Niccolas’s ring burned against her chest. Her dead husband’s ring, worn for grief, worn for guilt, worn because taking it off felt like letting go of the last person she’d been before Derren taught her what fear meant.
In the sunroom, Ember sat still on his perch.
He’d known since that first day. He’d seen it the moment she walked into that sheriff’s station, and her magic reached for a stranger. The owl had been waiting all this time for her to stop running.
But Narla didn’t stop.
She sat on her kitchen floor until dawn bled through the windows, trembling, and let the fear consume her.
FOUR
WYATT
Wyatt hadn’t lost control of his panther since he was seventeen years old.
Twenty-three years of discipline. Twenty-three years of keeping the predator contained, controlled, civilized. He’d built his entire identity around that control—the cold, calculating sheriff who never let emotion compromise his judgment. The lawman everyone trusted precisely because he never, ever let the beast win.
Last night, he’d lost all of it in a storage tent.
With a woman he’d distrusted from the day she arrived.
Wyatt stood at his bathroom sink, gripping the porcelain hard enough to make the edges creak. His reflection stared back—dark circles under bloodshot eyes, jaw tight enough to crack teeth. There were scratches on the back of his neck. Her scratches. Evidence of exactly how thoroughly his control had shattered.
He could still feel her.
That was the worst part. His panther wouldn’t stop reaching for her, searching for her presence across the miles between his cabin and her cottage. The beast paced restlessly in the back ofhis mind, prowling along the edges of his consciousness, hungry and focused and absolutely certain of what it wanted.
Go back. Find her. Claim her properly this time.
Wyatt shut that down. Hard.
His morning routine was sacred. 5:47 wake-up, the same time he’d been rising for seventeen years. Black coffee, no sugar, no cream—anything else was weakness dressed up as preference. A five-mile run through the forest behind his cabin, pushing until his lungs burned and his muscles screamed.
This morning, the run felt like punishment.
He hit the trails before dawn had fully broken, feet pounding dirt paths he could navigate blind. The Douglas firs rose around him in silent judgment, their shadows still deep with pre-dawn darkness. Cold air sliced into his lungs with each breath. His body moved on autopilot while his mind replayed every moment he wished he could forget.
The way she’d saiddon’t you dare stop. The sound she’d made when he’d?—
He ran faster. Punished himself harder.
His panther laughed at him.
The beast had been insufferably smug since the moment Wyatt had dragged himself out of that tent, shirt half-untucked, the scent of her magic and her skin clinging to every inch of him. Years of careful suppression, and his panther had finally gotten what it wanted.
“She’s not—” The words came out hoarse, barely audible over his harsh breathing. “It was the surge. Just the surge.”
His panther’s response was a rumble of dark amusement. The beast knew the difference between magical interference and mate recognition. Had always known.
Wyatt had spent six years telling himself otherwise.
He pushed through another mile, then two, until his body was shaking and his vision had started to blur at the edges. Onlythen did he turn back toward the cabin, legs screaming, chest heaving. Physical exhaustion was supposed to quiet the beast. It had worked for two decades.
It wasn’t working now.
His cabin emerged from the tree line—cedar and stone, deliberately isolated, positioned so he could see anyone approaching while remaining invisible from the road. He’d chosen this location specifically. A predator’s lair. A place where he could be alone without being watched.
This morning, it felt like a cage.
