It was a lie. A necessary one. Because what she’d seen in Hux’s chart wasn’t truths she could explain to a room full of people she’d just met. Wasn’t truths she fully understood herself.
Lunaria madeher excuses an hour later. The readings had exhausted her—she said so, and it was true enough to be believed. Junie offered to walk her home, but she declined. She needed the night air. Needed the silence. Needed time to think.
Haven Shores was quiet at this hour, the streets deserted except for the occasional supernatural going about their nocturnal business. A wolf shifter nodded to her as he passed. A group of younger witches giggled their way out of a bar. The harbor lights reflected off still water.
She walked toward the gardens without consciously deciding to. The path was becoming familiar—the turn at the old oak, the stretch of coastline where the forest met the cliffs, the overgrown drive that led to her cottage.
The garden gates stood open. She’d left them that way this morning, and they’d stayed put. A small victory, or perhaps just the gardens conserving their energy for a greater purpose.
She didn’t go inside. Instead, she sat on the low wall beside the gates and looked up at the sky.
The stars burned brightly tonight. The ley lines beneath Haven Shores amplified celestial visibility, making the patterns clearer than they had any right to be. She found Hux’s constellation easily—March born, the fish, the dreamer, the one who felt everything too deeply and showed nothing at all.
And there, exactly where she’d seen it in the reading, the darkness sat heavy on his fate.
Who did this to you? And why?
She shouldn’t care. He was the annoying mayor with the clipboard and the forms. In a few months, she’d be gone, and he’d be nothing but a memory.
But she thought about the flash of understanding in his eyes when she’d asked if it had to be him. The way he’d admitted to reading the forms three times, control being all he had left.The hollowness she’d sensed beneath the polished exterior—not emptiness by choice, but emptiness by design.
“I know,” she said aloud. “I shouldn’t get involved.”
Lunaria stood, brushing dirt from her clothes, and made her way to the cottage.
She would find out what was blocking his fate. Not because she cared—she didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t let herself—but because the mystery was there, and she had never been good at leaving mysteries unsolved.
That was all.
Two mysteries now. The gardens and their murdered witch. The mayor and his stolen fate.
She suspected they were tangled up in each other. The timing couldn’t be coincidence.
Sleep, when it finally came, was full of amber eyes and falling stars and a lion that roared in the darkness, calling for something it had been denied.
EIGHT
HUX
His lion made a sound of pure disbelief.
Shut up.
The beast had been insufferable since that first meeting. Since the welcome ceremony debacle.
Hux pulled into the Wolf Moon Brewery parking lot and killed the engine. Through the wide front windows, he could see the back booth already occupied. Theo’s hair caught the overhead lights. Leo’s ridiculous laugh carried through the glass. Beck was gesturing wildly about a beer, probably the new seasonal IPA he’d been developing.
He shoved out of the car and strode toward the entrance, rolling his shoulders to release the tension that had taken up permanent residence between his shoulder blades. The brewery’s familiar scent hit him the moment he pushed through the door—hops and cedar and the faint undertone of wolf that Beck never quite managed to scrub out of the place.
“Well, well.” Leo spotted him first, leaning back in the booth with that shit-eating grin he’d perfected. “The mayor graces us with his presence. What happened, get lost on the way here?”
“Budget reviews.” Hux slid into the open seat next to Theo. “The fiscal quarter reports don’t prepare themselves.”
“On a Thursday night?” Wyatt’s voice was flat. The panther sheriff sat across the table, nursing what looked like his first beer, watching Hux with those too-perceptive eyes. “Since when do you work late on Guy Gathering nights?”
Since never. Hux had been attending these gatherings religiously for years. Work stopped at six on Thursdays. That was the rule.
A rule he’d ignored because he couldn’t decide on a fucking shirt.
