Page 4 of Sentinel of Talon Mountain (Men of Talon Mountain #3)

WREN

T he red dot vanishes, but the tension doesn’t ease—it’s like breathing through glass, air visible but unreachable.

I hitch my pack higher on my shoulder, fingers tightening around the latch. My pulse hammers in my ears as I measure the distance—porch, yard, tree line. If I slip out now, fast and silent, I might vanish into the timber—back in control, not cornered prey waiting under someone else’s sights.

“Sit. You’re not going anywhere tonight.” Nate’s voice slices the room clean, commanding

enough to anchor in my spine.

My fingers are already on cold iron. “Last I checked, I’m not stamped with your name.”

“No. But tonight, I own the difference between you breathing or bleeding out in the snow.”

I don't move. I came to him for a reason, and he has a point, but still I don't like being told what to do. I live on my own on the side of a mountain for a reason.

“Wren, step away from that door.” Boots whisper against the floorboards as he crosses the room. He’s already a wall between me and the storm. “There are active sights on us and the pressure’s dropping. You walk out now, you’ll be blind in fifty yards and a target in ten.”

“The ridge won’t hold a visual if I cut south.” I hate that it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself. “I’ve been making it just fine for five years without a keeper.”

“And tonight proves how well that’s going.”

He reaches past me, flips the latch with an audible snap, and plants a palm flat on the wood, like the door answers to him. Snow rattles the panes, and the temperature in the room dips as if siding with him.

“You’re not leaving. Not until I say it’s safe,” he says in a tone that brooks no refusal.

The audacity of the man. Anger sparks behind my ribs but crashes against the memory of bark exploding at my shoulder and fizzles into something colder… a fear I refuse to name. “You can’t...”

“I can.” No raise in volume, no swagger. Just certainty. “Sit down, warm up, and let me keep the roof over us while the weather does its worst.”

“I’m not cold.” I hear the defensive bite and hate it.

“Your hands are shaking.” He doesn’t look at them; he looks at me. “Sit.”

I want to hurl something heavy at his head, if only to wipe that infuriating calm off his face.

But instead, I snap my shoulders back, turn away from the door, and stalk deeper into the cottage.

Every step is edged with defiance so I don’t have to see the quiet, possessive victory I know is glinting in his eyes.

The place is a study in control. Hooks by the door hold neatly looped rope, micro spikes, a trauma kit with shears that have been sharpened recently.

The stove ticks and breathes, throwing steady heat.

A row of labeled tins—coffee, black tea, chamomile, salt—stands on the shelf like soldiers at attention for a parade inspection.

A rifle lies disassembled on the table—every piece laid out like bones in a body, neat and unyielding. Blankets folded to regulation corners. Military precision married to mountain grit.

“Cozy,” I mutter, dragging bare fingers over the back of a leather chair. The hide is cool and smooth, the kind that will warm fast. “If you’re into prison chic.”

“Better than bleeding out in the snow.” His reply is clipped but amused. He moves into my periphery, a presence more than a silhouette. “Sit.”

“Bossy.” I drop into the chair anyway because the room tilts if I don’t. The cushion gives, and I try not to sigh with relief.

He steps into his kitchen and makes a mug of coffee.

I'm surprised to see it's one of those fancy pod machines. He sets it on the table—aromatic, rich and dark. Steam curls against my face, absurdly ordinary in a night carved open by sniper sights. I wrap my hands around the pottery like I’m holding the throat of my temper.

“Always this controlling, or is it just me that brings out your inner tyrant?”

“Some would say the best, and some people like to take structure as insult. I think of it as providing a framework for safety and efficiency.” He leans a hip against the table, arms folded, watching me without blinking. “I don’t have time to figure out which you need tonight.”

“Try neither.” I drink. It’s strong enough to restart a dead heart. Good.

The storm presses harder. The cottage answers with a tired groan, like old bones settling. I catalog it automatically—the way the wind combs at the eaves, the way the stove hum deepens when the gusts hit right. The ritual calms me. Counting always has.

“Why do I feel like we’ve done this dance before?” I say, more to fill the quiet than anything else.

