Stop that,he ordered it.
FOUR
HUX
They compromised on five minutes of official remarks—condensed to the point of near-meaninglessness—followed by the presentation of keys and the photograph for the newsletter. Lunaria smiled for the camera with the practiced ease of someone who’d done this before and would rather be anywhere else.
Standing next to her for the photo, Hux could feel her warmth along his entire right side. His lion pressed against his control, wanting to lean closer, to inhale more deeply, to?—
The camera flashed. He stepped away like he’d been burned.
Then came the forms.
“Fourteen?” She stared at the stack he’d placed on the table between them. The crowd had dispersed; only Wyatt and Narla remained, lingering near the gate with poorly concealed curiosity. “You need fourteen forms for a garden restoration?”
“The gardens are municipal property. There are liability considerations, access requirements, and employment documentation?—”
“This one.” She pulled a form from the middle of the stack. “This one is for the garden shed.”
“Yes. Form 7-B. Authorization to access ancillary structures.”
“It’s a shed.”
“It’s a municipal structure containing potentially hazardous equipment?—”
“It’s a shed with rakes in it.” She waved the form at him, and he tried not to notice the way her bicep flexed with the motion. Failed. “What am I going to do, impale myself on a trowel?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Have they? In Haven Shores, where apparently the biggest excitement in sixty years has been a bunch of shifters finding their fated mates?”
Hux’s spine stiffened. Fated mates. The words hit like a blow, aimed precisely at the wound he’d been pretending didn’t exist. “The forms are standard procedure?—”
“The forms are bureaucratic overkill designed by someone who’s never actually worked in a garden.” She pulled a pen from behind her ear—he hadn’t even noticed it there—and began signing with aggressive swoops of ink. “Does anyone ever actually read these?”
“I read them.”
“Of course, you do.” Her pen moved faster. Signature after signature, each one a small act of defiance. “I bet you read them twice. I bet you have a filing system. Color-coded. Alphabetized.”
“Three times, actually. And yes. The color-coding is by department.”
She looked up at that, her hand pausing mid-signature. Those dark eyes met his, and for a moment, the sarcasm dropped away. He saw vulnerability underneath—exhaustion, maybe. Wariness. The look of someone who’d learned to keep the world at arm’s length and didn’t quite know what to do when someone refused to maintain the expected distance.
“You actually care about this stuff,” she said. Not mocking now. Genuinely curious. “All the forms and procedures. It matters to you.”
“Someone has to.”
“Does it have to be you?”
The question caught him off guard. He didn’t have an answer that wasn’t also a confession—that the forms and procedures were the only things keeping him grounded.
“It’s my job,” he said instead.
“Right.” She finished signing the last form and slid the stack across the table. “Your job.”
There was understanding in her voice. Recognition. She could see right through the mayoral polish to the void beneath.
His lion stirred again, and this time the sensation wasn’t just desire. It was kinship—more unsettling still.
