Page 10 of The Florist and Her Alphas

“What the fuck was that about?” I say out loud at her reaction. “Seventy-five thousand is more than enough. Why would she need a flower shop? The numbers don’t support it. The location doesn’t support it. She could open somewhere else. Somewhere better.”

Nobody answers me.

I look at Julian. He’s still staring at his hand, his expression unreadable, his normally easy charm replaced by something tense and focused.

“Julian,” I say sharply. “What’s the matter?”

He looks up. His hazel eyes find mine, and there’s uncertainty. Alarm.

“Something felt off,” he says. His voice is quiet. Careful. “When I touched her. Just for a second. She’s…” He pauses. Looks at Cole, then at August, then back at me. “She’s not just a regular beta. Or anything normal.”

The air in the bakery goes still. Cole’s posture shifts and August sets his pen down very slowly.

Alarm moves through me like cold water. My skin prickles. The floral scent in the air suddenly seems sharper, more deliberate, like something I should have noticed the moment she walked in.

“Do you think she’s an omega?” I ask.

The question hangs between us. Four alphas at a table in a warm bakery, the scent of butter and cinnamon and something floral lingering in the air, and the implications of what Julian just said settling over us like a weight.

Julian doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.

I look out the window.

Two doors down, the door of Marsh Florals is closed, the CLOSED sign turned toward the glass, and the ivy climbing the brick wall catches the morning light in tendrils of living green.

Something shifts in my chest.

Something cold and calculating gives way to something else — something warmer, darker, more possessive. She’s more precious than any property I’ll ever have. And now I know I won’t sleep until I find out who Liana Marsh is.

Three

LIANA

The hot water runs out halfway through my shower, and I don’t even care.

I stand there shivering under the lukewarm drip until my fingers prune, my hair plastered to my shoulders, my skin covered in goosebumps. I need the cold. I need to feel something that isn’t the electric burn of Julian Frostwood’s fingertips against my wrist.

I towel off in the steamy bathroom, my reflection fogged and broken in the mirror. Pale green eyes. Dark auburn hair dripping onto the tile.

I trace the scar on my arm with my index finger. The ridge of scar tissue is smooth in some places, raised and rough in others. Six years, and it still feels fresh under my touch.

My apartment is quiet. The shop below is dark, my flowers sleeping in their coolers. I pull on an old pair of cotton pajama pants and a soft gray thermal that’s too big in the shoulders.

I pour cheap red wine into a chipped blue mug because all my glasses are in the sink and I’m too tired to wash them. The wine tastes like vinegar and blackberries, and I drink it too fast, feeling the warmth slide down my throat and settle behind my sternum. I sit on the floor beside my bed, back against the mattress, legs pulled up to my chest. The radiator ticks. The streetlights glow orange through my living room windows.

I can’t stop shivering. I’m not even cold.

Julian touched me for half a second. His fingers brushed the inside of my wrist where the pulse jumps, skin against skin, and my entire body lit up like a downed power line. Heat flashed through me so fast I thought I’d been struck. My pussy clenched. My nipples tightened. Slick gathered between my thighs so suddenly I was terrified he’d smell it through my clothes.

An alpha touch. An omega response.

I haven’t felt that in my entire life. I take another swallow of wine. It burns.

“They know I’m an omega,” I whisper, my heart sinking. There’s no way that they can’t know. The moment Julian touched me, they had all gone still like hunters. I remember the shock on Julian’s face and the widening of his eyes.

They’re going to come back. They’re going to want more than my shop now.

I set the mug down hard on the floor. The wine sloshes over the rim, a dark red streak across the worn wood. I don’t wipe it up.