His eyebrow twitches. “We did during that op we had with the organ poachers, and then there was the incident at Denali.”

My stomach goes tight. “You read the report?”

“I read the reports,” he says. “And I passed through the Base Camp on a joint case the day you brought in a guide with frostbit fingertips and refused to let anyone rewarm him too fast.”

I stare. “We didn’t meet.”

“No.” He doesn’t give me an inch. “But I heard you argue with a med tech about dry heat versus water bath, and you were right. You were loud about it.”

“I was not loud.”

“You were not quiet,” he chuckles and then waits a beat. “You saved that guy's hand.”

The memory flashes quick and mean—ice-burned skin, the woman with the guy crying, the sting of being second-guessed when seconds mattered. “So you had a front-row seat to my greatest hits and didn’t bother to introduce yourself.”

“I had a job,” he says. “So did you.”

We look at each other across the table. There’s heat in it, but not the kind either of us will admit to. Not when there’s a shooter outside and a storm thickening.

“You think you know me, Barrett?” I say, because picking a fight is easier than admitting the way my shoulders lower when he stands between me and a door. “I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t fit into your neat little case notes.”

“You’re right.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “You’re far messier. And that makes you harder to keep alive.”

The words ‘keep alive’ sting—part insult, part balm. A piece of me bristles, another folds like it’s been starving to hear exactly that. I tip the mug, burn my tongue a little just to feel something I can name.

“Fine,” I say. “One night. Then I’m gone.”

He looks like he wants to argue. He doesn’t. Instead, he pushes off the table and moves to the window, picking up his rifle as he does so. It isn't in his hands so much as an extension of them. He kills the lamp nearest the glass so the room goes dim, our reflections fading into the dark beyond.

I try to pretend I’m relaxed. I stretch my legs, flex my toes inside wet socks that have started to itch as they warm.

I take in the details—the shelf where he’s stashed spare batteries, the corner holding a second med kit, the hook with a key that likely belongs to a generator.

If I have to bolt, I want to know this room better than he does or at least as well. I doubt Nate leaves anything to chance.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“Patterns,” he says. “Or breaks in them.”

“Is that how you sleep at night? Counting patterns?”

“I sleep when the math works out.”

I snort and set the mug down. The storm leans a shoulder into the cottage. The room breathes with it. I can feel the shooter in the absence—the way quiet makes you a bigger target.

“You think they’ll wait till morning?”

“If they’re smart,” he says with a nod.

“And if they’re not?”

“Then we’ll know sooner.” He glances back, eyes tracing the cut on my cheek I forgot about. “You need a bandage.”

“I’ve had worse from a cranky lynx.”

“Hold still.” He’s already digging in the med kit. I’m about to tell him I can patch my own face when he’s there, thumb and forefinger gentle as he turns my chin. The sting of antiseptic makes my eyes water. His hands are warm. Mine stop shaking.

“This is unnecessary,” I say, voice steadier than I feel.

“How about we argue after I’m done.” His breath ghosts my skin—coffee, pine, the clean metallic note of oil and steel. He tapes a butterfly, smooth and exact, then steps back like he never touched me. “Better.”

I hate the sting of disappointment that lingers when he releases me, harsh as frostbite on raw skin.

My pulse still hammers for him, traitorous and insistent, like it’s chained to his rhythm instead of mine.

It isn’t attraction I want to name—too dangerous, too revealing.

I tell myself it’s practicality, survival, nothing more.

Useful. That’s all he is supposed to be.

“Gear scan,” he says. “Jacket. Pack. Boots.”

“For what?”

“Trackers.” He doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Anyone who bracketed you that clean either knows this terrain like you do, or they tagged you.”

My stomach plummets, a freefall I try to disguise as gravity. “I strip in front of you and you’re going to hand me a playbook first?”

A corner of his mouth thinks about curving. It doesn’t. “Keep your clothes on. Radio frequency sweep first.”

He pulls a small black wand from a drawer, flicks it on. A thin LED line glows. He runs it down the seams of my jacket—nothing—then the hem—nothing. When he hits the right pack strap, the wand chirps.

We both go very still.

“Don’t move,” he says, softer than before.

