The car slid out of the manor gates and onto the long coastal road, tires whispering over damp stone. Even in summer this part of the country never quite lost its chill; the sea on their right was a steel-grey sheet flecked with white, and the air that crept in through the window seams smelled of salt, iron, and cold weed. Dax watched it without blinking, one hand pressed to his mouth, the other curled loosely against his knee.
He could still see Chris as he had left him: curled into the bed, lashes down, breath steady. The scent had been clean under the cotton of his borrowed clothes, faint wine and rain and something that was simply him. It clung to Dax's palms even now, sharper than the brine outside, and every mile away from it set a quiet tension crawling under his skin.
"Did you find anything new about my mate?" he asked at last, not looking at Tyler.
