Zoe seemed to weigh it. “You want to... escort me? Into the forest?”
“Animals have been weird lately; they are not usually this far down. And the cubs make the bears edgy.”
“No, yes, I mean, I get it. It’s just...” She shrugged again. “Sure. You know the forest better than anyone. It’s just unexpected.”
Tell me about it.
“Fine,” she said. “If you think it’s safer, then thank you.”
Then shebeamed. She actually lit up like the first warm day after a cold, wet spring.
“I close at one. Meet at the trailhead at 1:30? I need food first, or I get cranky, and you don’t want to deal with that.”
He nodded because that was all he was capable of. “I’ll be there.”
And he left.
The all-powerful Alpha of Mystic Hollow walked away with his tail between his damn legs.
WHAT HAD JUST HAPPENED?
Zoe stared at the door for a full minute after it closed. Maybe longer. Hard to tell. Time had gone funny.
Many layers here. Many competing priorities. None particularly disciplined.
First: she needed to investigate her herbs. That should’ve been priority one. Something was wrong with them, and it was her job, her passion, and her responsibility to find out what.
Second: there was danger involved. Bears. Big cats. Unknown variables. She was a good camper, but not bear-fighting material.
Third...
Rex.
Rex the Alpha.
Her grandfather had always spoken highly of him. Everyone did. Through all the summers she’d spent in town as a girl and then in the years after returning, she’d only ever heard the same things about Rex: solid man, exceptional Alpha, reliable, protective, built like a tree trunk.
She had never spoken to him or even gotten close, but she had seen him. Oh, she’d seen him. Hard to miss someone who turned a standard-sized doorway into a mere framing device. Broad shoulders, arms that gave woodsman-thirst-trap vibes without even trying.
Now, though... Now she’d seen him up close, and she’d been caught in the gravity of him, as if something had latched onto her and tugged her toward him. His eyes, a rich chocolate brown, had held the wariness of having stumbled onto something important that he’d not yet figured out, but he’d sworn to find out.
Weird. So weird.
Scorching-hot weird.
As she went behind the counter to prep orders for the day, her mind kept looping back to him. Those sounds he made, those half-growls... A shiver skittered down her spine.
Her life was not exactly bursting with romantic excitement. Or any excitement, really. Probably this was just her body reacting to someone attractive for the first time in... a while. Maybe it was hunger. Not sandwich-hunger. Her brain got dramatic when she skipped, um, basic self-care for too long.
“He is super, uber hot,” she muttered under her breath.
And he was going to escort her into the woods. Her knight in shiny fur, she thought, chuckling.
She kind of looked forward to it.
JUNE IN MYSTIC HOLLOW’Sforests meant everything was alive and humming. Sunlight fell in scattered coins through thick fir branches. Ferns unfurled lazily along the trail edges. The air carried the layered scent of warm soil, pine, damp moss, and the soft, sugary whisper of early wildflowers. Birds arguedoverhead. A woodpecker hammered rhythmically somewhere deeper in the green.
It was a beautiful afternoon to be in the woods.
