For a long moment, she didn’t answer. Her owl appeared on the porch railing, settling between them without a sound.
“I think you should go, Sheriff.” Her voice had gone distant. Controlled. That deliberate blankness sliding back into place. “I have calls to return. Damage to control. Whatever the surge did to my magic, it’s my problem to solve.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“No.” She held his gaze, and for just a second, her mask cracked. He saw everything underneath—exhaustion, fear, and something that looked terrifyingly like longing. “I didn’t.”
She turned and walked back into her cottage. The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.
Wyatt stood in her driveway, his panther howling with frustrated need, and knew with absolute certainty that she had seen his face.
She knew.
They both knew.
And neither of them had any idea what to do about it.
SEVEN
NARLA
Narla showed up at Avine’s door just after noon and asked for wine.
The innkeeper of the Siren’s Rest took one look at her—the shadows under her eyes, the tremor in her hands, the complete absence of her usual composure—and didn’t ask questions. Just stepped aside, opened the door wider, and pointed toward the stairs that led to her private suite.
“Top floor. I’ll bring the bottle.”
Narla climbed the stairs on autopilot, her legs aching from a sleepless night spent on her kitchen floor. She’d eventually moved to the couch around four, then given up entirely and driven to the one place in Haven Shores where she might be able to fall apart without consequence.
The Siren’s Rest had been the emotional heart of their friend group since Avine and Theo’s mating over a year ago. Avine’s suite occupied the entire top floor—warm colors, comfortable furniture, a wine cabinet that never seemed to run dry. It had hosted celebrations and crises in equal measure. Girls’ Nights that devolved into drunken confessions. Emergency gatherings when relationships combusted or villains attacked or the world generally went sideways.
Today, it would host the biggest confession Narla had ever made.
She sank into the velvet sofa and pressed her palms against her eyes. Her magic still burned raw, exposed, stripped of the careful control she’d worked so hard to build. Every candle in Avine’s suite had flickered when she walked in—responding to her, reaching for her—and she’d had to clamp down hard to stop them from revealing anything they shouldn’t.
Wyatt’s face in every flame.
His voice, the raw edge of the demand he’d laid at her door.
The way he’d looked at her.
Avine appeared with two glasses and a bottle of rich, expensive merlot. She poured without comment, handed Narla a glass, and settled into the armchair across from her with the patient silence of someone who knew when to wait.
Narla took a long drink. The wine was smooth, warming, completely inadequate for the conversation she was about to have.
“You need to call the others.”
Avine’s eyebrows rose. “Are you sure?”
“Please.”
The change in Narla’s voice must have communicated the severity, because Avine didn’t argue. She pulled out her phone, fired off a group text, and within seconds the responses started rolling in.
Junie: wtf it’s barely past noon?—
Junie: wait is someone dead
Junie: i’m bringing coffee and potions just in case
