Page 18 of Bear Naked Truth
As her mind wandered as to why the spirits were reaching out to him as well, the scent of honeysuckle had turned metallic.
Autumn paused in the hallway outside the east wing, her fingers gripping a small crystal charm in her pocket so tightly her knuckles ached. The floor beneath her boots felt colder than it had an hour ago. Still. Not just quiet, butwrong. Like something was holding its breath in the walls.
She knew that feeling.
Knew it too well.
The charm vibrated once. Faint, like a warning bell muffled in cotton. Her breath caught in her throat. She’d been tracking fluctuations in energy all morning, her notes scribbled across half a dozen pages on the desk Dorian had built for her. This wing—thisroom—had pulsed on and off like a faulty heartbeat. But now it screamed silence.
She stepped forward, slow, deliberate.
The door to the end bedroom stood ajar, and the air leaking through it was ice against her skin.
“Dorian?” she called gently, knowing he was likely still downstairs but needing to say something oranything—to keep the goosebumps from spreading.
No reply.
She exhaled, whispered the shielding spell under her breath, and pushed open the door.
The moment she crossed the threshold, everything shifted.
The air pressed in, dense and wet, like walking underwater. The candle in her hand flickered once—then snuffed out entirely. The sunlight outside the windows dimmed, as if the house had turned its back to the day. That’s when she saw him.
The Hollow Man.
He didn’t emerge. Hecoalesced—from the shadows in the corners, from the cracks in the walls, from the very grief woven into the floorboards. He was tall, impossibly so, draped in shadows that moved like smoke. His face was… incomplete. A hollow where a mouth should be. Eyes like empty wells. Not glowing. Not burning.
Justgone.
Autumn froze, every instinct flaring to life.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, voice low, steady.
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Justwatched.
“Evelyn,” she said carefully. “I know her name. I know there was pain. That something was taken from you.”
Still nothing.
Her fingers twitched. The charm in her pocket heated sharply, then cracked.
That was when she felt it.
The shift in energy. It was sharp, like a spear cutting through fog.
“No,” she breathed. “No, don’t?—”
The psychic force slammed into her like a freight train, invisible but suffocating. Her vision blurred, knees buckling under the pressure. Not physical, but deep, emotional, mental. Memories not hers tried to shove into her consciousness. Images of fire, of a circle of robed figures, of Dorian’s facetwistingin anguish that wasn’t his.
He was downstairs and he was about to get hurt.
She had to protect him.
She bit her tongue hard enough to taste copper and grounded herself. Her body screamed under the weight of the spirit’s fury, but she pushed back. Pushedout. Her magic surged, flooding the room with warmth and memory. Real ones. Her own. The scent of rosemary in her mother’s garden. The scratch of old wool sweaters. The feel of Dorian’s hand over hers on a bench bathed in morning light.
The Hollow Man reeled just a step. But it was enough.
“Not him,” she gasped. “You don’t get to have him.”
