Page 14 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

They do not answer anything. They never do. But something about the spread feels unfinished, like a sentence with the last line torn away. I gather the cards and shuffle again. The deck catches. One card slips free and lands faceup beside my coffee. The Tower.

A chill moves over my arms despite the sweater and the Florida heat. “Nope.”

I scoop it up and shove it back into the deck. Buildings fall in tarot all the time. It’s metaphorical, not actual buildings. That feeling is not an omen. Sweetheart Haven is perfectly fine.

The porch light continues burning.

I glare at it. “Not one word.”

A vehicle moves somewhere along the distant road, tires crunching over shell and gravel before the sound fades again. I gather the cards into one neat stack but leave them on the table beside my cold coffee.

The unease remains. So does the heat in my body when I remember Wes looking at me or Roman smiling. And the effortless way Wes’s hand found Roman while Roman leaned into him. I want that. The admission sits heavily enough that I can’t joke it away. I want them and the frequency they make together. Stupidly, I wish there was a possibility there might be room inside their pack for me.

I pull my sweater tighter around myself, shivering.

Something splashes in the water beyond the reeds of the deck. The porch light finally goes dark.

“Thank you.”

The spoon in my coffee cup gives one last quiet stir.

I decide not to think about what that means.

Chapter 4

Roman Osprey

The road to Scarlet Sage’s house narrows until it barely deserves to be called one.

By the time Wes turns the SUV off the main highway, Sweetheart Haven’s festival charm has faded behind us. The flower baskets are the first to go, then the pastel storefronts, replaced by long stretches of marsh grass and live oaks draped heavily in Spanish moss. Water glints through the tree line in flashes, while the swamp presses steadily closer to the road, dark and watchful beneath the afternoon heat.

“This feels like the beginning of a documentary where the narrator eventually goes missing,” Wes says.

I glance over from the passenger seat. “You say that every time we leave city limits.”

“Because nature has made its position on humanity very clear.”

The dirt road dips before curving around a stand of cypress trees, and the house comes into view. It practically grows out of the landscape in pieces. First the weathered siding, gone silver-gray with age, appears from the trees. Then comes the wraparound porch, draped in drying herbs and wind chimes made from river glass. Wildflowers crowd the yard in loose tangles beside rusted planters, and climbing roses have long since conquered the trellis. The property sits slightly elevated above the swamp line, connected to the water by a narrow dock that stretches into the reeds and disappears. It looks less like a house and more like something the land decided to claim.

Wes slows to a stop, and neither of us moves.

We swung by the sheriff’s office first, at Wes’s insistence. The original plan had been routine introductions and access requests for the regional case files, but we didn’t get that far. A museum theft call came through over dispatch halfway through our introductions at the front desk, turning the entire station brittle with panic. In Sweetheart Haven, they treat losing the original Love Stone during festival week like a religious crisis and an economic disaster.

“Well,” I say. “She definitely lives here.”

“That sentence tells me absolutely nothing.”

“I know. I’m still processing.” I step out into the heat. Humidity settles around me, thick enough to taste, and cicadas buzz deeper in the tree line while dark water laps against the dock pilings.

Her scent reaches me before we have taken three steps toward the porch. It’s layered into the property itself. The same sage, rain, and honey notes from the bakery are fuller here, closer to the source. I pull it in slow, the way a beta learns to read a space, and find what I was already half expecting. Scarlet’s scent carries the thinness of an omega who has been running without a pack for long enough that it’s become her normal. It isn’t acute distress, but more of a low frequency trying to sustain itself on less than it was built for.

Beneath the deprivation runs the warmer thread from the bakery.

Beside me, Wes has gone full alpha. His shoulders have set beneath his shirt, and his breathing has taken on the controlled quality that means his instincts are running ahead of his judgment. His alpha would have caught the deficit note in her scent before anything else. His instincts identify need before compatibility, protection before desire. With Scarlet, those two things have tangled together so tightly, I doubt he could separate them if I asked. He’s decided she is his to protect, and he has been managing those instincts since the bakery.

I file his reaction away and head toward the porch. “You think she might be involved?” I ask.

“I think she knows something.”