Page 5 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

A deep cedar scent moves through the room, smokey and warm. It’s carrying the steady authority of an alpha whose instincts are running exactly as they should. He’s a beacon of calm, his frequency radiating a deep hum.

My body goes on high alert, awareness lighting up my skin. The response is so quick, I’m surprised when heat gathers low in my belly. My nipples tighten beneath my dress, and my scent threatens to lift in answer before I force it back down. Every depleted instinct inside me reaches toward the stranger entering the bakery as though it has been waiting for him.

A second scent follows the first. Cardamom, cinnamon, and a grounded beta frequency that settles around the alpha without being swallowed by him. They are pack. My body recognizes it before I see their faces.

Then the alpha steps through the door, and gravity changes.

Chapter 2

Wes Osprey

Sweet Tooth Bakery looks right at home in a town trying too hard. Pink flowers fill the windows. Heart-shaped decorations hang over the counter. Every available surface promises forever in one form or another: sweetheart cakes, honeymoon blend coffee, carved charms near the register. Half the signs reference the Everlasting Pack, leaning hard into the town myth that Sweetheart Haven bonds last longer, hold stronger, and survive what ordinary packs can’t.

It’s cute. Suspiciously cute.

The kind of cute that usually means somebody is hiding a body, a money trail, or a public-relations nightmare beneath all the whipped frosting and rose petals.

Beside me, Roman makes a thoughtful sound.

“Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“That has never stopped you before.”

His hazel eyes warm with amusement and too much understanding. He looks relaxed, all rolled-up shirtsleeves and easy charm, with the worn leather sketchbook he carried for most of the drive tucked under one arm. His dark-blond hair falls across his forehead like he hasn’t spent the last six hours reviewing case files full of broken bonds and alpha psychosis.

That’s Roman’s gift. He knows how to carry ugly things without letting them turn him ugly.

I’ve never mastered that trick.

His shoulder brushes mine as we move farther into the bakery. The contact is easy and familiar, another version of the hand he rested on my thigh twenty miles outside town when I asked him to read the victim summaries aloud. Roman knows when touch will settle me and when it feels like a demand. We’ve been a pack long enough that he rarely guesses wrong.

Right now, settling is not happening. An omega stands near the counter holding a pale-purple iced coffee. Her scent hit me the second I opened the door.

She smells earthy and herbal, like sage crushed between fingers and the fresh electric hint of rain on the horizon. Threaded beneath both is honey so faint it reads less like sweetness and more like something carefully kept.

My body responds with a hard, immediate pull. Underneath her scent runs another note, one I know from the field. Sometimes an omega’s scent carries a low frequency that speaks to a system running out of sync. I’ve scented touch-deprived omegas after bond-psychosis cases, when everything has already gone wrong.

This is similar but older. It’s worn into her scent the way chronic pain becomes someone’s baseline. Whoever she is, she has been living without what her body needs for so long that deprivation has become normal.

Want and the need to protect tangle together so tightly that separating them takes conscious effort. My alpha demands I fix it and take her under my protection. The instincts ride me hard, making it difficult to look anywhere else.

The omega has long auburn waves spilling over one shoulder, pale freckled skin, green eyes, and a fitted green dress that makes the whole sweetheart-pastel bakery look washed out around her. Pretty isn’t the right word. Pretty feels too tame, too polished. She’s beautiful in a way that doesn’t ask permission.

She also looks at me like I personally did something wrong by walking through the door.

Roman pauses beside me.

I glance at him. His scent changes with a warm, unmistakable spike of interest. Recognition moves through our bond.

“You feel it too,” I say.

His gaze stays on her. “Yes.”

Roman’s interest widens mine, but it doesn’t settle any of the questions underneath it. Before either of us can say more, the blonde behind the espresso machine straightens.

“Morning. What can I get y’all?”