Page 191 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

I’m crying. There is no point pretending otherwise. She kisses the tears from my face.

Wes leans around her and presses his forehead to mine. Through the bond, I feel them both. Scarlet’s fierce joy. Wes’s relief. My own love returning to me from two directions.

“My pack,” Scarlet says. The words vibrate through the bonds. Wes purrs against her shoulder, and I wrap my arms around them both.

We remain joined in the nest until Wes’s knot releases and the intensity softens into warmth. I clean Scarlet’s bite while Wes brings water, and she tends my neck. Then Wes settles against the headboard and draws her into his lap. Scarlet goes willingly.

I lie beside them, and she stretches her legs across mine.

The cottage holds cedar, cardamom, cinnamon, sage, and rain.

It smells like the home we will spend the rest of our lives choosing.

Chapter 45

Scarlet Sage

Sweet Tooth is closed to tourists for the morning. Honey has turned the sign to Private Event. In Sweetheart Haven, that means everyone has already guessed what is happening and is pretending not to look through the windows.

A shadow passes the front window for the third time in five minutes.

Honey glances toward it from behind the counter. “If Mrs. Bell walks by again, I’m charging her for the show.”

I sit sideways in Wes’s lap in the corner booth, with my boots tucked beneath me. His arm circles my waist, keeping me close without pressing against the bond marks hidden beneath the collar of my dress. They’re still tender. Every time Wes shifts, the bond between us warms with the steady certainty of cedar.

Roman sits close beside him, one hand resting around my ankle beneath the table. His cardamom and cinnamon curl through the new connection until we feel less like three separate people sharing a booth and more like one living thing with too many hands.

Wes holds a piece of cinnamon roll to my mouth. When I accept the bite, his satisfaction moves through the bond before his purr reaches me.

“You need to eat too,” I tell him.

He eats from the same piece. Roman steals the next one from his fork.

Wes gives him a flat look.

“What?” Roman asks. “Pack assets are shared.”

“That was my cinnamon roll.”

“Our cinnamon roll,” I reply.

Roman grins. “She understands communal property.”

The sweetness helps settle the nervous movement in my stomach.

Pepper sits across from us, with an evidence folder beside her coffee. Junie and Honey share the bench, both watching me with the careful attention.

Junie gives up first. She slides out of the booth and comes around the table. I barely have time to put down my coffee before she wraps her arms around me.

My body stiffens for half a breath. Then I fold into her.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“You didn’t do this.” The old hurt tightens in my chest.

Junie keeps holding me. “You were warning us.”

“I didn’t understand what was happening.”