Page 45 of The Florist and Her Alphas

I’ve read the text four times since I sent it, my thumb hovering over the screen at every red light like I might somehow will a response into existence.

It’s fine, she’s probably too busy to respond right now.

She’s probably elbow-deep in stems and ribbon the way she always is, that she probably left her phone in her apron pocket and forgot about it entirely. I tell myself a dozen reasonable things while I drive across the bridge with both hands locked at ten and two.

She could have said no to the movie suggestion.

That would have been fine.

I would rather have a negative response than nothing at all. I hate uncertainty.

Marsh Florals sits dark on the corner when I finally pull up across the street, engine idling, headlights washing pale across the brick. The chalkboard sign she chalks fresh every morning isn’t out on the sidewalk. And the window above the shop, the one she leaves cracked, is closed.

No light. Not one.

My hand tightens on the wheel until my knuckles go white against the leather. It’s barely past eight. She should be walking around her store as she usually does at 4 a.m.

Instead, the whole building sits there in the dark, and something cold moves down the back of my neck like a warning sign.

I kill the engine, and I’m out of the car before I realize it.

The street is quiet. A cyclist passes behind me, tires hissing on wet pavement. I cross without checking for traffic, and my shoes hit the curb outside her shop hard enough that I feel it in my knees.

I test the door.

It gives.

Unlocked. The bell doesn’t ring. Someone’s propped it open, silenced, a thin wedge of folded cardboard jammed against the little brass clapper so it hangs mute against the frame. She would never do that.

“Hey!”

The shout comes from above and behind me, sharp and furious, cutting through the quiet street. I turn. A woman stands on the roof of the building two doors down—flour dusted along one forearm, dark hair escaping a bun stabbed through with something that catches the streetlight.

“Don’t go in there!” she shouts, both hands cupped around her mouth. “Wait, I just need to talk to you…”

I don’t wait.

Whatever she’s trying to warn me about, whatever half-formed explanation is caught in her throat right now, it doesn’t matter.

The shop is cool and green-smelling, exactly the way it always is. The cooler hums. The radiator ticks somewhere in the dark. Nothing looks disturbed. The mahogany counter gleams faintly under the one streetlamp bleeding through the windows.

And then I hear it.

Voices. Male. Low, from somewhere above me. I stay still as I listen to the voices through the curtain, past the workbench, up that narrow staircase.

There. Again. A second voice answering the first, unhurried, almost amused.

And I hear a whimper in reply.

Small. Female. Full of pain.

Everything in me goes very quiet and very cold.

Immediately, I climb the stairs two at a time. I need to get to her. Something or someone has her scared, and I intend to find out what’s going on.

The scent hits me before I reach the top.

Her scent is thick and sweet. Like bucketfuls of roses and flowers seeping from her apartment door. The male voices grow louder.