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“I know you’re there Come out”
Silence
I peered into the night, scrutinizing the fa Park Street froe footprints crossed the lawn Nothing hid in the oak tree, nothing rustled the bushes behind it, nothing troubled the cedar twenty feet behind the bushes…
Two amber eyes stared at me from the shadows under the cedar I almost jumped
“Sean!” He nearly gave me a heart attack
Sean Evans didn’t o, we’dhis territory onthe boundaries of the inn
“Co hborhood “I don’t want to shout”
He moved, a blur, ran up to the oak, leapt, bounced, and landed on the branch near the balcony Déjà vu
Beast woofed once, quietly, just to let hi
“Is so?”
I scrutinized his face When Sean first moved into the Avalon subdivision, he’d caused aIf someone looked up “ex-military badass” in the dictionary, they would find his picture He was closing on thirty, with a handsome face he kept clean-shaven, russet-brown hair cut short, and an athletic, powerful body He was strong and fast, and crossing him was a du the overwhel majority of people on Earth had no idea existed Several o, while Sean helped me defend the Avalon subdivision froins and then left to find hi trapped in an interstellar war in a place called Nexus, and it took all my resources to break him free of it
The war took a toll A long scar now ressive This new Sean was quiet and patient, and if you peered into his clear amber eyes, you would find a steel hardness So into the eyes of a tiger No hunger, no rage, just an inscrutable watchfulness Sean and I had gone to the ht with us outside the theater after the show Sean looked at hiht through the alcohol haze, because the drunk turned around without a word and walked away
I could handle the arrogance and the anger, but that watchful nothing alarh I saw hihborhood, and none of the was still there He didn’t sayWith his other neighbors, he took pains to pretend to be norh With me he was himself, and that Sean held the door open for ht I was cold, and put hi Whatever he had lived through on Nexus had pushed him outside the normal huht