The cream-colored cat fixed Junie with a look that clearly communicatedI started this. You’re welcome.
“You.” Junie pointed at the cat. “You tripped me on purpose.”
Marzipan yawned, displaying impressive fangs, and began grooming herself with studied indifference.
The final knock came ten minutes later—Avine, slightly breathless, carrying two bottles of wine and wearing an apologetic expression.
“Sorry, I’m late. Theo wanted to talk about—” She stopped. Smiled in that quietly content way that still seemed new on her. “Actually, never mind. Girls’ night. No alpha talk.”
“Unless we’re talking about a different alpha.” Cassia accepted a wine glass from Dahlia and fixed Junie with a pointed stare. “A tall, tawny, extremely well-dressed alpha who’s currently staying at Avine’s inn.”
Junie dropped onto her couch and buried her face in a cushion. “Can we not?”
“We absolutely cannotnot.” Cassia positioned herself in the chair across from her, wine glass in hand, Gust perching on her shoulder. “Spill.”
Twenty minutes later,Junie had consumed half a bottle of wine and recounted the full horror of her morning encounter with Leo Castellan.
The clinical questions. The leather notebook. The way he’d looked at her brewing station like it was a crime scene requiring forensic analysis.
“He took photographs,” she finished. “Of my cauldrons. Like evidence.”
“To be fair,” Dahlia offered gently from her perch on the arm of Cassia’s chair, “your cauldrons were covered in soot. And that potion was trying to escape.”
“Not the point.” Junie grabbed a pastry from the basket—a flaky thing with honey that melted on her tongue—and bit into it aggressively. “He’s arrogant. Cold. He looked at me like I was a disappointing lab result. Like I was a problem he needed to solve rather than a person.”
“And yet you let him into your basement,” Narla observed from the corner chair. “To see your ley line access. Which you’ve never shown anyone outside this room.”
Junie’s mouth opened. Closed. She shoved more pastry in to avoid answering.
Cassia snorted. “He also looked at you like he wanted to eat you alive.”
Junie choked on her pastry.
“In the fun way,” Cassia clarified, as if that helped. “At the dinner. Before you crashed into him. He was watching you from across the room with this intensity that was frankly obscene.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I’m really not.” Cassia’s sea-glass eyes sparkled with mischief. “Ask Narla. Her nose doesn’t lie.”
All attention swung to Narla, who was seated in the corner, cradling her wine glass with quiet composure. On her shoulder, her small owl familiar—Ember—blinked slowly.
“His scent was… complicated.” Narla chose her words with characteristic care. “Restraint on the surface. Turmoilunderneath.” Her dark eyes met Junie’s. “He wanted you. Badly. And he was fighting himself over it.”
Junie’s cheeks flushed hot. “That’s—he was probably irritated. I’d just ruined his suit.”
“Irritation doesn’t smell like that.” Narla’s voice was quiet but certain. “Neither does simple attraction, usually. This was different. Deeper. More…” She paused, exchanging a look with Avine. “Primal.”
Avine had been quiet throughout the interrogation, curled into the other corner of Junie’s couch with her wine barely touched. Now she straightened slightly, that knowing look in her eyes that Junie had learned to distrust.
“Junie.” Avine’s voice was soft. “Did anything… unusual happen when you met him? Did you feel anything strange?”
“Besides crushing embarrassment?”
“Besides that.”
Junie opened her mouth to deflect. To joke. To do what she always did when conversations got too close to uncomfortable truths. But Avine was looking at her with such quiet knowing—the awareness of a woman who’d recently been exactly where Junie was, resisting feelings she didn’t want—and the joke died in her throat.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe. When he grabbed my wrists—to stop me from touching his suit—there was this… spark. Like static electricity but more. And Glimmer went absolutely insane. She’s never reacted to anyone that way.”
