Free Untamed: The Savage: The Complete Series by June Gray

used to lobster and duck. Of course elk meat seasoned with nothing but salt would not be appetizing to someone like her. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have put her in the position of pretending. It was a mistake I intended to fix.
    I climbed off the bed as gently as possible, got dressed, and hurried outside.

    T he sun was starting to peek over the horizon by the time I made it back to the cave. I retrieved my sharpest knife and faced my rock table.
    “Where did you go? I woke up and you were gone.” Chloe approached me with the blanket wrapped around her. When she saw the mess I had made on the table, she looked up at me with a question on her face.
    “I went to the river. I caught you a fish.” I went back to work, slicing open the belly of a rainbow trout.
    “You caught me a fish?” she asked, genuine surprise on her face. “Why?”
    I set down the knife and faced her. “Because you’re hungry.”
    Her shoulders sagged and her eyes watered. “I’m sorry. I’m trying not to be so picky. I’m trying, really.”
    I held out my dirtied hands, wishing I could touch her. “You don’t have to try so hard. Not with me.” I’d known a man once who failed his wife and son. They had left him as a result. I’d always vowed that would never happen to me. “I will do whatever it takes to make you happy here, Chloe.”
    She smiled through the tears. “I am happy. Happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
    How? I wanted to ask the question but couldn’t get it out. Maybe it was better left unsaid.

    A fter breakfast we ventured out of the caves again. It was later in the day and there was a higher chance of being spotted, so we wore clothes that made us look like ordinary hikers.
    I took her to a place about a mile southeast, to an abandoned cottage in the middle of nowhere. It was a tiny dwelling made of roughly hewn logs with a single door, two windows, and a crumbling stone fireplace on the side. The vegetation had claimed it a long time ago; weeds grew tall around the structure and moss covered the collapsing roof. But before nature’s takeover, it had once been a home.
    “Did you live here?” Chloe asked.
    “No, I just found it. I don’t think anybody knows about this place.”
    Chloe broke away from me and walked around the house, wading through the weeds to look in the windows. “There’s a tree growing right through the center of the floorboards,” she said, her voice bright with excitement. “I see a chair and a bed, I think.”
    Her eyes were sparkling when she rejoined me. “People lived here once. Out here in the middle of nowhere,” she said as if it was an impossible task. “It must have been such a hard life.”
    “Challenging, yes. Hard, no.”
    She smiled up at me, understanding my meaning.
    We stood side by side for a long time and contemplated the house. With Chloe beside me, I allowed myself to imagine a life where I didn’t live alone. Here, in the heart of the forest, we could build a home together and live in peace.
    “What if the house starts to lift up as the tree grows?” I asked, pointing up.
    “And becomes a tree house,” she added.
    “I would fix it, make it bigger, more stable.”
    She understood the game and played along. “Maybe add a few more rooms attached to other trees, with wooden walkways to connect them. I would insist on running water, of course. And proper heating.”
    “Of course.”
    “And an outdoor bathtub overlooking the forest.”
    The ideas came alive, taking form before our eyes. “I will build you whatever you want, Chloe. Just say the word.”
    She looked up at me, realizing I was no longer playing. “Alaric…” she began. After a long, painful moment, she finally smiled. “Maybe one day.”

    O n the way back , Chloe threw quick little glances my way before looking away.
    I tugged on her hair. “What?”
    “Just trying to picture you as a lumberjack.”
    “And?”
    She bit her lip and looked me up and down in a way that