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I grinned, said goodbye, and walked home.

Home was the apartment above The Honeycomb. Convenient. Cheap. The size of a dorm room and blessedly empty.

Would empty be such a bad thing to fix?

I hated that voice. I hated that some small traitorous part of me had reacted to tall, dark, and troubled like it was a dare instead of a cryptic warning Darlene had no doubt been going for. I shoved the thought aside and ran through tomorrow’s inventory in my head — the second batch of Full Moon bath salts still needed to be put in jars.

Which was how I ended up in the alley. Not paying attention. Not that I was afraid. It was Lone Mountain, after all. The worst thing that had ever happened back here was a raccoon in my recycling.

“Well, shit,” I murmured, turning the corner.

Something enormous and black was planted in the middle of the alley, and it was not a raccoon.

I stopped so hard I almost tripped. My brain needed a full second to reclassify the shape as a dog and not a small, extremely calm bear. He sat on his hind legs, his massive head tilted, watching me with an expression that was somehow both friendly and completely immovable — a bouncer who liked my outfit but still wasn’t letting me through.

“Okay,” I whispered, because my mouth needed something to do. “You are really a big dog, did you know that? I know I probably shouldn’t mention it. I hate when people point that out to me. But I am willing to share the doughnut in my pocket. Let’s not fight over it. It’s yours. I promise.”

Before I could think about whether to run or scream, a low voice came from the shadows.

“Grimm. Hold.”

The voice was flat. Used to being obeyed.

A shape emerged from the shadows — tall, broader through the shoulders than any one man needed to be, a charcoal hoodie pulled up against the chill. He moved like he was used to not being watched. Careful. Quiet.

He didn’t look at me, just stepped past me toward the dog. The streetlight at the mouth of the alley caught the side of his face when he turned his head a fraction, and I got my first real look at him.

Not a full look. The hood covered most of his face. What it didn’t cover was marked by a pale, rope-thick line of scarring that ran from somewhere under the fabric, across his cheek and down his jaw, then disappeared beneath the hoodie. It did not look like an accident you told a cute story about.

I did not scream. I did not step back. I did notice — traitorously, vividly — the mouth beside that scar. Full. Set. The kind of mouth that would not ask twice.

And then, unhelpfully, the rest of him. The width of his chest. The way the hoodie hugged a body that had been built for work, not display. The size of his hands when he touched the dog’s collar. I had a sudden, stupid picture of one of those hands at my waist, then higher, and my skin went tight under my sweater like it had already happened.

“Don’t walk back here alone at night,” he said. No hello. No are you all right. Just that, in a voice a little rough, as if he wasn’t used to talking to people. That voice. That voice, plus Darlene’s fake fortune telling message, had me thinking, well, fuck. He certainly looked tall, dark, and troubled.

“I’ve been walking back here alone for months. I own The Honeycomb.” I pointed to the back door of my shop, just a few feet down. “This is basically my alley.”

The second the words left my mouth I wanted them back. You did not hand your address to a stranger who stepped out of the brickwork with a scar like that.

He still didn’t look at me properly. His attention stayed on the dark end of the passage, a slow scan that made the hair on my arms lift. I got another sliver of him. The hood’s shadow falling away from the unscarred side of his face. A throat I wanted, briefly and insanely, to put my mouth on. Heat rolled through me, and I hated Zelda with my whole being for putting the thought of meeting someone into my head.

“There was a bear.” He simply stated the fact.

“What?” That tore me away from the crazy fantasy I’d just had.

“A bear.”

I took a few steps toward him and his dog, looking around. “Where did it go?”

“Back home, I imagine.” I swung my head around at his dry comment.

I stood there a moment, trying to let everything catch up with me. I’d walked into an alley that had a bear using it as a shortcut back to its den, one guarded by a dog almost as big as the bear. And this man — tall and dark — had appeared out of nowhere.

I did not, I repeated to myself firmly, believe in fate or destiny.

“You could have led with the bear.”

He said something to the dog. The dog hesitated just a second before obeying.