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Ezra goes motionless under her touch. Pepper’s perfume blooms across the cemetery.
His body sharpens. Color returns to his face. His shirt becomes opaque. Even the fine brown hairs along his forearm appear beneath her hand.
Pepper stares at their joined skin.
Ezra looks at me.
The bond between us pulls tight, full of wonder and fear.
Behind them, the cemetery bell rings.
There is no wind.
Chapter 3
Pepper Vines
The cemetery bell rings once, clear enough to scatter a flock of grackles from the live oaks.
All three of us turn toward it.
My fingers are still resting on Ezra’s wrist, where his pulse beats beneath skin that had been half transparent a moment ago. Theo stands close beside him, his attention fixed on the bell. The bell sways beneath its iron frame, but no breeze moves through the moss.
Ezra studies it with narrowed blue eyes. “That wasn’t me.”
“That happens often?” I ask.
“The bell?” Ezra looks back. “Only when it wants attention.”
Theo gives him a look. “It’s a graveyard. We’re used to the weird and unexplained.”
“So the cemetery has a personality,” I say.
Theo looks back at me. “Let’s get you to the house.”
It should sound like an order. Instead, it gives my scattered thoughts a direction.
I let go of Ezra. His color fades at once. The change begins at the edge of his sleeve. Sunlight leaks through the fabric near his elbow, then his forearm blurs beneath my gaze.
He looks down at himself and says under his breath, “Not now, please.”
A worried sound slips from me.
Theo catches it. His attention drops to the hand I have pressed against my lower stomach.
The ache that began in town has thickened into a warm pull. It’s not painful yet, but my knees feel looser than they did ten minutes ago, and my skin can’t decide whether it wants shade, water, or to climb Theo like a tree. The third option is socially premature.
“Cramp?” he asks.
“Maybe. My omega appears committed to a dramatic debut.”
“House. Come on.” Theo’s purr rolls low from his chest as we start toward the house, warm enough to soften the frantic edge inside me.
I glance at him as we walk, and the purr deepens, answering before I ask whether he means it for me.
He carries my bag across one broad shoulder. Ezra keeps to my other side, pale at the edges whenever the path curves away from the water channel. The three of us move beneath live oaks and hanging moss while the bell behind us settles into quiet.
The old caretaker house appears through the magnolias, white with dark green shutters and a porch deep enough to hold afternoon shade. A narrow path slips around the side toward a dock. Water flashes between reeds and cypress knees, bright beneath the sun.
