Skin in the Game

by Harley Wolfe · Cinnamon Roll Monster Romance

He stopped being human because grief was easier as an animal. She stopped asking for help because everyone who helped eventually left. Kit Dunbar is holding a failing motor lodge together with duct tape, profanity, and a multi-tool her dead grandmother gave her. Leshy has been in the Maine woods since before the town existed, shifting between animal forms, watching humans come and go, choosing solitude over the cost of caring. He fixed her roof because it was in his territory. He stayed because she threw a boot at his head and he hasn't been that interested in anything in two hundred years. She let him stay because the roof stopped leaking and the water was hot and he brought her wild honey and looked at her like she was worth four hundred years of patience. Things grow where he stands. Moss on the walls. Flowers through the floor. A vine that reaches for her in the dark.