, Iron had pushed the laptop away and pinched the bridge of his nose. Had her hair been a bright strawberry red or more of a darker auburn? Or perhaps it hadn’t been red at all and it was a trick of his mind? Shades of brown were similar to red, as he well knew given his hair color. Or what if she’d dyed her hair or had grown it out from the time a potential photo could have been taken?

He could very well be staring at a picture of her from five years ago where she sported a blond pixie cut, nose piercing, and goth eye makeup, and he’d have no idea who the hell he was looking at.

The shrill honk of several cars choking the street next to him drew his thoughts away from the dark path he was heading down and instead painted his landscape in garish hues of red and blue. Up ahead, some vehicle had made the unfortunate decision to give up the ghost in the middle of an intersection, effectively congesting every artery in town into individual wells of despair.

He could so relate.

Iron let the cold prickle his ears as he barreled down the sidewalk with a mountain-sized chip on his shoulder.

Despair . . . that was certainly a concept his conversation with Titan a few days ago had scratched at. Iron had referred to it as suffering when he’d recounted his worry of not finding this dream woman in a timely manner, but perhaps that had been the wrong approach. Then he froze, digging his heels into the concrete.

Tired. She’d seemed so damn tired. There was a tightness to the edges around her eyes that he hadn’t bothered to think too closely about before. Was she a teacher? Or a member of another overworked profession?

“A teacher. Hmm . . .”

Iron pulled out his phone and began typing out a text to Chrome about checking the different education rosters of all the New Hampshire school districts. It would take more than a hot minute, but if he could recruit his brothers in the search, perhaps?—

The resounding screech of brakes set Iron’s back teeth on edge and slowed the harried steps of everyone around him.

“Jeez, lady. Drive much?” The tallest mortal in a teenage gaggle of women in front of him looked up from her phone just long enough for the rest of her party to cast their attention toward the line of standstill cars next to them. Before the urge to care about a stranger took too strong of a hold among the women, the siren song of social media pulled the group back into the numb safety of their screens.

The disruption was minimal. To a mortal. To Iron, it was the Freightliner he didn’t see coming.

Boxed into the far-right lane was an unassuming Subaru of lower-middle-class proportions spotlit by alternating beams of headlights mixed with shadows of pedestrians weaving through the thrall. The car’s bumper would have all but given the Jeep in front of it a proctology exam if the driver hadn’t slammed on the brakes when they did. Even so, there was barely a centimeter’s worth of breathing room between those bad boys. Impressive for a near-miss love tap.

On any other night, Iron would have dismissed it. Just shoved his hands into his pockets and kept right on walking away from yet another mortal mess. He had exactly fuck all to do with congestion best practices and even less interest in being first on scene to an almost oopsie.

But the flash of the driver’s rust-hued copper hair pulled any remaining acts of self-preservation from his mind and chucked them toward far more useful endeavors.

All that remained was the shocked resonance of recognition as, through a foggy window, his enhanced nighttime vision had him staring into the soft jade eyes of the woman from his dreams. The one he’d been looking for.

His feet were moving before he could think better of it and then sped way the hell up once he realized what must have happened. Despite the wall-to-wall traffic, she must have stepped on the gas by mistake and then stopped short before she hit the vehicle in front of her.

Iron ignored the honking around him as he weaved through the stalled cars and went over to her window. Gently, he tapped his knuckle on the glass. “Miss, are you all right?”

The defroster’s poor performance did nothing to prevent his celestial senses from picking up what he needed to through the pane’s haziness. And when the glass finally lowered, revealing the woman inside, he was . . . amused.

The woman pushed a pair of clear-framed glasses higher up her nose and then went to work lifting and lifting and lifting sections of long hair into some sort of complicated top knot situation. Like nearly rear-ending cars was all in a day’s work and she was about to go on lunch. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. Just got a little too trigger-happy there. I didn’t hit him, did I?”

“Uh, no. No, you stopped in time.”

Iron took a step back when she moved to lean her head out the driver’s side window and wave at the car in front of her. When no one waved back—or even noticed, though something told him he shouldn’t point that out—she just sank back into her seat, her features twisting into despondency. Was she . . . unhappy that she hadn’t hit the Jeep? Then she fished around into the shopping tote next to her and pulled out a handful of M&Ms. Peanut, judging by the smell.

Oddly enough, only after she popped a few into her mouth did she start talking. “I don’t know what happened to me there. It’s not like I didn’t know we were in gridlock. I was just thinking about something, and then I had a sort of shitty experience at Nature’s Value Market. Which, newsflash, don’t go to that place on a night like tonight. Or ever, really. Pretty sure the owner has me on a list now. Anyway, they didn’t have the cereal I wanted, or maybe they did, but I couldn’t find it, and then I forgot to get the pancake mix. But then the M&Ms looked good. They always look good, don’t they?” A wistful sort of acceptance curved her mouth into a sad, small smile, immediately disarming him of whatever line of questioning he’d been preparing to throw at her.

“I prefer mint M&Ms myself. The peanut ones are okay, too.”

Mint M&Ms? What the fuck, Iron? Mint M&Ms?

He was about to retract his prior statement for something more appropriate, like whether she needed help, when her shoulders shook with a sharp laugh, and she looked up at him.

