Page 64 of Claimed By the Mothman

He blinked at her, then shifted his focus to the thyme. Gently, he began pinching away browned tips with the edge of a claw, like he needed the task to anchor his hands.

“Dev and I have been together twenty-five years, and not one of them has felt in order,” Carol said casually, her shearssnickingcarefully. “Love doesn’t care about clean lines. It cares about intention.”

Intention.He had that in abundance, but it wasn’t the same as permission. It certainly wasn’t the same as being wanted.

“What if I have already ruined it by claiming too soon?”

His deepest fear. It was the first time he had said it aloud to another.

“Then,” Carol said thoughtfully. “Then that is her choice to make.”

He nodded once. The motion felt like it scraped something loose in his chest. He knew that truth, of course he had. But it landed differently here from someone who was human. Someone who had lived long enough in Greymarket to understand both love and monsters.

Sig’s thoughts began forming quiet, awful contingencies.If she says no. If she severs it. If I have to live without her for the rest of my life—

“But,” Carol said, and the word caught him mid-fall, “Nell is delightful.”

He looked over at her, startled. Carol did not look up from her rosemary. “She has that sharp-corner softness that takes real guts to carry around. I can tell she’s been shattered in some pretty painful ways, but last night, I saw a woman who hasn’t let that kill her joy for life and living.”

Sig swallowed.

“And you…” She glanced over and waved her shears at him in a lazy circle. “You’re listening, even if you don’t think you are. You’re trying. You’re giving her space to knit herself back together. That’s more than most humans would do.Certainlymore than any Harbingers I’ve met.”

The bond pulsed low beneath his ribs.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Sig,” she said casually, “but if Iwere, I’d say to keep trying, thoughtfully.”

She snipped a final stem and examined it like a verdict.

“Based on what I saw last night, and what the building’s been whispering, you’re doing a damn fine job. So keep it up.”

They worked in silence for a while. Carol snipped and trimmed with her usual sharp efficiency. Sig turned his attention to the dill, pulling away the browned leaves with steady hands.

Her words had taken root in his sternum.

Nell is joyful.And she was. The way she lit up around her friends. The way her eyes crinkled when she teased. The way she had leaned into him—head on his chest, fingers brushing his wrist—as he walked her home.

“When Dev courted you,” Sig said haltingly, “were there offerings he presented that sang to your heart?”

Carol paused, one hand on her hip, shears resting against her shoulder.

“I know she enjoys tea,” Sig added quickly, humbly. “But I do not wish to be…a song of one note. I do not know much about her. Or about human courting rituals.” He turned toward her. “What would make a bond strengthen?”

Carol made a thoughtful noise and tilted her head. “Dev’s always had a knack for knowing what I want but the best gifts he ever gave me were the ones I never would’ve asked for, and didn’t know I needed until they were in my hands.”

She pulled her glasses down her nose and looked at Sig over them. “You like to carve wood, don’t you? Didn’t you make that little puzzle box at the white elephant exchange last Solstice that Orell ended up with?

Sig’s antennae twitched faintly. “She still has it?”

“In a place of honor,” Carol said, grinning. “I saw it the last time I visited. Center shelf, next to the egg sac terrarium and her first loom. She dusts it.”

Sig smiled. “Yes, I carve. The wood has memory. You do not force it into shape, but instead uncover what it wants to be.”

Carol nodded, satisfied. “Then carve something for her. Something useful, but pretty.”

He turned the idea over like a seed in his palm.A comb,he thought. For her hair, brown like a bird’s wing, soft and wild and sweetly untamed.

“Yes,” he murmured.