# PSYCHIC HARVEST

### Chapter 5: Paid in Full

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**PART TWO**

The trail back toward Haven cut through a stretch of open scrubland just past dusk, quiet enough that Ethan caught himself listening for the wrong kind of silence out of pure habit — and it was in that particular, half-alert state that he noticed the two figures waiting at the fork in the road ahead, clearly not travelers passing through by accident.

Mura went still against his shoulder. Not the sharp, threatened stillness of a hunted thing. Something more like caution.

"Friends of yours?" Ethan asked quietly.

"Never seen them," Dallin murmured back, and something in his voice had gone careful in a way Ethan hadn't heard from him yet.

The woman stepped forward first — dark hair with an unmistakable deep copper-red running through it, warm expression, the easy, unhurried posture of someone who did this kind of approach often enough to have smoothed every edge off it. Behind her, a step back and slightly to the side, a quieter man watched the tree line on either side of the road with the patient, unblinking attention of someone whose entire job was noticing things before they became problems.

"Ethan Cole," the woman said, warm as an old acquaintance, like they'd met a dozen times before instead of never. "And Murasakimaru, I'm guessing. Cute name. Suits him."

Every nerve in Ethan's body went very quiet and very still at once — the same particular stillness that had once told him, in a jungle clearing on his first day in this world, that something was paying attention to him that had no business knowing he existed.

He hadn't told this woman Mura's name. He hadn't told her anything at all.

"I don't believe we've met," Ethan said carefully, feeling Dallin shift half a step closer beside him, unconsciously mirroring the watchful man's own posture.

The woman smiled, warm and entirely unbothered, like his caution was simply the correct, expected reaction and nothing to be offended by.

"Not yet," she said. "But I've heard a lot about you. The Thistlebound whisperer... The Choir swarm today was a nice touch to add to your resume — very clean work, by the way, for someone who's only been linked a few months." She tilted her head slightly, studying him the way Sato had studied him that very first night, except with none of the warmth underneath it. "My name's Vera. I think you and I might have a few things worth talking about."

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*End of Chapter 5*