Chapter 3
THREE
NARLA
She made it through the rest of the festival on autopilot.
Narla cleaned up the storage tent. Made excuses about a magical mishap to the concerned festival organizers who came to check on the sudden flame eruptions across the grounds. Packed her surviving inventory with mechanical precision while her mind screamed in the background.
“I heard there was some magical surge near your booth. Are you okay?” Avine stopped by, eyes bright with concern.
“Fine.” The word came out too fast. Too sharp. “Just the equinox affecting my candles. Nothing serious.”
Avine’s gaze lingered on Narla’s disheveled hair, her flushed cheeks, the slight tremor in her hands. The innkeeper was too polite to say anything, but her expression said plenty.
“If you need to talk—”
“I’m fine.” Narla forced a smile that cracked like broken glass. “Truly.”
She saw Wyatt twice during the remaining hours—once across the festival grounds, once near the parking area—and they both looked away immediately. Pretending. Denying. Rebuilding the distance that had crumbled so spectacularly.
Ember stayed on her shoulder the entire time, a warm pressure against her neck. He didn’t make a sound. Even the owl knew this wasn’t the moment for pointed looks or dead mice.
By midnight, the festival was winding down. Narla loaded her car, drove home through streets that felt surreal in the aftermath, and pulled into her cottage driveway on pure muscle memory.
The cottage looked the same as it had this morning. The place where she’d hidden since fleeing her old life.
Tonight, it rang hollow.
She let herself in, moved through the familiar rooms without turning on lights. The wards hummed their recognition as she passed—layers of protection woven into the very foundation stones. Safe. This was supposed to be safe.
Ember detached from her shoulder and flew to his perch in the sunroom. The cottage smelled of beeswax, lavender, and memories, but the comfort she usually found here had evaporated.
Her skin still tingled where Wyatt had touched her.
She could still taste him on her lips.
A mistake. It was a mistake. The surge made you lose control. It doesn’t mean anything.
Her hands shook as she pulled a candle from the basket by the door—a simple beeswax taper, one of her own.
She needed to calm herself. Needed to center her magic after whatever the hell had happened.
Lighting a candle had helped before. The ritual of it.
The familiar comfort of flame responding to her will.
She set the candle on her kitchen table and touched a finger to the wick.
The flame ignited.
And then the fire showed her the impossible.
The flame flared—not violet this time, but pure gold, burning higher than it should, brighter than physics allowed. And in its depths, unmistakably, a face took shape.
Amber eyes bleeding to gold. A jaw set in permanent tension. Dark skin and the silhouette of a man who never let himself relax.
Wyatt.
Narla stopped breathing.
The vision held for three heartbeats, four, five. His face in her flame, undeniable. And rising in her mind, unbidden and unstoppable, a word she’d been running from since the day she walked into his station.
Mate.
The candle guttered. The vision faded. But the truth remained, burning in her chest with a heat that had nothing to do with magic.
Wyatt Gentry was her fated mate.
And she could never, ever let him know.
Because somewhere out there, watching and waiting, was a monster who destroyed everyone she loved. A monster who had killed her husband. Who had killed her sister. Who held her parents’ lives as leverage for her silence.
If Derren found out she had a mate—
Narla’s legs gave out. She slid down her kitchen cabinets, sat on the cold floor with her back against the cupboard doors, and pressed her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound of her breaking.
Niccolas’s ring burned against her chest. Her dead husband’s ring, worn for grief, worn for guilt, worn because taking it off felt like letting go of the last person she’d been before Derren taught her what fear meant.
In the sunroom, Ember sat still on his perch.
He’d known since that first day. He’d seen it the moment she walked into that sheriff’s station, and her magic reached for a stranger. The owl had been waiting all this time for her to stop running.
But Narla didn’t stop.
She sat on her kitchen floor until dawn bled through the windows, trembling, and let the fear consume her.