Page 4

"I find very few things intimidating, cousin. I'm just making conversation."

They reached the first ward marker about a quarter mile in, a moss-covered stone carved with symbols that predated the town's official founding. Kieran crouched beside it and pressed his palm flat against the surface, closing his eyes. The reading took concentration, something about feeling the resonance of the ward's magic against a shifter's natural energy. Criss had never been great at it, but Kieran read wards the way other people read road signs.

"This one's fine," Kieran said after a moment. "Stable."

"Riveting."

Kieran stood and gave him a look that managed to communicate patience, exasperation, and something uncomfortably close to concern all at once. "You know why your mother really sent you here, right?"

"Because she thinks I'm aimless and charming, which is apparently a dangerous combination in a tiger shifter."

"Because she's worried about you."

Criss's smile didn't falter, but something behind it rearranged. "She worries about everything. It's her hobby."

"She worries because you deflect everything with a joke and nobody knows what's actually going on with you. Including, I suspect, you." Kieran started walking again, not waiting for a response. "You're not here because you need fixing, Criss. You're here because she wanted you around family. There's a difference."

The words sat between them, unwelcome and uncomfortably precise. Criss let them hang there rather than swatting them away with the first clever thing that came to mind, which was itself unusual enough that Kieran glanced back at him.

"I'm fine," Criss said.

"I know."

"This is temporary."

"I know that too."

"And I don't need guidance."

Kieran stopped at the second marker and crouched again, pressing his palm to stone. "Nobody said you did."

But that was the thing, wasn't it? Nobody had to say it. Criss could hear it in his mother's voice every time she called, feel it in the careful way Kieran parceled out tasks that were just challenging enough to seem meaningful but never quite essential. They were handling him. Managing the family wild card with patience and proximity, hoping that time in Hollow Oak would sand down whatever rough edges made Leora Holt lie awake at night wondering where she'd gone wrong.

They hadn't gone wrong. He was fine. He was always fine.

Criss watched Kieran read the ward, steady and sure, his tiger perfectly leashed, his place in this town as solid as the stone under his hand. Kieran had found his mate, built a life, earned the kind of respect that came from years of quiet, thankless work. He'd become the Holt that people trusted. And Criss was the Holt they tolerated.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and tilted his face toward the canopy where the morning sun was finally burning through the cloud cover. Amber eyes caught the light, sharp and restless, the kind of eyes that women called beautiful and men called trouble and his mother called wasted.

Two months down. A few more to go, at most. He'd do his time, check the boxes, and get back to a life where nobody measured him against his cousin or his bloodline or some imagined potential he'd never asked to carry.

Temporary. Everything was always temporary.

3

STEPHANIE

Steph was up before the sun, which wasn't unusual. What was unusual was how well she'd slept, considering the storm had rattled the inn's windows half the night and she'd spent the other half thinking about stratigraphy layers instead of counting sheep.

She dressed in the field uniform that had become second nature over the years: worn jeans with reinforced knees, a fitted olive tank under a flannel she'd stolen from a college roommate and never returned, and boots that had survived two continents and a volcanic dig site in Iceland. Her dark curls went into a knot at the base of her neck, secured with a pencil because she could never find a hair tie when she needed one. Tool belt last, buckled low on her hips with the comfortable weight of trowels, brushes, and a handheld magnetometer she'd modified herself.

Diana had left coffee and a wrapped muffin on the kitchen counter with a note that said Gone to market. Back by noon. Don't skip lunch. Steph pocketed the muffin, poured the coffee into her travel thermos, and was out the door by six-fifteen.

Hollow Oak in early morning was a different creature than the rain-soaked town she'd driven into last night. Mist curled off Moonmirror Lake in slow ribbons, and the cobblestone streets were still dark with moisture but starting to steam where the first light hit. A few shopkeepers were unlocking doors along Main Street, nodding to her as she passed. She recognized most of them, and they recognized her. That was the thing about Hollow Oak. You didn't visit casually. If the Veil let you through, the town remembered you whether you wanted it to or not.

The learning center sat on the north end of the square, a converted stone building with tall windows and ivy climbing the eastern wall in thick ropes. Inside, it smelled like old paper and chalk dust and the faintly herbal scent of whatever protective wards the witches refreshed each season. Steph had given three lectures here over the years on archaeological methodology adapted for magically sensitive sites. The center kept records of supernatural artifacts, geological surveys, and historical accounts that most universities would sell a dean's kidney to access.

Nora Finch was already at the front desk, wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose and a stack of intake forms spread in front of her. Nora was one of the center's archivists, a hawk shifter in her fifties with cropped silver hair and the particular brand of no-nonsense efficiency that came from cataloguing magical artifacts for three decades.