A STING OF JEALOUSY
1288 Words
~NOIR~
Coir panicked the second he saw me rush inside the house with Amanda in my arms, almost lifeless.
“What did you do this time?” Were the first words that came out of Coir’s lips. He didn’t spare me a glance, grabbed Amanda gently from my arms and set her on the couch.
The care in his eyes…it felt natural…too natural.
“What did you do!” He yelled.
I blinked back to reality and croached down beside Amanda. “I didn’t do anything. I found her stalker, it’s a witch. The witch did this. I’m not sure how to undo it.”
While I spoke, Coir was restless, checking every part of her body. He took off his shirt like it was a major problem and pressed two fingers to Amanda’s neck.
“She’s alive.” He looked at me then. “We need to take her to—”
“No!” Amanda cried, her eyes still closed, tears squeezing out. She winced and grabbed Coir’s hand like a last bit of hope. “Mom…I can’t—DON’T!”
She jolted up like she’d been electrocuted, gasping, her eyes bare of any warmth. She looked around furiously and found Coir by her side. She leapt onto him like a shield, burying her face in his chest.
The most dangerous kind of jealousy is the kind you refuse to name.
Kane’s voice kept going in my ear but I wasn’t hearing him. I was watching Coir hold Amanda like she was made of something precious, like letting her go even an inch would cost him something he could not afford to lose.
Coir…Coir who had never held anything gently in his life, just breathed her in and let her tremble against him.
“Boss,” Kane said again.
“Give me a minute,” I said quietly, and hung up.
Leo stirred inside me, a low, restless current. “You should go to her.”
I should. I knew I should. She was my mate. I knew what the witch had done, it wasn’t just to scare her, it was way deeper.
But Coir was already there. And Amanda had chosen him.
The word chosen sat in my chest like spinster I couldn’t reach.
I veered around, walked to the far end of the room and made myself call Kane back.
“Tell me what you know about witches operating in the human quarter,” I said.
He’s the only wolf in my company, the only one I trust.
Kane went quiet for three full seconds. That was his tell—three seconds meant he knew something he hadn’t told me yet. “I’ve heard rumours,” he said carefully. “An old coven. Pre-dates the current pack territories, pre-dates your family’s settlement here. They were here first, apparently.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this.”
“You didn’t ask me to survey covens, Boss. You asked me to run the north division accounts.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d been deliberately keeping my human world and my wolf world separated, clean lines. The witch today made clear those lines didn't exist for anyone else.
“Find me anything. Names, territory, and what they want. Quietly.” I paused. “And Kane—no more lunches outside the building.”
He exhaled. “…right. Yes, Boss.”
When I came back to the room, Coir had moved Amanda to the window seat. He sat across from her now, not touching, but the space between them was the kind that asks to be closed.
He was talking to her in a low voice. She was listening, really listening.
“She needs rest,” I said from the doorway. My voice came out steadier than I felt.
Coir looked up. Something in his expression was careful. “I know what she needs, Noir.”
“Amanda glanced at me then, just once, just a flicker, then looked away.
I went back to my office and sat in the dark for a long time. Leo didn’t say another word. Even he understood that some silences are the kind you deserve.
~AMANDA’S POV~
I didn’t dream. Or if I did, the dream had the good sense to leave no marks when I woke.
The window seat was wide enough to curl into and someone, Coir, I knew it was Coir without checking, had left a blanket over me. It was soft.
I pressed my face into it for a second longer than I meant to.
The house was quiet. Late afternoon light was doing the light golden thing across the floor. I lay still and tried to put the night before back together in the right order. The restaurant, the woman in black, that face—
My mother’s face.
I pressed the blanket tighter and made myself breathe.
She'd been dead long before I could meet her, but I knew her like the back of my mind. But whatever that witch had shown me, it wasn’t real. It was designed to break something open in me, and I would not give it that.
I sat up. My shoes were off. The room was warm.
Coir was in the kitchen. I could smell and hear him moving. He was moving carefully, a way not to disturb. I stood in the doorway and watched him for a moment before he noticed me.
He was making tea.
Just…making tea. Both hands around a mug, reading something on the counter while the water came to boil. He looked so ordinary it made something in my throat ache.
“You’re awake,” he said, without startling, like he knew I was there the whole time.
“How long was I out?”
“Through the night. Sit down.”
I sat at the kitchen island. He slid the mug across to me without asking if I wanted, and somehow it was exactly right, strong, no sugar, a little bitter at the edges.
“How did you know?” I asked.
He shrugged, leaning back against the counter. “I've been watching you drink coffee for three weeks. You make the same face every time there’s too much sugar.”
I stared at the mug. Nobody had ever watched me closely enough to know that. Long hadn’t. The people who were supposed to love me certainly hadn’t.
“Coir,” I said.
“Mm.”
“What did that woman do to me?”
He was quiet for a beat. Then, “she showed you something. Something designed to reach into the fear you already carry and make it feel like now.” He met my eyes. “Withes like that don’t create pain, Amanda. They find the pain you’ve already buried and they press on it.”
That was worse, somehow. That it hadn’t been invented. That she’d just found what was already there.
“My mom,” I said, barely above a whisper.
He nodded once. No pity. Just acknowledgement:
“I didn’t know her but I was cursed for bringing her death. My father mentioned it every day till he died a worthless death.”
“You were a child, that is totally not your fault.”
“Only if I hadn’t been bo—”
“Not your fault, Amanda.” The second time was quieter, but it landed harder. “You don’t owe the dead your whole life as payment for surviving or coming into this world.”
I looked at him across the kitchen island and felt something shift in me, like a crack in something I’d been holding sealed for years.
He didn’t push it. He just stayed. That was the thing about Coir. He stayed.
- Writer
