Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
NARLA
Narla couldn’t answer. Her voice had seized, trapped behind the terror clawing at her throat.
Wyatt moved into the shop, closing the door behind him, flipping the sign to CLOSED with the efficiency of someone who expected to be obeyed.
Two strides brought him to the counter. His hand closed over hers—warm, solid, an anchor in the storm of her panic.
“You’re shaking.” Not a question. An observation.
His thumb swept across her knuckles, and even through her fear, her body responded to his touch.
Heat where there had been ice. Steadiness where there had been chaos.
“I saw him leave. I saw your face through the window. Narla. Who was he?”
She should lie. Should deflect, the way she’d been deflecting for years. Should send him away before he got any closer to the truth.
But his hand was on hers. His presence was a wall between her and the door Derren had walked through. And somewhere behind his professional concern, she could see it—the panther, pacing with protective fury, wanting to hunt down whatever had put that look on her face.
“Not here.” Her voice came out raw, broken. “Please. Not here.”
His expression shifted. He didn’t argue, didn’t push. Just released her hand and moved to survey the street through the window, positioning himself between her and any threat that might return.
“Where?”
“My cottage.” She was already reaching for her keys, her bag, the emergency supplies she kept beneath the counter for exactly this kind of moment. “I need—I can’t stay here. He might come back, and I can’t—”
“Hey.” Wyatt caught her arm, steadying her before she could spiral further. His grip was firm but careful, controlling without confining. “We’ll go to your cottage. I’ll follow you. And then you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on.”
Not a request. Not even close.
She should resent it. The commanding tone, the assumption that she would comply. But right now, with Derren’s threats echoing in her mind and her parents’ names on his lips, she didn’t have the strength to fight.
“Okay.” The word came out smaller than she intended. “Okay.”
Ember transferred from her shoulder to the travel cage she kept behind the counter, settling onto his perch with feathers still ruffled from agitation. He fixed Wyatt with a stare that managed to convey both warning and reluctant approval.
Wyatt met the owl’s gaze without flinching. Understanding passed between them—predator to predator, protector to protector.
Then they were moving. Out the back door, into the alley where Narla’s car waited. Wyatt’s patrol vehicle was parked at the curb, and he fell in behind her as she pulled out, a shadow in her rearview mirror that should have felt threatening but instead promised safety.
The drive to her cottage took ten minutes. Ten minutes of gripping the steering wheel too hard, of watching for Derren’s face in every passing car, of feeling Wyatt’s presence pulse steady at the edge of her awareness.
He was worried. She could sense it—not his emotions, those were still frustratingly opaque to her magic, but the quality of his attention. The intensity of his focus. The way he was tracking her vehicle with the precision of a predator protecting its territory.
Its mate.
She shoved the thought away.
She parked in the driveway, and Wyatt was out of his vehicle before she’d finished cutting her engine.
He didn’t rush her. Didn’t demand answers in the driveway. Just walked beside her to the front door.
The cottage’s wards recognized her, humming their greeting as she crossed the threshold. Wyatt paused at the doorway, and she watched him register the defensive magic—the layers upon layers of protection she’d woven into every surface.
“You’ve been living in a fortress.” His voice was quiet. Assessing.
“I’ve been living in terror.” The admission slipped out before she could stop it. “I’ve been hiding, and running, and pretending to be someone I’m not, and it didn’t matter. He found me anyway.”
“Who found you?” Wyatt closed the door behind him, and the cottage’s wards sealed them in.
Safe. Private. A space where she could finally tell the truth.
“Narla. I’ve been investigating you since you arrived.
I’ve pulled your background, tracked your movements, built a file full of inconsistencies I couldn’t explain.
I know you’re concealing secrets. I’ve known for years. ”
“I know.” She set Ember’s cage on the counter and released the latch. The owl emerged and flew to his perch in the sunroom, settling in to watch without a sound. “You weren’t exactly subtle about it.”
“Then tell me.” He stepped closer, and she felt that pull—the unwanted awareness she’d been fighting since the festival. “Whatever you’re scared of, whatever that man said to you—I can’t protect you if I don’t know what I’m protecting you from.”
Protect you.
Not investigate. Not interrogate. Protect.
A barrier cracked in her chest.
“His name is Derren Bale.” The words felt like glass in her throat, sharp and dangerous.
“He was my husband’s business partner. Niccolas was a healer—a bear shifter who ran a small practice specializing in magical ailments.
