I can’t sleep either. In case you were wondering.
Too honest. Too vulnerable. Too much.
Delete.
Your burger grease stain is going to need professional cleaning. Fair warning.
Better. Deflection with a hint of acknowledgment. The kind of message that saidI’m thinking about youwithout saying it.
She hit send before she could change her mind.
The reply came within seconds.
Worth it.
Two words. No elaboration. No deflection of his own.
Junie smiled into the darkness. Glimmer made a soft sound that might have been approval.
TWENTY-TWO
LEO
The trail along the cliffs had become Leo’s thinking place.
He’d discovered it during his first week in Haven Shores—a narrow path that wound along the rocky headlands north of town, offering views of crashing waves and sea stacks that jutted from the water like broken teeth. The wind was fierce here, carrying salt and the distant cry of gulls, and the isolation gave him space to let the predator inside him stretch without witnesses.
Tonight, he needed that space more than ever.
The investigation had reached a dead end. Victor’s shell companies were layered behind more shell companies, each one leading to another offshore account, another fake address, another frustrating wall of legal obfuscation. Leo had spent the afternoon cross-referencing property records with business filings, following paper trails that twisted back on themselves like snakes eating their own tails.
He was close. He could feel it. The pattern was there, beneath the surface, waiting for the right piece of information to click into place.
But that wasn’t why he’d come to the cliffs tonight.
Worth it.
He’d sent those two words to Junie, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what he’d meant by them. Worth the ruined suit? Worth the disaster restaurant? Worth the risk of wanting someone when wanting had never done him any good?
All of it. Everything.
The sunset painted the water in shades of orange and gold as Leo rounded a jutting promontory. The color reminded him of Glimmer’s scales when the snake was feeling complicated about him. The color of reluctant acceptance.
Maybe he was starting to understand what that felt like.
The wind shifted.
Leo froze.
Three scents. Sharp. Predatory. Moving through the brush with the kind of coordinated silence that spoke of training and intent.
Jackals.
The attack came before he could process the implications.
The first shifterburst from the scrub in full animal form—lean and golden-furred, teeth bared in a snarl that promised violence. Leo pivoted, dropping into a defensive crouch, but the jackal was already airborne. Its claws raked across his forearm as he deflected, drawing first blood before the fight had properly begun.
Leo grabbed the creature mid-attack, using its momentum to hurl it into the rocks. The impact was satisfying, the yelp of pain even more so. But he didn’t have time to appreciate it.
