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“I need to replenish my stock of ingredients for the draft.”

I glanced around and I wasn’t sure how she could even keep track of everything. It didn’t seem that anything was labeled, but upon closer inspection, a tiny wooden sign speared into the soil declared the purple flowering plant as wolfsbane. I stumbled back a few steps before meeting Aura’s judgmental gaze.

“Relax, it won’t kill you,” she said.

“Actually, it will.”

She pulled gloves from her pocket and shoved them at my chest. I grappled for them, my fingers brushing the backs of her hands. She pulled away as if I was poisonous. “Unless your skin comes in contact with it, you’ll be fine. I work with it all the time.”

“When you say work with it⁠—”

“It goes into my draft.”

“What the fuck, Aura? You ingest this? Have you any idea how dangerous⁠—”

She rounded on me, a pair of pruning scissors close to my chest. “I am aware, genius, of how dangerous everything in here is. As aware as I am of how dangerous it would be if I didn’t use this to suppress—” She stopped abruptly, stepping back. Her eyes flicked away, and she tucked her scissors under her arm before slipping her gloves on.

The realization hit me. Nausea swirled in my stomach before it sank. “Are you literally poisoning yourself to keep from shifting?”

“Talk a little louder, Beta,” she said, and I bit my lip to keep from snarling, from asserting my dominance. Damn alpha spirit. I breathed through the surge of emotions, and she spun to face me, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. She had to have scented something in me. I convinced my body to relax, but Aura kept staring at me.

The calculating look in her eyes was there again. Was she trying to figure out what scent she’d caught? Was she just simply confused? “I can teach you to control your shifting,” I told her.

Her surprise was covered up by a scoff, but I’d caught it anyway.

“I’m serious. I don’t know how the hells you’ve survived multiple doses of this in your system”—I gestured to the wolfsbane—“but that’s not the way to go. Not when you can learn to control it. It’s just a matter of being able to connect with your wolf.”

“No, thank you. I was raised a vampire. The lycan part is just a minor …inconvenience.”

My laugh echoed through the greenhouse, but she was moving away from the wolfsbane. Thank the gods. I took a wide berth and tucked the gloves into the pocket of my trousers. Was she truly going to leave the wolfsbane out of her draft this time or wait until I was gone? I hoped it was the first. “What else do you need?”

She prattled off a list of items as we walked through the greenhouse, and I tried to commit as much as I could to memory.

“So how exactly do you prepare these herbs to go into your draft?” I asked. “Do you just boil them?”

“Some,” she said. “Others are dried then crushed to make a powder. Others … well I won’t bore you with the mundane details.”

“I could listen to you talk mundane details any day.” Aura’s look of confusion echoed my own, because why did I just say that? And why was her heart racing as much as mine was? I glanced around. Was there something in the vicinity causing such a reaction?

As we worked on gathering the herbs, Aura told me about the use of each of them and how they were prepared. She explained how she used blood samples, testing them for antibodies and other properties. Her mind was fascinating, and I was surprised to find her not at all conceited in her knowledge.

She asked about what I’d been learning about lycan history in the books from the library. I told her about the hierarchies, and about how there wasn’t much known anymore about lycan royalty since it no longer really existed—at least not on our continent. When she asked about my own pack dynamics, I gave her a vague rundown of the different roles. She made a remark that it seemed unfair to be born into roles with no option of choosing your path except to earn it in cold blood. I wished I didn’t agree. If I believed in this as much as most pack members did, things would be so much easier.

“So, you’re basically second in command?” she asked me after a moment of silence. I nodded. “And your brother doesn’t mind you being away so often?”

“It’s for a good cause,” I said.

She quirked a brow. “Hmm, cryptic. Alright, then.” She didn’t ask me to elaborate. We bunched the herbs then stacked them into a wooden crate. As Aura was about to lift the crate from the bench, I stopped her. “I can carry it.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not some weak human in need of a man to help her out,” she hissed. But as the last words left her lips, her cheeks flushed. She faced forward, refusing to look at me, then rushed off, the crate hugged to her chest.

We left the greenhouse, and I stared in disbelief as she balanced the crate against her side just above her alchemy belt. I watched her struggle to get her key out. Stubborn woman. We returned to the main building, and as we stepped into the alchemy workshop, a friendly voice called out a greeting.

“Good morning, Shan,” said Aura.

“Good morning. And welcome back, Sylvan.”

I was impressed the spellcaster had remembered my name. “Thank you.”