“Terrifies me,” he admitted.
“Cal...”
“But I’m more scared of losing this.” He cupped her face in his hands, thumbs brushing across her cheekbones. “Of going back to Seattle and pretending I don’t feel you calling me home. Of spending the rest of my life being successful and productive and completely, utterly empty.”
She kissed him then—soft, brief, a seal on an unspoken promise.
“Then don’t lose it.” The words barely carried. “Stay. Fight. See what this could be.”
Cal pressed his lips to her temple and didn’t argue.
An hour later,they emerged from the storeroom to find Marzipan waiting by the kitchen door with an expression of supreme judgment.
“Oh, hush.” Dahlia stepped over the cat, pulling Cal by the hand. “You don’t get to judge. I’ve seen you sleeping in the ingredient bins.”
Marzipan’s tail swished. Her golden eyes tracked to Cal, assessing.
He crouched down, meeting the cat at eye level. “Thank you for sharing your napping spot.”
The cat’s whiskers twitched. For a long moment, she simply stared at him—a look that seemed to see straight through skin and bone to whatever lay beneath.
Then, slowly, deliberately, she blinked.
Dahlia made a strangled noise. “She slow-blinked you. She never slow-blinks anyone.”
Pride spread through Cal. Feline approval. The cat, at least, had accepted him.
“Come on.” Dahlia tugged him toward the kitchen. “I’m making breakfast. Real food. And then we’re going to sit down with my grandmother’s journals and figure out where those boundary stones are.”
Cal followed her, Marzipan padding along behind them. The morning sun streamed through the bakery windows, casting everything in gold. The smell of bread and honey filled the air.And for the first time in longer than he could remember, Cal felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
The fight with Magnus was still coming. The boundary claim still threatened everything Dahlia had built. His grandfather was still dying.
But he wasn’t facing any of it alone anymore.
And that, his bear reminded him, made all the difference.
TWENTY-EIGHT
DAHLIA
Dahlia sent the emergency text at six in the evening.
By seven, her living room was overflowing with witches. Avine with wine and the quiet crisis-alertness she never had to announce. Junie with a tote bag of potions, smelling of sulfur and experiments gone sideways. Cassia trailing static electricity, Gust circling the lampshade once before landing in protest. Narla arriving last, sliding into a shadowed corner with Ember tucked against her shoulder like she’d always been there.
Marzipan watched from the bookcase with supreme disdain.
Well?those eyes seemed to demand.Get on with it.
“Start wherever you need to,” Narla said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Dahlia exhaled. And she started.
It tookan hour to tell the full story.
Magnus’s public claim and the private ultimatum he’d delivered in the empty room afterward—join Ironwood, orvacate in thirty days. Cal stepping to her side before she’d had time to be afraid.
The kiss. And then the shifter crash.
