“Born and raised. Left for a few years when I was younger, came back, couldn’t seem to leave again.” He hasn’t taken his eyes off me since he sat down. It should feel intrusive. It doesn’t. It’s the opposite. I want tocrawl into his lap and take what’s mine. “My family’s been in Mistwood for a long time. Longer than most.”
“Mistwood,” I repeat the name, connecting it. “As in the village?”
Something crosses his face. A tightening around the jaw, there and gone. “As in the village. It’s a common enough name up here.”
I want to ask more, but I can feel the boundary, the same careful deflection I’ve noticed in other locals when conversations drift towards certain topics. Mistwood has its secrets. I’ve been here less than a week, and I can already feel the shape of them, the way conversations bend around things left unsaid.
We talk about easier things. The best walking routes that don’t involve getting lost in the forest. The ongoing saga of Maggie’s tabby and its refusal to lose weight despite being on a strict diet that Maggie almost certainly undermines with kitchen scraps.
He’s good company. Funny without effort, attentive without being overbearing. He asks questions about my work with genuine interest and listens to the answers, which is rarer than it should be. And he’s relaxed, and it’s contagious. The knot of anxiety I’ve been carrying since yesterday morning loosening by degrees.
When he finishes his tea and standsto leave, I feel something pull tight in my chest. Not disappointment. Something with less of a name than that.
“Thank Maggie for the basket,” I say, following him to the door. “It was thoughtful.”
“I’ll pass it on.” He pauses on the doorstep, hands in his pockets, and turns back to me. The afternoon light catches his face, and for a moment, he looks like someone working up the nerve to say something important. Then that crooked smile returns, easier and lighter. “Listen, there’s a decent café in the village. The coffee’s not bad, and the owner does a thing with cinnamon rolls that’s probably illegal. Would you want to go sometime? Tomorrow, maybe?”
The sensible answer is no. I’ve been in Mistwood for less than a week. I don’t know this man. I don’t know his surname, his occupation, or why Maggie chose him specifically to deliver a welcome basket instead of bringing it herself. I don’t know why his presence makes the cottage feel warmer, or why his voice settles something restless in my chest, or why the thought of him leaving makes me want to find a reason for him to stay.
“Tomorrow works,” I say. “What time?”
“Ten? I’ll meet you there. It’s the one with the blue door. You can’t miss it.”
“Roan.” I stop him as he turns to go, and the namefeels strange in my mouth, new but not unfamiliar. “What’s your surname?”
That hesitation again. Brief, barely noticeable.
“Mistwood,” he says. And then he’s walking down the garden path, hands still in his pockets, before I can ask the follow-up question that’s already forming.
I stand in the doorway and watch him go and notice two things simultaneously. The cottage feels emptier without him. And he left the moment I asked something personal.
I close the door and lean against it for a moment, pressing my hands to my cheeks. They’re warm. But the warmth doesn’t quite drown out the other thing. The pattern. Ask a question, get a deflection. Push a little further, and he’s already reaching for his jacket.
I tell myself it’s a first meeting. People are allowed boundaries. But I’m trained to observe behaviour. What I’ve observed is a man who’s charming, warm, present right up to the edge of anything real. Then gone.
The welcome basket sits on the kitchen table where I left it. I unpack it slowly: a loaf of bread, still warm. A jar of honey from a local farm. A wedge of cheese wrapped in wax paper. A small bundle of dried herbs tied with twine that smells of lavender and something earthier I don’t recognise. At the bottom, a handwritten note on thick card.
Welcome to Mistwood, Dr Clarke. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. M
It’s an odd thing to write on a welcome card. Not “we’re glad to have you” or “hope you settle in well.”You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.As if Maggie knows something I don’t.
I pin the card to the fridge with a magnet and start putting the food away. I tell myself I’m not thinking about Roan Mistwood’s golden-brown eyes, or the warmth that spread up my arm when he shook my hand, or whether I can still spot him from the window.
I’m not a good liar, even to myself.
Chapter 9
Mine
Roan
The meeting went well.Too well.
That’s the problem. If she’d been boring or distant or any of the things a sensible person should be on a first meeting with a man she barely knows, I could have walked away. Told myself the mate bond was a biological glitch, an instinct misfiring, something that would fade with time and distance.
Instead, she’d been sharp, funny, curious about everything, and utterly incapable of hiding her reactions. When she’d laughed at something I said, tipping her head back and covering her mouth like the sound had escaped without permission, my wolf had gone so still inside me that for a moment I’d thought my heart hadstopped.
I haven’t stopped thinking about her since.
