FORBIDDEN BY BLOOD,CLAIMED BY FIRE

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Wren woke up to the sound of someone running.

Not inside the house — outside, on gravel, the steady, punishing rhythm of feet hitting the ground like they were trying to outrun something. She checked her phone. 5:42 AM. She hadn't even known bodies were capable of moving at this hour voluntarily.

She gave up on sleep, pulled on a hoodie, and went looking for coffee.

The kitchen was empty, but the back door stood open, and through it she could see him — Colt, shirtless, drenched, running laps around the property like the ground owed him something. He moved like a machine that hadn't been told it was allowed to stop. She counted four laps before he finally slowed, hands on his knees, chest heaving.

She should have gone back to bed. Instead, she poured two cups of coffee and walked outside in her socks.

"You're going to give yourself a heart attack," she said, holding one out.

He straightened, wiped his face with the hem of his shirt, and looked at the mug like it was a trap. "I don't drink coffee before six."

"Cool. I'll drink both, then."

That earned her the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth — gone almost before she caught it — but he took the mug anyway, fingers brushing hers for exactly one second too long.

"You're up early," he said.

"You're loud. Some of us sleep with windows open."

"Marine habit. Sleep's optional."

"That sounds like a personal problem, not a life philosophy."

He almost laughed. She watched him catch it, swallow it back down like laughing was a weakness he couldn't afford to show her yet. It made her want to know exactly how many things he'd swallowed back down over the years.

"You always this much trouble before six a.m.?" he asked.

"Only for people who tell me to get maps instead of showing me around."

His jaw ticked. She was starting to recognize it as his version of being caught. "That an invitation to renegotiate?"

"Depends. You offering?"

He studied her for a long moment, coffee cooling in his hands, some internal war playing out behind eyes that gave away nothing and everything at once.

"There's a trail behind the tree line," he said finally. "Goes up to a ridge. View's decent."

"Decent. High praise."

"It's Maine. We ration our enthusiasm."

"Noted." She smiled at him — actually smiled, the kind she hadn't given anyone in this house yet — and something in his expression shifted, like she'd knocked a brick loose without either of them noticing until it hit the ground.

"Saturday," he said, like the word cost him something. "Early. Before Beau wakes up and invites himself."

"Are you asking me on a hike, Colt Reyes?"

"I'm offering a trail map with a tour guide attached. Don't make it weird."

"Too late."

He shook his head, but she caught the almost-smile before he turned back toward the house, and for the first time since she'd arrived, the silence between them didn't feel like a wall.

It felt like a truce.

Beau found her on the porch an hour later, hair still damp from a shower, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

"So," he said, dropping into the chair across from her. "You and Colt. Coffee. Sunrise. Very cute."

"It was coffee. Not a rom-com."

"Uh-huh." He grinned wider. "You know he hasn't voluntarily talked to anyone outside this family in eight months. Not friends. Not the guys from his unit who call. Nobody. And this morning I walk downstairs and he's out there having a whole conversation with the new stepsister."

Wren's stomach did something complicated. "It wasn't a whole conversation."

"With Colt, three sentences is a whole conversation." Beau's grin faded into something more careful. "Look — I'm not trying to freak you out. I just want you to know what you're dealing with. He didn't come home from that deployment the same guy who left. Something happened over there he's never told me, and I'm his twin. If he's letting his guard down even an inch around you, that's not nothing."

"What happened to him?"

Beau's smile disappeared entirely. "That's his to tell. If he ever does." He studied her for a second, something unreadable passing behind his eyes. "Just — be careful with him, okay? Not because he'd hurt you. Because he wouldn't forgive himself if he let you close and then pushed you away like he does with everyone else."

Wren thought about the porch steps at midnight, the scar on his shoulder, the way his hand had flinched at the dinner table like it was still braced for something the rest of them couldn't see.

"I'm not scared of him," she said.

"I know," Beau said. "That's exactly why I'm telling you to be careful."

She didn't see Colt again until dinner, and he was back to four-word sentences and eyes that avoided hers like she was something he'd already decided was dangerous. Whatever had cracked open at sunrise, he'd spent the day welding it shut again.

But when she got up to clear her plate, brushing past his chair, he caught her wrist. Just for a second. Just long enough to say, low enough that no one else at the table could hear it:

"Saturday's still on."

Then he let go, like even that much contact was a rule he'd broken, and Wren went back to her seat with her pulse in her throat and the distinct, unshakable feeling that whatever this was, it was already too late to stop it.