“It’s good. It’s really good.”
She grins. “That’s what I thought.”
The nest is in the house on Birch Lane—the one Damon found three weeks after the bond verification, with a big kitchen and a porch that wraps around to the back and a yard big enough for a garden.
It’s ours. The four of us signed the papers together, which required a level of creative legal work that Helena handled with the grim efficiency of someone who used to bend rules for the wrong reasons.
Our home itself took shape gradually. Blankets and shirts appeared first—Griffin’s old quilt from his truck, Damon’s flannel that I’ve been stealing for months, Silas’s button-down that he left at my apartment and never reclaimed. Then pillows. Then the specific arrangement of cushions in the corner of thebedroom that made something in my chest unclench the first time I lay in it.
Now, it’s a proper nest, layered and soft and saturated in the scents of my pack. So strong that even when I’m at work, I can close my eyes and summon the feeling of being wrapped in them.
I brew the aftercare potions at work now. June taught me the base formula, and I’ve been refining it—adding valerian for the cramping, a touch of chamomile for the anxiety, a hint of something sweeter that I developed myself. It sells faster than anything else on the shelf. Half the Omegas in town have a bottle in their medicine cabinet.
The bonding failures haven’t stopped completely. They’ve slowed. The flare frequency is down—Damon’s wards are stronger than anything the town has seen in decades, layered with Silas’s runes and reinforced by the combined energy of three Alphas who’ve figured out how to work together. The Rift is still there, still dangerous, still pulsing with the kind of power that could level the town if it really let go. But it’s contained. For now.
Helena and Silas are still building their case. It’s slow, meticulous work
Deveraux hasn’t made a move. That worries me more than anything else.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
Griffin: How’s my favorite potion witch?
Me: Working.
Griffin: Want me to bring lunch?
Me: What are you bringing?
Griffin: Surprise.
Me: Then no.
He sends a string of emojis that I choose not to interpret. I pocket the phone and turn back to the shelves, pulling jars ofdried lavender and rosemary for the batch of calming tinctures I’m mixing for the clinic.
Amara finishes her headache potion and lingers, watching me work.
“You’re happy,” she says.
“I’m busy.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I measure out the lavender, tap the jar to settle it, and set it on the scale. “Yeah. I’m happy.”
“Good. You deserve it.”
The afternoon passes in a blur of customers and measurements. Mrs. Hartwell comes in for her monthly sleep tonic and asks how my “gentlemen friends” are doing, her wording carefully neutral in a way that means she’s been gossiping about us at the Brass Lantern. I tell her they’re fine. She tells me that’s nice and buys two extra tinctures.
By five, the shop is empty. June locks the front door and flips the sign to closed, and I head out the back into the alley that connects to Birch Lane.
The walk home takes ten minutes. I take the long way, past the town square where the booths are going up for the weekend market. Lights are being strung between the lampposts, and someone is testing the sound system—fiddle music, bright and fast, the same songs they play every year.
Everything looks the same as it always has. County fairs and pumpkin festivals and fairy lights twinkling around the square. But underneath the surface, something has shifted. The gossip is different now—less suspicious, more curious. People don’t whisper when I walk by. They wave. They ask how I’m doing and mean it.
Gideon Ash caught me outside the tavern last week and asked if I wanted a coffee. We sat on the porch and talked about Summer’s school and the new menu he’s planning, and he didn’tmention his father once. But there was something in his eyes when I left—something unresolved, a question he wasn’t ready to ask.
Dahlia Cross came into the apothecary two days ago. She looked better—color in her cheeks, no headache, her shadow witch energy contained but present. She bought a bag of licorice root and told me her mom was teaching her to bake. She didn’t mention the visions. I didn’t ask.
