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I look back at him until he drops it on his foot.

Hattie is having the best day of her life. I can tell. She’s trying to be professional, but every time another wife comes up and stares at me, she presses her lips together so hard they disappear, and her shoulders shake. By noon, she’s sold out of candles. By one, she’s sold out of honey. She keeps looking back at me with her eyes all bright and wicked.

“You,” she whispers, while some woman in a yellow bonnet pretends to read a salve label for the fourth time, “are the best business decision I’ve ever made.”

“I thought I was a husband.”

“You can be both.”

Then I smell him.

Sour sweat. Onions. Cheap tobacco. And under it, an alpha who hasn’t washed in a week. I know who it is before he even opens his mouth, because I’ve heard all about him.

The Tolley boy shoulders his way through the line of wives like he owns the place and leans one hand on Hattie’s table, right on top of her empty honey crate. He’s shorter than I expected. Soft around the middle. Little piggy eyes.

He doesn’t look at me. He looks at her.

“So,” he says, loud enough for the whole line to hear, “it’s true. Couldn’t get a real man, so you went and bought one.” He grins, showing too many teeth. “Guess my mama was right. Beggars really can’t be choosers.”

The line of wives goes dead silent.

Hattie’s shoulders go stiff. And she says nothing, which is somehow worse than anything she could have said.

Something in my chest goes very cold and very calm.

I’ve only been alive for three days. In three days, I’ve learned a lot about being a man. But I already know everything I need to know about being a tree. Trees don’t rush. Trees don’t yell. Trees just wait, and grow, and win.

I step around the table.

I don’t hurry. I don’t say anything. I just walk up to the Tolley boy and stand there, right in front of him, so close he has to tip his head all the way back to see my face. His grin starts to wobble.

Then I put my hand on his shoulder.

Gently. My fingers wrap all the way around the meat of his shoulder and reach his back, and I squeeze, just a little, just enough for the grain in my hand to creak.

He goes white.

“You’re going to apologize to her,” I tell him. Quietly. Pleasantly. “And then you’re going to walk away. And then you’re never going to speak to her that way again. Because if you do, I’m going to find out where you live. And I’m going to stand outside your window all night. Very still. Just watching.” I lean down a little. “I’m very good at standing still.”

He swallows. His throat clicks.

“Sorry, Hattie,” he whispers.

“Louder, so the ladies can hear.”

“Sorry, Hattie!”

I let go. He stumbles back, and almost trips over a goat, and then turns and pushes his way out through the crowd so fast he leaves a hole in it.

I turn around. The whole line of wives is staring at me with their mouths open. The woman in the yellow bonnet has a hand on her chest.

And Hattie is staring at me too. But not like they are.

Her eyes are dark. Her lips are parted. Her chest is going up and down, fast, and her scent is rolling off her in thick, sweet, honey-heavy waves, so strong that every alpha in the square is probably smelling it right now.

She’s not scared. She’s not upset.

She’s fucking soaked.