“I can read a map, Barrett, not a mind.” My voice is steady. My hands aren’t.

He unthreads the strap with a multitool, careful as if he’s defusing more than a frequency. A fleck of black plastic falls into his palm—tiny, the size of a dried berry, wrapped in a sliver of duct tape. The kind that sticks through wet and cold.

He examines it. "Tracker only. No audio or video."

“How long?” I ask, throat tight.

“Could be days,” he says. “Could be hours. Whoever placed it knew what they were doing.” He bags it, seals it, writes a time with a fat marker. “This is how they knew where to set the lane.”

“Son of a...” I bite the rest off and swallow it hard. “I didn’t see anyone close enough to do that.”

“They didn’t need to be close. Trailhead, store, snowmobile rental shed—anywhere you hung that pack.” His eyes meet mine. “Or at your cabin.”

The world tilts. “No.”

“Wren.”

“I lock my door.” Stupid, useless thing to say. I hear it leave my mouth and want to snatch it back. Locks stop friends and the wind. They don’t stop a patient adversary.

He sets the bagged tracker on the table between us like a line drawn in black plastic. “We’ll take the battery out and use the shell to bait them later. For now—boots.”

I toe them off, jaw clenched. He runs the wand along the soles, the laces, the heel cups. The LED stays quiet. I exhale, shaky, then immediately feel ridiculous for needing that much air.

“Any of your gear in the truck?” he asks.

“I hiked in, remember? No truck.”

He has the good grace to look sheepish. “Right.”

He moves around the cottage with quick efficiency, killing unnecessary lights, checking latches, sliding a steel rod into concealed brackets that lock the shutters from the inside. Not paranoia—discipline. It should grate, but instead it settles something jagged in me.

“Before we go further,” I say, because the need nags, “you were at Base Camp.”

He doesn’t pause. “Just passing through.”

“You called me loud.”

“You were fighting for a hand.” He glances over. “I respect loud when it saves someone's fingers.”

I don’t have an answer for that, so I find a safer battlefield. “You keep saying we.”

“You came here. That makes it we until this is done.” He slides a folded sweater across the table. “You’re staying in the loft. I’ll take first watch.”

“What if they come back,” I ask, “and the dot isn’t for the map this time?”

“Then I put myself between you and the dot.” No bravado. Just policy.

Something in my chest, tight since the shot, loosens a fraction and scares me worse than the shooter did.

We drift into a rhythm because bodies know how to do that under pressure: he sets a kettle, I sort gear; he checks a perimeter sensor, I reload a flashlight; he gives orders I pretend I’m choosing to follow. The storm pours itself against the cottage, relentless.

When the kettle clicks, he puts a mug of tea by my elbow like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Chamomile,” he says. “Don’t argue.”

“I was going to say thank you.”

“Acceptable.”

The quiet that follows isn’t comfortable, but it’s not empty either. I don’t mistake that for safety.

A faint tap rattles the porch. Not the ping of brass. A different sound—a delicate, insistent tick like wood flexing under weight.

We look at each other.

He moves first, killing the nearest lamps until the room sinks into a softer dark. He puts a finger to his lips and points to the side of the window. I edge there, breathing shallow, every nerve awake.

When he lifts the curtain two fingers’ width, the porch is a gray smear of snow and shadow. Nothing moves. Nothing human.

Then I see it: a slender shaft embedded in the doorjamb, still quivering as the wind tugs at it. A black-shafted arrow juts from the jamb, still quivering. A strip of birch peel lashes the fletching—my mark, stolen and inverted, turned into a weapon against me.

The breath leaves my body in a single, furious rush.

Beside me, Nate’s voice is a quiet verdict. “Message received.”

“Yeah,” I whisper, heat burning the back of my eyes. “They were inside my head, twisting my own words... and weapons against me.”

“Not anymore.” He lowers the curtain, jaw a hard line.

The strip of birch peel swings from the shaft like a pendulum, each sway a reminder of how little time we have. Outside, the storm claws harder at the walls, but for now the house stands firm against it.

For the first time tonight, it’s not the storm outside that feels lethal. It’s the shadows I dragged in with me.