Cal didn’t let go.
He drove the rest of the way with her hand in his, watching the road and trying not to think about how much he wanted this to be more than one morning. More than a honey harvest and a drive home and fingers intertwined on a center console.
He pulled up outside Honey & Hex. Dahlia stirred, blinking awake, and looked down at their joined hands with sleepy confusion.
“Oh.” Soft. Not pulling away. “I fell asleep.”
“You needed it.”
“So do you.” Her thumb brushed across his knuckles, and his bear damn near hummed. “Cal... when was the last time you actually slept? Not passed out from exhaustion. Really slept.”
He couldn’t answer that. Couldn’t remember.
“That’s what I thought.” She squeezed his hand once, then gently withdrew. “Go home. Sleep. The honey crisis is solved for now, and the world won’t end if you take a day off.”
“The world might surprise you.”
She laughed—that soft, surprised sound that made his gut clench. “Then let it. You can’t fight Magnus if you’re running on empty.”
Cal watched her gather the honey jars, slide out of the truck, and pause at the door.
“Thank you,” she said again. “Truly.”
“Any time.”
She smiled—dimples appearing, eyes crinkling—and the armor Cal had spent fifteen years building cracked wide open.
Then she was gone, disappearing into the bakery with her honey, leaving him alone in the truck with the lingering imprint of her touch still pressed against his palm.
Cal sat there for a long moment, staring at the butter-yellow door.
He was completely, catastrophically lost. The kind of lost that didn’t care about five-month timelines or Seattle empires or carefully constructed plans.
His bear made a sound of deep contentment.Finally,the animal seemed to say.Finally, you’re starting to understand.
Cal drove home, one hand on the wheel and the other still tingling where Dahlia’s fingers had been.
For the first time since he’d left Haven Shores years ago, when he fell into bed that night, he slept.
TWENTY-ONE
DAHLIA
Dahlia recognized Magnus Ironwood the moment he walked into Town Hall.
Not because she’d seen him before—she hadn’t. But every supernatural instinct she possessed screameddanger. The way the crowd parted around him without conscious thought. The way the air seemed to thicken when he entered, heavy with the kind of power that didn’t need to announce itself. Her witch senses prickled.
He was massive. Taller than Cal by a good two inches, with shoulders that blocked out the light from the windows behind him. Iron-gray hair cropped military-short. A face that had been broken and reset enough times to show it—a pale scar bisecting his jaw, a notch missing from his left ear. His hands, when he removed his gloves, bore the marks of violence: scarred knuckles, crooked fingers that had healed wrong.
But his clothes were expensive. Flannel and denim and work boots, yes, but the quality kind. The practical that came with a four-figure price tag. And his eyes?—
Dahlia’s breath caught.
His eyes held the blue of a frozen lake—the kind that looked solid until you stepped on it. They swept the room with thecasual assessment of a predator surveying its territory, marking threats and opportunities with equal dispassion.
When that gaze landed on her, she felt it press against her skin.
He smiled.
