Page 20 of Roaring Spell

She looks up. Dark eyes find mine.

“Thank you.” She wraps both hands around the cup, fingers curling against the Styrofoam. Small hands. Delicate. My hands could engulf hers completely.

Stop staring at her hands.

I settle into my chair—my chair now, the cushion permanently dented to my shape—and pull out my phone. The pretense of checking messages. The reality of watching her.

She’s in the middle of arguing with a crystal about its placement, seven minutes before I was supposed to arrive.

The morning passes in comfortable rhythm.

Two clients come and go—a dryad with seasonal anxiety who leaves trails of autumn leaves in her wake, and a nervous pixie whose wings won’t stop flickering. Sakura handles both with steady patience, her magic calm, her voice warm.

The afternoon brings a werewolf teenager whose partial shifts won’t stabilize. His mother hovers in the waiting area, radiating anxiety so strong even I can smell it.

I offer her my chair. She declines. Paces instead.

“She’s good.” The mother nods toward the treatment room. “The weather witch. Tyler’s seen three other healers.”

“She’s talented.”

“More than talented. First session, she told Tyler his wolf wasn’t the problem—the problem was pretending it didn’t exist.” The mother finally sits, perching on the edge of the cushion. “No one else saw that. Three healers, six months, and none of them understood what she grasped in twenty minutes.”

When Tyler leaves—grinning, his mother near tears with relief—Sakura emerges looking tired but satisfied.

“Good session?”

“He’ll be fine.” She stretches, rolling her shoulders. “His wolf just needed permission to exist.”

“That’s usually the hardest part. The permission.”

She tilts her head, studying me with that perception that sees too much. “Is that what you did? Stopped waiting for permission?”

“Eventually.” I stand, suddenly needing distance. “I should check in at The Den. Network business.”

“Torin.” She stops me before I reach the door. “Thank you. For the coffee. And for... being here.”

“It’s just coffee.”

“It’s not just coffee and we both know it.”

The air thickens. Electric. Her magic stirs—I feel it, that familiar pressure before a storm.

“I’ll be back later.”

Aslan is already seated, radiating the satisfied energy of a recently claimed tiger. His claiming mark practically glows. Annoyingly content.

Rhodes sits across from him, flipping through files with the precision of someone who believes proper procedure will save the world.

Elio lounges in the shadows, because panthers can’t enter a room without making it dramatic.

Veren has already claimed the best chair and is in the process of disassembling one of Rhodes’s pens, piece by piece, for reasons known only to him.

“You’re late.” Rhodes doesn’t look up.

“I was working.”

“You were mooning over the weather witch.” Elio’s voice carries that smooth amusement that makes me want to throw things. “The whole square noticed. Very romantic. Very obvious.”