FORBIDDEN BY BLOOD,CLAIMED BY FIRE

The first thing Colt Reyes said to her wasn't hello. It was get out of my house. He didn't say it out loud. He didn't have to. It was in the way his jaw locked the second she stepped out of the car, in the way his eyes swept over her like she was a threat he hadn't cleared yet — like she was already a problem he intended to solve. Wren had exactly three seconds to decide whether to shrink from that look or meet it head-on. She met it. "You must be the stepbrother nobody warned me about," she said. Something flickered behind his eyes. Not quite surprise. Not quite respect. Whatever it was, it vanished as fast as it came, and he turned away without a word, hauling her suitcases out of the trunk like he could carry the weight of what he wasn't saying instead. "Okay then," Wren muttered. "Great talk." "Don't take it personal," said the second twin, jogging down the porch steps with an easy grin that felt like it belonged to a completely different family. "I'm Beau. That's Colt. He forgot how words work somewhere around month six overseas." "Beau." One syllable, flat as a closed door, and Beau actually stopped talking. Wren watched Colt disappear into the house without a backward glance, spine straight, shoulders set like he was still waiting for an ambush. She'd grown up around a lot of guarded people — her mother included — but she'd never seen anyone hold themselves quite like that. Like stillness was the only thing keeping something else from breaking loose. "Is he always like that?" she asked. Beau's grin faltered, just slightly. "Only since he came home." Dinner was worse. Her mother had gone all out — table set with cloth napkins, candles, a roast that had clearly taken all afternoon — like enough effort could paper over the fact that she'd upended both their lives with a single text message. Marcus, her new stepfather, was warm enough, cracking jokes about the movers losing a box of his golf clubs. Beau kept the conversation alive single-handedly, asking Wren about college, about her major, about whether she'd survive a Maine winter. Colt said four words the entire meal. Pass the salt, please. Wren caught herself watching him anyway — the way he ate like he was still on some kind of schedule, fast and economical, eyes tracking the room every few seconds like he was cataloguing exits. When Marcus reached across the table too quickly for the pepper, Colt's hand twitched toward his own lap before he caught himself and forced it still. Nobody else seemed to notice. Wren noticed everything. "So, Colt," her mother tried, bright and hopeful in the way that made Wren's chest hurt a little, "Wren's actually really into hiking. Maybe you could show her some of the trails around here?" The silence that followed lasted just long enough to be its own answer. "She'll find them fine on her own," Colt said. He didn't look up from his plate. "Maps exist." "Colt," Marcus said, a warning under the word. "It's fine," Wren cut in, because watching her new stepfather scold a grown man over dinner felt worse than the insult itself. "I don't need a tour guide. I found my way across three states by myself. I think I can manage a hiking trail." That got his eyes up. Just for a second. Just long enough for her to see something in them that wasn't hostility at all — something closer to surprise, like he hadn't expected her to have teeth. "Good," he said. Quiet. Almost like a concession. Then he stood, thanked her mother for dinner in a voice that actually sounded like he meant it, and left the table without another word to anyone else. She found him again just after midnight. She'd gone looking for a glass of water and found the kitchen dark, the house settled into that particular silence only unfamiliar houses have — full of sounds that weren't hers to recognize yet. She was halfway back to the stairs when she saw the light spilling from the back porch. Colt sat alone in the dark on the porch steps, a mug going cold in his hands, staring out at nothing. No shirt, dog tags catching what little moonlight there was, a scar cutting pale and jagged across one shoulder blade that told its own story without a single word attached to it. She should have gone back inside. She knew that. Every closed-off line of his body was a do not enter sign. She sat down two steps away from him instead. "Can't sleep?" she asked. "You should go back inside." "You should try being less terrifying at dinner. Then maybe I would." His jaw ticked — not quite anger, something closer to reluctant amusement fighting to get out and losing. "I'm not trying to be terrifying." "Could've fooled me. You made Beau apologize for existing." "Beau doesn't need my permission to talk. He just likes an audience." "And you don't?" He was quiet long enough that she thought he wouldn't answer at all. When he finally spoke, his voice had dropped, rougher, like the words were being dragged out from somewhere he usually kept locked. "I like quiet. I earned it." Something in the way he said earned made her chest tighten. She thought about the way his hand had flinched at the table. The scar on his shoulder. The way he sat facing the yard instead of the house, like even here, at midnight, in his own home, some part of him was still standing guard. "You don't have to talk to me," she said. "But you don't have to hate me either. I didn't ask for any of this any more than you did." For the first time since she'd arrived, he actually turned and looked at her — really looked, like he was seeing her instead of just cataloguing another variable in a house full of them. "I don't hate you," he said finally. "Could've fooled me." The ghost of something crossed his face — not quite a smile, but close enough to make her stomach do something she didn't have a name for yet. "Go to bed, Wren." It was the first time he'd said her name. She stood, brushed off her pajama pants, and paused at the door. "For the record — I don't need a tour guide. But if you ever feel like talking instead of glaring, I'm in the room at the end of the hall." She didn't wait for an answer. She didn't get one. But long after she'd gone back upstairs, Colt Reyes sat alone on the porch steps, staring at the door she'd disappeared through, and for the first time in eight months, the silence he'd fought so hard to protect felt less like armor and more like a cage.