Derren was his partner for fifteen years.
I thought I knew him. I thought—” Her voice broke. “I thought he was a friend.”
Wyatt stood motionless, absorbing. Waiting.
“Niccolas discovered irregularities. Patient files that didn’t add up.
People who came in for treatment and just…
vanished. He started investigating. Started digging into Derren’s background.
And when he confronted him—” The memory rose, unbidden and brutal: Niccolas’s voice on the phone that last night, urgent with discovery, telling her he’d found proof of what Derren really was.
“Niccolas died. The official story was a house fire. Tragic accident. No survivors.”
“But it wasn’t an accident.”
“No.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. Those amber eyes, sharp and focused, seeing everything she’d tried to hide. “Derren killed him. And then he came to me. Showed me what he really was—what he could do—and made sure I understood what would happen if I told anyone.”
“What he really was.” Wyatt’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous register—quiet and lethal. “What does that mean?”
“He’s not—” She stopped. How did you explain a monster to someone who’d never seen one?
How did you describe a glamour so perfect that even magical senses couldn’t pierce it?
“He’s not human. He’s not any species the Continental Council recognizes as existing.
He wears a face, Wyatt. A mask that rewrites how people perceive him.
Even I couldn’t see through it, and I can read emotions through scent.
My magic slid right off him for fifteen years. ”
Wyatt processed this without visible reaction. The sheriff, cataloguing data. But she could feel the predator underneath—his panther, processing threat assessment.
“There’s more.” He said it as a statement, not a question.
“My sister Clara.” Narla’s voice had gone flat, distant, the only way she could get the words out.
“Two months after Niccolas died, I broke down and told her everything. She was a lawyer. She worked with the Continental Council’s enforcement division.
She started building a case, making calls, trying to bring the man who killed Niccolas to justice. ”
“What happened?”
“Three weeks later, her car went off a cliff in broad daylight. The investigation found nothing. No mechanical failure. No evidence of foul play.” Narla’s hands clenched in her lap. “He sent flowers to the funeral.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Wyatt stood in her living room, completely still, and Narla watched the implications register on his face. The years of investigation. The suspicion he’d harbored. Everything he’d thought he knew about her, rewritten in an instant.
“He killed your husband.” His voice was barely human. “And your sister. And you’ve been hiding from him—”
“Since I fled to Haven Shores. I thought if I was quiet enough, careful enough, he’d forget about me.
He doesn’t need me for anything. I was just…
a loose end. A witness he’d decided to let live as long as I kept my mouth shut.
” She laughed, brittle and broken. “But now he’s here.
He knows about my parents, Wyatt. He mentioned them by name.
He’s in the middle of my life, and I don’t know why. ”
“The candles.” Wyatt’s focus sharpened. “He mentioned your candles.”
“He said they were interesting. That revelation magic was dangerous in the wrong hands.” Her stomach churned with remembered fear. “What if that’s why he’s here? What if my magic can somehow expose him? What if he’s trying to figure out if I’m a threat before he—”
“Before he what?” Wyatt’s voice had gone deadly quiet.
“Before he kills me too.”
The words hung in the air between them. The truth she’d been carrying alone, finally spoken. The danger that had followed her across the country, finally acknowledged.
Wyatt moved. Three strides brought him to her, his hands cupping her face, tilting her head up to meet his gaze. His palms were warm against her cheeks. His eyes had shifted—the panther, riding close to the surface.
“Listen to me.” His voice was rough, raw, nothing like the controlled sheriff she’d known for years. “Whatever this Derren is, whatever he’s capable of—he’s not taking you. Not while I’m breathing. Do you understand?”
“You don’t know what he can do.”
“I don’t care.” His thumb swept across her cheekbone, leaving fire in its wake. “I’ve spent years watching you, suspecting you, telling myself the pull I felt was instinct I needed to control. And the whole time you were carrying this. Carrying it alone. That ends now.”
“Wyatt—”
“Whatever you need. Whatever it takes. We’re going to figure out what he is, what he wants, and how to stop him.” His forehead dropped to hers, breath warm against her lips. “You’re not alone anymore. Do you hear me? You’re not alone.”
The tears came then—hot and relentless, years of suppressed terror breaking free. And Wyatt held her, solid and steady, while she finally let herself fall apart.
In the sunroom, Ember watched with ancient approval.
The panther had passed his test.