Page 9 of Bound to the Minotaur (Hillcrest Hollow Shifters #2)

Kess

The couch sagged softly beneath me, its worn cushions carrying the faint scent of pine and woodsmoke.

Gregory’s home was warm in its bones—beamed ceilings, thick woolen blankets tossed without thought, bookshelves built right into the cabin walls.

Everything here had the kind of wear that spoke of usefulness, of years.

Not cozy in a curated way, but real. Lived-in. Like him.

Or, it had been warm.

The fire in the woodstove had long gone out.

I hadn’t meant to let it die, but time had slipped by too fast. One moment, I was watching the flames, listening to them crackle while Avis curled into a luxurious crescent of fluff by my side.

The next, I was hunched over my laptop, shoulders tight, chasing leads down dead ends.

Email after email. All the jobs I’d bookmarked before leaving the city had either gone silent or pulled their listings.

The longer I sat staring at that screen, the more it felt like something was closing in behind me. I’d pulled a throw blanket around my shoulders—something scratchy but thick—and tried not to think about my father. Or how easily he could find things. Or how many favors he was owed.

It should have scared me more that I was thinking about Gregory instead.

I hadn’t seen him in hours. He’d gone back to his shop after we unloaded groceries and told me in his usual grumble that my car wasn’t going to fix itself.

I’d nodded and tried to look distracted with my emails—but the second the door had shut, my gaze drifted toward the window, watching the line of trees just beyond his backyard.

The forest behind the cabin was older than the town, maybe older than anything. Gnarled and twisting, it was thick with a silence that didn’t feel empty. And somewhere back there… the maze.

Gregory’s only warning had been one sentence, spoken low and flat over his shoulder before he left: “Don’t go near the maze. You step into it, and you don’t come back out.” That should’ve been enough. But it wasn’t the danger that kept me thinking about it. Not really.

It was the dream.

The one I’d had the night before, under his roof, with Avis at my feet.

I remembered running barefoot between towering hedges, the scent of honeysuckle thick in the air.

Not chased by something monstrous—but hunted .

Desired. A beast with golden eyes and heavy breath, drawing closer no matter how far I ran.

My pulse had pounded not with terror, but with want.

Something hot and aching. I’d woken twisted in the sheets, breathless.

The cold crept closer now, coiling at my ankles and climbing my spine.

I thought about restarting the fire, but my body stayed curled where it was, the laptop screen dimmed and Avis lazily licking a paw beside me.

My heart was in the woods—with the mystery I shouldn’t want to solve, with a man I barely knew but couldn’t stop imagining.

Then the phone rang.

Shrill, jarring—too loud for this quiet world.

I jumped, snatched it off the side table, and thumbed to answer out of instinct.

My new number, one I hadn’t given to anyone but job recruiters.

It shouldn’t have been anyone I knew but I knew who it was going to be before I answered anyway.

And I answered, a reflex I cursed even as I did it.

Too many years of ingrained obedience weighing down on me to disobey. Stupid as it was.

“Kess,” came the voice. Familiar as blood, cold as the barrel of a gun.

I stopped breathing. “I was beginning to wonder if you were still alive.” My father’s voice hadn’t changed: smooth, measured.

With the weight of menace curled beneath the vowels.

I could see his cufflinks, his smile like a blade behind smoke.

My mouth opened, but no sound came. The air around me tightened like a noose. Fear froze me to the couch, my heart hammering in my ribs, blood rushing so loudly in my ears that I didn’t hear the door creak open behind me.

I didn’t know Gregory was there until he moved. The floorboards whispered under his boots. A new heat filled the room—not from the dead fire, but from him, radiating like fury forged in steel. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t warn him. My father was on the phone. My safe little hideaway had cracked open.

And I had no idea how much of that conversation Gregory had just heard, or what he was about to do next.

I didn’t want an audience for this, as much as I wanted Gregory to take that phone from me and solve my problem for me.

That was a weak thought, one that would have earned me a punishment if my father had heard it, a verbal slapdown about how I should be strong, never show weakness, never let anyone do anything for me.

