“Where?”
“My cottage.” She was already reaching for her keys, her bag, the emergency supplies she kept beneath the counter for exactly this kind of moment. “I need—I can’t stay here. He might come back, and I can’t?—”
“Hey.” Wyatt caught her arm, steadying her before she could spiral further. His grip was firm but careful, controlling without confining. “We’ll go to your cottage. I’ll follow you. And then you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on.”
Not a request. Not even close.
She should resent it. The commanding tone, the assumption that she would comply. But right now, with Derren’s threats echoing in her mind and her parents’ names on his lips, she didn’t have the strength to fight.
“Okay.” The word came out smaller than she intended. “Okay.”
Ember transferred from her shoulder to the travel cage she kept behind the counter, settling onto his perch with feathers still ruffled from agitation. He fixed Wyatt with a stare that managed to convey both warning and reluctant approval.
Wyatt met the owl’s gaze without flinching. Understanding passed between them—predator to predator, protector to protector.
Then they were moving. Out the back door, into the alley where Narla’s car waited. Wyatt’s patrol vehicle was parked at the curb, and he fell in behind her as she pulled out, a shadow inher rearview mirror that should have felt threatening but instead promised safety.
The drive to her cottage took ten minutes. Ten minutes of gripping the steering wheel too hard, of watching for Derren’s face in every passing car, of feeling Wyatt’s presence pulse steady at the edge of her awareness.
He was worried. She could sense it—not his emotions, those were still frustratingly opaque to her magic, but the quality of his attention. The intensity of his focus. The way he was tracking her vehicle with the precision of a predator protecting its territory.
Its mate.
She shoved the thought away.
She parked in the driveway, and Wyatt was out of his vehicle before she’d finished cutting her engine.
He didn’t rush her. Didn’t demand answers in the driveway. Just walked beside her to the front door.
The cottage’s wards recognized her, humming their greeting as she crossed the threshold. Wyatt paused at the doorway, and she watched him register the defensive magic—the layers upon layers of protection she’d woven into every surface.
“You’ve been living in a fortress.” His voice was quiet. Assessing.
“I’ve been living in terror.” The admission slipped out before she could stop it. “I’ve been hiding, and running, and pretending to be someone I’m not, and it didn’t matter. He found me anyway.”
“Who found you?” Wyatt closed the door behind him, and the cottage’s wards sealed them in. Safe. Private. A space where she could finally tell the truth. “Narla. I’ve been investigating you since you arrived. I’ve pulled your background, tracked your movements, built a file full of inconsistencies I couldn’t explain. I know you’re concealing secrets. I’ve known for years.”
“I know.” She set Ember’s cage on the counter and released the latch. The owl emerged and flew to his perch in the sunroom, settling in to watch without a sound. “You weren’t exactly subtle about it.”
“Then tell me.” He stepped closer, and she felt that pull—the unwanted awareness she’d been fighting since the festival. “Whatever you’re scared of, whatever that man said to you—I can’t protect you if I don’t know what I’m protecting you from.”
Protect you.
Not investigate. Not interrogate. Protect.
A barrier cracked in her chest.
“His name is Derren Bale.” The words felt like glass in her throat, sharp and dangerous. “He was my husband’s business partner. Niccolas was a healer—a bear shifter who ran a small practice specializing in magical ailments. Derren was his partner for fifteen years. I thought I knew him. I thought—” Her voice broke. “I thought he was a friend.”
Wyatt stood motionless, absorbing. Waiting.
“Niccolas discovered irregularities. Patient files that didn’t add up. People who came in for treatment and just… vanished. He started investigating. Started digging into Derren’s background. And when he confronted him—” The memory rose, unbidden and brutal: Niccolas’s voice on the phone that last night, urgent with discovery, telling her he’d found proof of what Derren really was. “Niccolas died. The official story was a house fire. Tragic accident. No survivors.”
“But it wasn’t an accident.”
“No.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. Those amber eyes, sharp and focused, seeing everything she’d tried to hide. “Derren killed him. And then he came to me. Showed me what he really was—what he could do—and made sure I understood what would happen if I told anyone.”
“What he really was.” Wyatt’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous register—quiet and lethal. “What does that mean?”
