The room went motionless.
“Wyatt.” Cassia said it like a statement, not a question.
“Clear as a photograph. Unmistakable.” Narla’s voice shook. “Every candle I’ve touched since then shows the same thing. His face. His eyes. And I know what it means. I know what the candles are showing people now.”
“Fated mates.” Junie had gone pale. “Your candles show people their fated mates.”
“Yes.”
“And Wyatt Gentry is?—”
“Yes.” Narla set her wine glass down because her hands were shaking too badly to hold it. “The panther shifter who’s been watching me with suspicious eyes since the day I arrived. The sheriff who’s been digging into my background, looking for inconsistencies, trying to figure out what I’m hiding. He’s my fated mate.”
“And that’s a problem because…” Avine’s question was gentle.
The pressure, the expectation, the knowledge that she was going to have to share something she’d kept buried.
Not everything. She couldn’t tell them everything. But maybe—maybe she could tell them enough.
“Because there’s someone from my past.” The words felt like glass in her throat. “Someone dangerous. Someone who’s been watching me. And if he finds out I have a mate—if he finds out there’s someone I care about?—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Narla.” Dahlia’s voice came through the laptop, soft but urgent. “What are you saying?”
“My husband didn’t die in an accident.” Six years of silence, cracking open. “Niccolas was murdered. By someone who threatened to do the same to anyone I tried to tell. Anyone who got too close. Anyone I cared about.”
The silence that followed was different from before. Heavier. Darker.
Arms wrapped around her. Avine on one side, Junie on the other, pulling her into an embrace that smelled like lavender and chaos magic and the unfamiliar sensation of safety.
“You’ve been carrying this alone.” Avine’s voice was thick.
“I couldn’t risk it.” Narla pressed her face into the embrace. “Couldn’t risk anyone else.”
“Stop.” Junie’s voice was fierce. “You didn’t kill him. Some monster did, and you’ve been surviving the best way you knew how.”
A laugh bubbled up in Narla’s chest, wet and broken but real. “It’s armor. All of it. The calm, the distance?—”
“I know.” Junie’s expression softened. “But you don’t need armor with us.”
The tears came again—not the sharp, suffocating grief of before, but clean release. The weight lifting, redistributing, spreading across shoulders that were willing to share it.
“So,” Avine reached for the wine bottle and refilled everyone’s glasses, “here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to drink this wine, eat whatever pastries I can scrounge from the kitchen, and tell us exactly what you need. Not what you think we can handle. Not what you’ve decided is safe to share. What youneed.”
“And then,” Junie added, “we’re going to figure out how to keep you safe without sacrificing your shot at happiness with a hot panther shifter. Because honestly? You deserve good things after all that fear.”
“Junie.”
“What? I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking.”
Cassia snorted. Dahlia bit her lip on a smile. Even Avine’s composure cracked into reluctant amusement.
And Narla—for the first time in years—discovered what might have been hope.
NINE
NARLA
