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Hudson smiled, shaking his head, and I tried not to stare at his mouth.

That had become harder ever since I’d met him in person. Text-Hudson had been dangerous enough. Real-Hudson had muscles for days, piercing green eyes, and the habit of looking directly at me while I spoke, which made every sentence feel more important than it should have been.

Tonight, he wore jeans and a dark hoodie. Nothing elaborate. Nothing that should have caught my attention.

My attention, however, disagreed.

“Did you bring bug spray?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Would you like some water or sweet tea?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Something to eat?”

“Nah. I’m not hungry.”

Grandma Ruth appeared beside us holding a paper bowl of caramel corn. “You need to eat.”

“I’m really not hungry. Thank you, though.”

She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “You’re too thin.”

Hudson covered his mouth with one hand.

I looked at him. “Are you laughing?”

“No.”

Grandma Ruth handed me the bowl anyway. “I remember when you could eat half a pie.”

That sounded unlikely for both the real Loany and me, but I accepted the caramel corn.

“Traveling changed my eating habits.”

Grandma nodded as though that explained metabolism and every other inconsistency in my existence. “Yes, traveling does that to a person.” She patted my shoulder and moved on to see whether Grandpa Alfonse had enough blankets.

I wondered if Grandma Ruth could be on to me, even though I’d spent the month leading up to the reunion preparing with the discipline of someone planning to infiltrate a secure supernatural compound. Which, technically, I had.

The first problem had been scent.

Until I’d learned werewolves existed, I had never devoted significant thought to how I smelled beyond ordinary body odor concerns and whether my shampoo, soap, and deodorant were too strong.

Now I thought about scent constantly.

After wading through dozens of conspiracy forums claiming basketball players were reptilians and alien-hybrid site pop-ups, I finally stumbled onto a forum that seemed shockingly… legitimate. Or at least legitimate enough for a desperate woman at two in the morning. Taking a massive leap of faith, I had ordered pheromone blockers from a website with a black background, silver lettering, and no customer-service phone number. The product claimed to suppress shifter markers for twelve hours and came with instructions warning users not to apply it near the eyes, mouth, open wounds, or compromised areas—whatever the hell that meant.

I had used it anyway.

I didn’t possess shifter pheromones to block, which could become suspicious if anyone noticed. Smelling like blocker seemed safer than smelling like a human. At least the product gave them an explanation for what was missing.

To cover the remaining gap, the past week I had purchased a vial of female wolf-shifter essence on Etsy from a woman claiming to be a witch. The seller likely had no idea actual shifters existed—from what I’d gleaned in my conversations with Patty and Hudson, shifter secrecy laws would have had her shop shut down in minutes if she did. She was just tapping into the wild-feminine, werewolf-romance aesthetic, hawking attraction oils, moon-charged jewelry, protective powders, and candles that supposedly removed curses from coworkers. But on the off chance her homemade blend of botanical oils happened to mimic real pheromones, I took the gamble.

The essence arrived in a tiny amber bottle with a handwritten note that read: Use sparingly. Power knows power.

It smelled faintly of pine, soil, and something musky enough to make me worry I had paid twenty-eight dollars for diluted animal urine.