The last thing I need is for Luna to notice a six-foot-four kitchen hand in a hairnet gawking at her.
I take a slow breath, trying to draw her scent in, but the distance is too wide. The kitchen’s steam and grease choke it out anyway.
Behind my ribs, my alpha hits my sternum, a heavy, impatient thump that makes my fingers twitch. I want to vault the stainless steel counter and walk right up to her. Still, seeing her slightly takes the edge off the itch that’s been crawling under my skin. She looks beautiful.
I step back from the sneeze guard, fading into the shadow of the prep tables, dropping the serving spoon into a bus tub and keep moving.
“Hey, new guy.” The cafeteria manager looks up from a clipboard near a steaming pot. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Break,” I say, and I don’t wait for his answer.
I push through the swinging doors into the back corridor and tear the hairnet off, stuffing it into my apron pocket. The toupee stays, mostly because I’m afraid I used too much glue and it’ll take my scalp with it.
Now I need to find the idiots I call my brothers. The plan was simple: check on her, make sure she’s safe, grab a quick hit of her scent to take the edge off, and clear out before she ever knew we were here. Now that I’ve found her, we can do that and get back to the orchard, where “short-handed” doesn’t even begin to cover our situation.
I stalk down a bamboo-paneled corridor toward the maintenance wing that smells like sage and floor wax. And around a corner, I find Ash.
He’s in dark blue maintenance coveralls, pushing a mop across the slate tiles with aggressive, jerky strokes. That absurd blonde mustache is still glued to his lip, twitching every time he grunts.
I stop a few feet away and cross my arms over my chest.
“Damn it,” Ash mutters, wringing the mop out into the yellow bucket with unnecessary violence. “I thought I’d be pretending to fix stuff. Look busy with a wrench. Not mopping the damn floor.”
He looks five seconds away from snapping the handle over his knee.
“Quit moping,” I tell him, and grin, pretty pleased with my pun.
Ash pauses, the mop handle still in his grip. He turns his head slowly and levels a glare at me that would probably work a lot better without the mustache.
“Ha. Ha,” he says, flat. “Good one. Glad to see the job hasn’t crushed your spirit. Real lucky for you, getting to stand behind a counter spooning mush at strangers while I do actual manual labor.”
“Well, good news. You can stop,” I say, dropping my voice so it won’t carry down the hall. “I found her.”
Ash freezes. The mop handle slips from his hands and clatters against the slate, the wet strings slapping the tiles. The annoyance drains out of his face, replaced by the same tight, quiet hunger that’s been pulling at me.
“Where?” he whispers.
“Cafeteria, just now. She looks good.” I scrub a hand over the stubble on my jaw, feeling the edge of the fake hair piece lift. “Let’s grab Reed and get close enough to smell her. Then we bail.”
Ash steps over the mop. “Let’s go.”
We navigate the labyrinth of the retreat, looking for the wellness studios. Reed’s text earlier said they put him in Studio B for an advanced class, which, by the way, I still can’t wrap my head around. The class must be hell of a carnage.
We turn another corner and, at last, we find it. The front wall is a sheet of floor-to-ceiling glass, fogged at the top from the heat inside. Around twenty people are twisted into pretzels on purple mats, moving to the tinny, frantic synth-beat of Olivia Newton-John’sPhysicalplaying over the speakers.
I stop. Ash halts next to me and makes a low, strangled sound in his throat... because pacing at the front of the room, is Reed.
He’s wearing illegally short bright red shorts, a tight, sleeveless white track jacket, and a neon blue sweatband around his forehead. Miraculously, he’s still wearing the neon-taped glasses, too, which he keeps readjusting as he moves.
“Breathe into it—that’s it!” Reed’s voice comes through the glass, muffled but loud. He claps, paces the front row, and throws one fist in the air, then the other, pumping his arms in a frantic, alternating rhythm. “You feel that shake in your legs? That’s not pain, that’s progress! Stay with me, you beautiful warriors—almost there, yes, you’re almost there!”
Ash stares. “What the actual fuck?”
“Whatever this is, it’s working,” I mutter, without a hint of exaggeration. Every person in the room is locked on him, dripping sweat and straining to hold their poses, completely hooked.
I step up to the glass and rap my knuckles hard against the pane.
Reed snaps his head toward us, freezes for a second, then turns back to his class.
