Beck leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, studying him with an expression Theo couldn’t quite read.
Theo looked at Avine’s sleeping face. At her hand, still wrapped in his. At the woman who’d thrown herself in front of danger without hesitation, who’d told him she wasn’t running anymore, who’d said always like it was a promise.
He left, and Theo eased deeper into the chair. He’d leave eventually. Handle his responsibilities. Be the alpha his pack needed.
But first, he was going to stay a little longer. Watch her breathe. Let himself want without fear.
After forty-two years of being responsible, of being needed, of never asking for anything for himself?—
He was finally ready to reach.
TWENTY-SEVEN
AVINE
The door to her bedroom burst open without warning.
“The moping ends now!” Junie and Cassia swept into the room together. Junie with a canvas bag that clinked ominously. “We’ve got wine, we’ve got supplies, and we’ve got absolutely no intention of letting you lie here feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“You were absolutely moping,” Cassia said, three bottles of wine cradled in her arms. “I could feel the melancholy from the boardwalk. It was messing with the barometric pressure.”
“That’s not how melancholy works.”
“It is when you’re as dramatically sad as you’ve been.” Cassia set the wine on the dresser and immediately started opening the first bottle. “Don’t argue. Drink.”
Dahlia and Narla appeared next. Dahlia, carrying a basket that smelled like honey and lavender and a hint of magic. Marzipan trotted at her heels, immediately leaping onto the bed and curling up against Avine’s hip with a proprietary air. “I brought purifying mud masks. The glowing kind. They’re supposed to help with magical fatigue.”
“Do they actually glow?”
“Like a beacon.” Dahlia smiled. “It’s very dramatic. You’ll love it.”
Narla settled in her corner with her customary quiet, and the four of them descended on Avine with the focused energy of a unit that had spent too long worrying.
Avine looked around at them—these women who’d burst into her life without permission and refused to leave. Something tightened behind her breastbone.
“I wasn’t moping. I was contemplating.”
“Contemplating with a sad face while staring at your phone.” Junie was already pouring wine into glasses she’d produced from her bag. “Which is moping with extra steps. Here.” She thrust a glass into Avine’s grasp. “This is a prototype. It changes color based on your mood.”
Avine looked at the wine. It was currently a deep purple, edging toward violet at the rim.
“What’s purple mean?”
“Longing.” Junie grinned. “Deep, yearning, possibly romantic longing. Interesting.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. Drink your feelings and let’s get started.”
Within the hour,Avine’s bedroom had been transformed into a cross between a spa and a slumber party.
The facial masks did, in fact, glow—a soft golden light that made them all look like benevolent spirits in the candlelit room. Cassia had conjured music from nowhere in particular, sea shanties that she claimed were “thematically appropriate” and everyone else called “annoying.” Junie’s enchanted wine keptshifting colors as they drank, a constantly changing mood ring in liquid form.
Dahlia had produced a basket of pastries alongside the mud masks—“Comfort croissants, with a hint of calm baked in”—and Avine had eaten three before she realized she was actually hungry for the first time in days.
“So.” Junie curled cross-legged on the bed beside Avine, her glowing face mask catching the candlelight. “Are we gonna talk about it, or are we gonna pretend we came here for spa time?”
