He knew. He knew about her friends, her relationships, the people she cared about. Derren made it his business to know everything about his prey before he struck.
“Haven Shores seems full of trusting people.” He leaned against the counter, close enough that she could smell his cologne—expensive, sophisticated, a lie layered over the emptiness beneath. “I met the most delightful elderly couple at a café this morning. They were visiting from Sunset Harbor. Something about an assisted living facility? The woman mentioned her daughter lived here. A candle maker.” His smile widened. “Small world.”
Her parents.
He’d found her parents.
“Rose and David, wasn’t it? Such a lovely couple. Your mother has quite the stories about you as a child.” Derren’s voice was soft, conversational, carrying no hint of threat to anyone who might overhear. “I promised I’d stop by and say hello next time I’m in the area. They seemed so pleased to hear you’d made friends in your new town.”
Narla couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Every protective ward she’d woven around her parents’ facility, every spell she’d embedded in gifts and care packages—could none of it stop him if he decided to enter the facility?
“What do you want?” The words came out barely above a whisper.
“Want?” Derren’s eyebrows rose in perfect innocence. “I’m just a businessman exploring a charming coastal town. Nothing more sinister than that.” He straightened, adjusting his perfectly tailored jacket. “But I do appreciate Haven Shores’s hospitality. I may stay awhile. There’s so much here worth… observing.”
He moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the frame.
“Your candles really are remarkable, Ms. Wright. The way they reveal what people are hiding—who they’re meant to be with, who they’re not meant to be with.” He glanced back at her, and for just an instant, the glamour flickered. The shadows around him moved wrong, stretching in directions that had nothing to do with the light. “I wonder what else they might show, given the right motivation.”
The bell chimed as he left.
Narla’s legs gave out.
She caught herself on the counter, knuckles white, chest heaving. Ember launched from his perch and landed on her shoulder, pressing against her neck with urgent warmth.
He was here.
And he knew everything.
Her friends. Her parents. Her candles and their dangerous new power. Everything she’d tried to protect, exposed. Everything she’d tried to escape, standing in her shop with a smile and a threat.
The trembling started in her hands and spread through her entire body. Her vision blurred. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps that didn’t fill her lungs.
The storage room. She needed to get to the storage room. The warded space behind the boxes, where she could fall apart in private, where she could?—
The bell chimed again.
“Narla.”
That voice. Low, controlled, carrying an edge of urgency she’d never heard from him before.
“Who was that man?”
FIFTEEN
NARLA
Narla couldn’t answer. Her voice had seized, trapped behind the terror clawing at her throat.
Wyatt moved into the shop, closing the door behind him, flipping the sign to CLOSED with the efficiency of someone who expected to be obeyed. Two strides brought him to the counter. His hand closed over hers—warm, solid, an anchor in the storm of her panic. “You’re shaking.” Not a question. An observation. His thumb swept across her knuckles, and even through her fear, her body responded to his touch. Heat where there had been ice. Steadiness where there had been chaos. “I saw him leave. I saw your face through the window. Narla. Who was he?”
She should lie. Should deflect, the way she’d been deflecting for years. Should send him away before he got any closer to the truth.
But his hand was on hers. His presence was a wall between her and the door Derren had walked through. And somewhere behind his professional concern, she could see it—the panther, pacing with protective fury, wanting to hunt down whatever had put that look on her face.
“Not here.” Her voice came out raw, broken. “Please. Not here.”
His expression shifted. He didn’t argue, didn’t push. Just released her hand and moved to survey the street through the window, positioning himself between her and any threat that might return.
