Page 26 of Bear Naked Truth
“Foryou, Dorian.”
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he walked slowly to the sink, gripping the edge with both hands. His back muscles rippled with the tension, and even now—after everything—Autumn’s eyes followed the lines of him like gravity.
“You okay?” she asked.
“No.” His voice was rough. “But I will be. If you keep telling me the truth.”
“I always tell the truth,” she said.
He turned, finally, and the weight in his gaze was heavier than anything that had come before.
“I know. That’s why I keep falling for you.”
Autumn flinched, just a little.
Not from fear. But fromknowing.
And Dorian, he didn’t push. He didn’t press. He just bent, picked up the kettle, and said, “Still want that tea?”
She stared at him.
At the man who wasn’t trying to fix her. Just hold the pieces steady while she figured out how to fit them together.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Tea sounds good.”
And as he turned back to the stove, humming low under his breath, she knew two things for certain:
The Hollow Man wasn’t done with them.
And as her rational side wanted to be, every other part of her that she had pushed down for years wasn’t either.
14
DORIAN
Dorian had always thought of the attic as the house’s last line of defense. The walls could whisper. The halls could rearrange themselves with a ghost’s breath. But the attic… the attic held her secrets close, like a woman who kept all her pain in a locked box under the bed, daring anyone to pry.
The door groaned when he opened it, hinges rusted like they'd forgotten how to move without complaint. Dust kicked up in lazy spirals around him, caught in the lone shaft of light slanting through the fractured windowpane. It smelled like old paper and forgotten lives—sweet with age and the faintest tang of iron. Warm, too. Oppressively so. Not just because of the insulation. It was the kind of heat that came from memories too loud to die quietly.
He stepped inside slowly, like the air might snap shut behind him.
He didn’t know what he was looking for.
Only that something inside him had cracked since Autumn described that ghost’s face—the man she’d seen in her vision. The grief in her voice. The recognition she hadn’t wanted to admit.
And gods, thatlookshe’d given him. Like he wasn’t a stranger. Like she already knew what lived in the shadows of this house and was just waiting for him to face it.
So here he was. Chasing ghosts of his own.
He moved past a stack of covered furniture and toward the back corner where his uncle’s things were piled in an unceremonious heap. A row of leather-bound trunks, brass corners dulled with age. Some crates splintered at the seams. The scent of candle wax and dried lavender drifted from a rotted satchel. One crate held only a bundle of dried herbs and a petrified animal skull.
And there—a shelf of journals. Haphazardly stacked, mismatched sizes. Some thin and crumbling, others thick and bound with care. Dorian’s heart kicked harder against his ribs.
Alaric hadn’t kept pictures. Not many, anyway. But he’d left behind something even more dangerous.
Words.
