Page 156 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

Her scent thickens before either of us can name what’s happening.

“Scarlet.”

She grips Wes’s shirt. “It’s coming back.”

I touch her forehead. She’s hotter.

Wes lifts her into the nest while I call Dr. Cole.

She answers from the lab, safety glasses pushed into her hair. “Temperature?” she asks.

“One hundred two point two and rising.”

“Scent recognition?”

Scarlet presses her face into Wes’s neck and breathes deeply. “Cedar,” she says. Then she reaches for me. “Cardamom and cinnamon. Roman.”

Recognition holds, thank fuck.

Dr. Cole’s attention shifts offscreen. “This may be a post-heat rebound rather than a renewed mating cycle. Keep cooling her. Fluids. Pressure against the cramping.”

Wes sits behind Scarlet and draws her against his chest. His purr rolls through the nest while I wrap a cooling cloth around her neck and press my palm low against her stomach. The cramp tightens, then gradually loosens. Scarlet’s hand finds mine.

Dr. Cole continues. “The results are consistent with delayed absorption from the binder. Her true heat peaked first. The recognition disruptions and this rebound followed later, as the carrier metabolized.”

“Maribel’s exposure was higher,” I say.

“And likely repeated. Scarlet’s dose was lower, and weather degraded the greenhouse sample. Her shorter episodes support a dose-dependent progression, but I need more cases before I can call that confirmed.”

Scarlet shivers once before her body relaxes against Wes.

Dr. Cole confirms what her body has already begun to tell us. “The heat is breaking. Continue monitoring through the night, but I don’t expect another wave.”

Her temperature drops by half a degree over the next twenty minutes. The sweetness in her scent recedes rather than swelling. Her breathing evens. When she opens her eyes, she looks at Wes, then me. “My alpha,” she whispers.

Wes presses his mouth to her hair.

Scarlet reaches for my hand. “My beta.”

I lace our fingers together.

Wes closes his eyes against Scarlet’s hair, and relief rolls through his scent.

Scarlet’s fever loosens its hold one breath at a time, and the truth waits, elusive as ever.

Chapter 37

Scarlet Sage

The morning after my heat breaks, the cottage smells familiar again.

The scent of wet soil drifts through the cracked kitchen window, and coffee darkens the air near the stove. Cedar clings to the blanket someone wrapped around my shoulders sometime in the night, and cardamom and cinnamon linger on the pillow Roman carried downstairs, so I wouldn’t have to choose between resting and being near them.

I can separate every scent again. The relief leaves me weak enough that I stay seated when Wes sets a plate of toast and eggs beside my elbow, his hand lingering at my back for an extra moment. He watches me take the first bite like it matters more than it should.

“You can stop checking whether I remember breakfast,” I tell him.

“I’m checking whether you eat it.”