Whatever haze had clouded his thoughts around her thinned. With one hard shake of his mental snow globe, the blurred edges of what he’d dreamed she might have looked like crisped up with all due haste and purpose. There was no mistaking her eyes, gems of rich sea glass floating in a jade lagoon, or the softness of her features he thought had fled his memories for good. But it was all there, the pert nose and resolute lower lip that she seemed to push out without realizing it. The hair, even the tension that pulled her shoulders higher beneath her ears while her chin aimed at whatever threat was in front of her.

It was her. Her . The woman who could potentially help them all get back to the Empyrean again. And she was . . .

Looking at him as though he’d give her a UTI from eye contact alone.

Iron’s mouth went dry, and a sharp recoil of magic began to pulse within his core. “I won’t hurt you,” he rushed out.

“Are you sure?” she challenged. “Because you just said you like mint M&Ms, and I’m pretty sure there are no fewer than several dozen varieties of chocolate mint candies that would reliably rank higher in double-blind taste tests. I’m not exactly certain you’re of sound mind at the moment.”

“Well, I also didn’t just get into a fender bender.”

“ Almost got into a fender bender. You verified that one yourself.”

“Yes, and as you so astutely pointed out, my judgment is under scrutiny at the moment.”

Watching ten kinds of thoughts shimmy behind her eyes was enough to keep him glued to the asphalt indefinitely. There was a fascination to it that had begun tugging at achingly tired parts of him, parts that hadn’t just rusted over long ago but had made headway in the ten-thousand-year fossilization process.

As if he needed yet another reminder that he was a war-torn relic of another time, and she was a modern-day woman by herself who was being cornered by a creep in a coat with an apparently brand-new dissociative complex.

Juuust fucking great.

Iron worked to free the frog in his throat and took a healthy step back from her door. Blocks ahead, a scratchy “Scene’s clear” worked its way through to his celestial senses from a police officer’s radio. Fast on those heels was the growling rumble of a tow truck pulling away. Another minute or two and the traffic would start to move again.

“What’s your?—”

“Anyway, thanks for checking?—”

Their collision of words was met with the same awkward half-laugh common among prepubescent boys asking out a girl for the first time. At least that was the case for him. For her? Nothing but that gracious smile again, which he was quickly coming to realize he’d commit no small number of murders to see.

Body counts had never bothered him.

A lock of hair that somehow hadn’t been secured well to begin with—impossible, given the perceived tensile strength of that thick-ass elastic band, but what did he know?—fell free and, like a falcon diving for its catch, was snatched up by her deft fingers that had so swiftly put both hair and him back into place.

“You’re sure I didn’t hit him?” she asked again, even though they both knew she hadn’t. But there was something there, something she clearly wasn’t willing to let go so easily either.

At least, that was what he hoped.

“Positive.”

She nodded and stared out through the windshield. With her hand on the steering wheel, she gestured a finger up ahead. “Looks like traffic’s moving.”

It sure is, goddammit.

“Yeah.” Then before she could get the genius idea to take her foot off the brake and drag herself farther away from him, he plopped his hand on her door, covering the pocket of her still-down window, and said, “Your brakes sound rough. Like, really rough.”

There were any number of things he expected her to do when faced with a large male pressing into her open window. She could scream, hit the gas, grab the butt end of her phone and slam it down on his fingers. At the very least, choice words with no shortage of expletives would have been a good place to start. Any of the above was fair game, really.

To his never-ending surprise and perhaps delight, she did none of those things. Instead, she just looked at him and nodded, nodded as if the weight of the world had left a few things off its grocery list and decided to add them to her shoulders before it, too, skedaddled back inside to take cover before the storm.

It broke his fucking heart.

“I’m painfully aware, thank you. They’re on the list.”

“That list really big?” he couldn’t help but ask.

She pursed her lips. “Big enough. But whose isn’t?”

Already, some of the cars in front of her had begun to move up inch by inch. “You live far?”

“Does anyone in this traffic jam live far?”

“You always answer a question with a question?”

Then those jade eyes narrowed, and that earlier fire returned. The fire he’d last seen in his dream and had been chasing the warmth of ever since. “Listen, buddy. If you’re in the market for a Good Samaritan badge, you might want to check with the Aurora Police Department. I hear they still give them out to Boy Scout troops and when they teach school kids about K-9 units. As you can see, traffic’s moving again, and I’d like to get home before the sky opens up. So, yeah, thanks for . . . whatever it is you think you did.”

“Give me your phone.”

“Yeah, that’s a big old no on that one.”

“Wasn’t asking.” In the red haze of the brake lights only two cars ahead of them, Iron ducked into her open window and snatched her phone from the pocket in her center console.

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re?—”

It was the work of a moment to program his details into her contacts and, yeah, favorite that shit at the tippy top. Might as well. “You need anything, you call me. Name’s Iron. I’m local. Your brakes sound like shit, and I don’t need to tell you that storms this time of year are unpredictable. Or maybe I do need to tell you that.” He smiled, then eyed her paltry provisions as she grabbed her phone out of his hand and threw it in her bag.

“You can’t take people’s stuff.”

“Didn’t take anything I didn’t give back.”

“Do you always do this?” she said, mimicking his tone from earlier, though with a heavy bend toward the obnoxious.

“Do what?”

“Act out what I suspect is your warped code of integrity?”

He smiled at that. Smiled big and wide.

She had no fucking idea.

Iron raised two fingers to his temple and saluted her off before ambling back to the sidewalk. Her window was up and sealed a moment later. And as he watched her drive off with the moving line of cars, he pulled out his phone to finish making those notes to himself from earlier.

Except this time, they’d have nothing to do with scanning school district rosters and everything to do with running her license plate.