“I know it’s scary.” Avine stacked glasses in Junie’s tiny sink, her movements careful and precise. “The mate thing. If that’s what it is. I remember how terrified I was when I started to realize what Theo was to me. What I was to him.”
“You fought it pretty hard.” Junie remembered those weeks—Avine pale and trembling, denying everything, pushing Theo away with both hands while her heart reached for him.
“I fought it with everything I had.” Avine faced her, leaning against the counter. “And I’m not going to tell you to stop fighting, because that’s your choice. But I will say this: the fighting didn’t change what was true. It just made me miserable for longer than I needed to be.”
“But you and Theo—that was different. You had history. You knew him.”
“Did I?” Avine’s smile was wry. “I thought I knew him. I was wrong about most of it. The man I thought was cold and dismissive turned out to be protective and worried. The distanceI thought was rejection was actually restraint.” She pushed off from the counter. “Sometimes we can’t see people clearly until we stop looking through our expectations.”
“That’s very wise. I hate it.”
“I know.” Avine hugged her—a brief, fierce squeeze. “Whatever happens, whatever you decide—we’re here. Always.”
After Avine left, Junie stood in her quiet apartment, surrounded by Dahlia’s throw pillows and the lingering scent of wine and friendship.
Glimmer had relocated to the windowsill, watching the street below with unnerving intensity.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Junie asked the snake. “That night at the dinner. That’s why you went crazy. You recognized what he was.”
Glimmer’s scales flickered—confirmation, frustration that Junie was only now catching up.
“You could have told me.”
The snake’s look clearly communicated that she had told her. Junie hadn’t listened.
“Great. My familiar is smarter than me. That’s reassuring.”
She crossed to the window, looking out at Main Street. The Siren’s Rest was visible at the end of the road, lights glowing against the dark. Somewhere in there, Leo Castellan was probably writing reports in that precise handwriting, cataloging everything he’d learned about her failing business and unstable magic.
Or maybe he was lying awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about?—
Stop it.
She didn’t know what Leo was thinking. She barely knew the man. Two days of disaster and argument did not constitute knowledge.
But she remembered his voice softening in the basement, bathed in ley line light. How he’d seen her problem when she couldn’t. His quiet insistence that she forget about the suit, like her finances mattered more than his expensive wardrobe.
And she remembered his eyes on her mouth. The way his breath had caught. The want he kept suppressing and failing to bury.
“This is a bad idea,” she told Glimmer. “Whatever this is—it’s a terrible, horrible, no-good idea.”
Glimmer’s scales flickered to a color Junie had never seen before. Orange layered with gold, complex and undefined.
The snake didn’t argue. But she didn’t agree either.
Junie pulled the curtains closed and went to bed, determined to dream about absolutely anything except tawny hair and gold-flecked eyes and the way her world had tilted off its axis two nights ago.
She dreamed about him anyway.
NINE
LEO
The summons arrived via text message at 6:47 p.m.
Wolf Moon Brewery. Eight o’clock. Back room. Dress casual.
No name. No explanation. Just the address and the expectation that Leo would show up.