Well, I’d learned that lesson all too well. How to play by myself, make my own damn food, dress myself for school. And now that I wanted to live my life my way, my dad couldn’t cope. Fury filled me in a sudden rush.

I shot to my feet. “Yes, I’m still alive, no thanks to you!

” I snarled into the phone, my voice so filled with anger that even my always cool and controlled father drew in a surprised gasp.

Another lesson: never talk back. Well, that one he could shove up his freaking ass.

I was done treading lightly. He’d already done his worst, hadn’t he? And I was still here.

“You had your goons mess with my brakes, didn’t you, Dad?

” I asked next. I needed to hear that. Hear that he’d tried to have me killed, sever that last tie to my hopes of a loving father.

Crush the dream once and for all so that I could move on and stop wasting time and energy on a man who didn’t deserve it.

Gregory’s presence was at my side now, bathing me in warmth.

I knew he was big, but standing there next to me, I really felt it.

In my socks, I didn’t even reach his chin, and somehow he seemed even bigger and more menacing than I remembered.

He stood next to the couch like he’d always been there—like the walls had bent to let him in and settle him at my side just when I needed him most.

The room shifted with his presence. Big and solid, smelling faintly of metal, earth, and smoke, he seemed to blot out everything else—my fear, the cold, the voice slithering through the speaker in my hand. Even the woodstove looked small next to him.

For one insane moment, I thought maybe my father couldn’t reach me after all. Not here. Not with him in the room. Bigger than life, insanely protective, and so very strong. That’s what the look in his eyes said: that he was there for me, that he would walk through hell to protect me.

Then the voice continued, slick and oiled with false charm. “Brake trouble?” he said, with a chuckle that didn’t reach his voice. “That wasn’t me, pumpkin. I’d never do anything to hurt you.” A lie. That same voice—so smooth, so practiced.

And in the next breath, like flipping a coin: “But you will come home. Enough of this little game.”

My heart thudded against my ribs. I could feel Gregory’s eyes on me, feel the sheer heat radiating off him, like a wildfire barely restrained by skin. He hadn’t said anything. Not yet. But he was listening.

“No,” I said, my voice low and sharp. “You can forget it.” I stood up to him, probably for the first time ever.

At least directly—the distance the phone provided made it easier.

But it was still reckless. I was shaking with repressed fury and nerves, but I was no longer small.

Not with Gregory there. Not with his shadow stretching long behind me like a wall, his presence curling around me like a protective embrace.

“I’m not coming back,” I said, more clearly this time. “You don’t own me. You never did.”

Silence.

Then, like a serpent striking, my father hissed, “You’re going to regret this, Kestrel.

You don’t get to mouth off and walk away.

I will make sure you pay for it.” I didn’t flinch, having expected exactly that kind of response.

My father thought he owned everything, and back in New York, that might as well be the truth.

Through a phone, though, he couldn’t do a thing.

I opened my mouth to speak—to tell him goodbye, to hang up.

But then Gregory moved. Faster than I could process, he reached out and took the phone from my hand, his fingers brushing mine for only an instant; hot, rough, and steadying.

Then the phone was pressed to his ear, his shoulders squared like a storm rolling in.

“Go fuck yourself,” he said, his voice low and lethal. I gasped in surprise and was certain my dad was just as surprised on the other end of the line, even if he probably didn’t show it. There was a heartbeat of silence. Then Gregory dropped the phone—calmly, deliberately.

I watched it fall to the worn wooden floor, watched it land screen-up, a crack spidering across the glass like a frozen river.

Then his boot came down. A sharp crack split the air—plastic shattering, glass fracturing.

And for just a blink, just a blink—I could’ve sworn it wasn’t his boot that crushed it.

For a moment, I saw something else. Something black and glossy and cloven.

Hooves.

I blinked again. Just boots—heavy, scuffed leather boots. Nothing more. That had to have been a figment of my imagination, a flash of insanity after the tension-laden moments from before. And yet, something pushed at the back of my mind, some niggling doubt that I hadn’t imagined it at all.

Gregory’s jaw was clenched so tightly I could see the muscle twitching in his cheek. He didn’t look at me. Just turned and walked toward the kitchen, fists flexing at his sides.