But then he’d taste it, and he’d eat his words—literally—as that suspicion melted into impressed approval.
That was the goal, anyway.
As time went on, the stress started to build, mostly because my culinary adventure wasn’t exactly going well. I stood there, staring down at what was supposed to be a meal and currently looked more like a crime scene involving vegetables, sauce, and what I was pretty sure was overcooked rice.
“Okay,” I muttered to myself, poking at something that definitely wasn’t supposed to be that color. “We can fix this. We can absolutely fix this.”
I tried stirring the rice with the sauce, attempting to scrape the burnt parts off the bottom. Then I added more sauce,because obviously the solution to everything was more sauce, hoping to loosen it enough to make it salvageable.
“Why is it doing that?” I whispered to absolutely no one as the mixture bubbled in a way that felt aggressive, like it had taken one look at me and decided to fight back.
I stood there for a second too long, wooden spoon in hand, staring at the pan like I could will it into behaving.
Maybe if I just... stirred it differently?
I tried again, slower this time, like I suddenly knew what I was doing. I was in the middle of another desperate attempt to salvage it when a knock sounded at the door, and my head snapped up instantly, my heart jumping straight into my throat.
Crap.
I glanced toward the door, then to the clock, then back to the absolute disaster in front of me.He was early.On any other day, I would’ve been thrilled, but right now? He was about to walk in and see the evidence of my very short and very tragic career as a chef.
“Oh no, no, no, no,” another knock echoed through the cottage, and I panicked. “I—just a minute!” I called back, my voice pitching slightly higher than I meant it to as I scrambled to hide my disaster.
I turned off the stove and immediately started moving things around—pushing pans aside, shoving ingredients out of sight, tossing the worst offenders into the sink like that somehow erased the evidence.
“Alright,” I muttered, flattening my dress like that might somehow fix everything. I looked like a perfect 1950s housewife... if you ignored the fact that I was failing in the kitchen, but at least I looked cute doing it.
I quickly ran my fingers through my hair, aiming for presentable even if dinner was a lost cause, then rushed to the door, forcing a smile onto my face as I reached for the handle, already bracing myself for whatever teasing comment Octavius was about to make about my “progress.”
I pulled the door open, and my smile fell instantly, my heart dropping straight into my stomach. Because standing outside my cottage wasn’t the shifter I had been trying to impress. No...
It was Hugo.
For a split second, my brain refused to process or accept what I was seeing. The shark shifter I had stolen from, the one whose pearl now hung around my neck, now stood on my doorstep. He wore an unsettling smile, his sharp teeth catching the light in a way that promised nothing good.
“Hello, Kara,” he said smoothly. “Fancy seeing you here.”
My throat went dry. “W-what are you doing here?” I managed, my voice betraying me as my heart pounded harder with each passing second.
He tilted his head slightly, as if amused I even had to ask. “I think you know exactly what I’m doing here.”
My pulse roared in my ears as my grip tightened on the door, fighting the instinct to slam it shut and run—a plan I would almost certainly fail at against someone like him.
“How did you find me?” I demanded.
His smile widened, showing off those sharp teeth yet again. “Well,” he said casually, like we were discussing nothing more than the weather, “considering my pearl went missing, and that same pearl just so happens to grant someone access to this town...”
His gaze flicked down to the necklace at my throat.
“It was a decent starting point. And then,” he continued, almost lazily, “an old friend reached out to me the other night. Said they saw someone wearing a pearl that looked suspiciously like one of mine. So I put two and two together and decided to come see for myself.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could barely hear myself think. “Does Zavier know I’m here?” I asked, my voice shaking, already knowing the answer.
Hugo’s smile sharpened. “Of course he does. In fact, he hired me to come and bring you back.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a piece of paper, but the moment my eyes landed on it, I knew it was more than that. It wasn’t just paper—it was a contract.My contract.The one signed in blood, confirming that I belonged to Zavier.
“He owns you, remember?” he said, his tone almost casual. “And since he’s not allowed to enter the town, temporary ownership was transferred to me. I’m the only one who can move in and out freely, so it’s time to go, Kara, so I can get paid and we can be done with this.”
