Chapter Two #2
She looks away first. “I had a mate,” she says softly.
I go still, but my wolf does not. He surges forward, teeth bared, rage flooding my blood so fast my claws prick beneath my fingernails. I force them back, barely.
Holly notices anyway. Her smile is small and humorless. “There he is.”
“Who?”
“The wolf who thinks the answer to every problem is dominance and violence.”
“He has some good ideas,” I say.
“He really doesn’t,” she counters.
“What did he do?” My voice is rougher now.
She shakes her head. “No.”
One word. Clear and final. And I shut my mouth.
Her gaze comes back to mine slowly, searching. Testing. “That’s it? You’re not going to demand the whole sad story?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you said no.”
Something fragile moves through her expression. Not trust, not yet. But maybe the smallest beginning of it. My chest tightens at the thought alone.
She looks down at the mixer between us, safer than looking at me. “He denied me.”
My control cracks. The words are quiet, but they hit with the force of a blade between my ribs.
Denied.
Not rejected after some mutual understanding. Not a bond that faded or failed. Denied. A wolf looked at this woman, felt the same sacred pull currently burning through my entire body, and chose to wound her with it.
My vision sharpens, and the room narrows. My wolf throws himself against my skin, snarling so hard my bones ache.
Holly’s head snaps up. “Don’t.” I freeze. Her voice is fierce now. Her eyes flash wolf-bright, and for the first time since I walked in here, I see not just the wound, but the survivor guarding it. “Don’t stand there and look like you want to murder a man on my behalf.”
“I do want to murder a man on your behalf.” The words are harsh as they fall from my lips.
“At least you’re honest.”
“I can lie if it helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I’m bad at it anyway.”
She stares at me, and I stare back. Then she sighs, and some of the fight drains out of her shoulders.
“It was a long time ago,” she says.
That’s a lie.
Not the time part, maybe, but the wound is not old. Not to her. Some pain does not understand calendars. It lives fresh under the skin, waiting for the right scent, the right word, the right memory to tear it open again.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She flinches. “Don’t.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want pity.”
“You don’t have it.”
Her eyes search mine again, and I let her look. Whatever she sees there makes her swallow.
“What do I have?” she asks softly.
My answer comes too fast to be anything but truth. “My respect.”
The bakery noise rushes back in around us. Someone laughs near the front. The espresso machine hisses. Maisie drops a spoon and swears quietly enough that only wolf ears catch it.
Holly looks away again, but her scent changes. Warmer and less sharp. More dangerous.
“Well,” she says, clearing her throat. “That’s annoying.”
“My respect?”
“You.”
I smile. “I’ve been called worse.”
“I believe that.”
“I deserved most of it.”
“I believe that too.”
The mixer makes another grinding noise, saving me from saying something reckless like, I would never deny you because that is not helpful. Not now. Not on the day we meet. Words are easy, and Holly has clearly had easy words used as weapons before.
So I do what I know. I fix what I can.
I kneel again and adjust the belt, buying her a few more hours of production and myself a reason to stay in the room. She moves around me, close but not too close. I learn things about her in pieces.
She hums when she concentrates. She mutters insults at pastries that misbehave. She calls the oven Patricia when it takes too long to heat. She tastes frosting from her thumb and closes her eyes for half a second like pleasure is something she allows herself only in secret.
That one nearly kills me.
By the time the morning rush clears, my hands are smeared with grease, my knees ache from kneeling on tile, and I have mentally rebuilt half this kitchen.
“It’ll hold,” I say, tightening the last screw. “But you need replacement parts. Soon.”
“How soon is soon?”
“Yesterday.”
She groans. “I hate yesterday. It’s always making today expensive.”
“I can source the parts,” I offer.
Her eyes narrow. “How much?”
“I’ll get prices first.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was an answer-adjacent statement.”
“Daniel.” The way she says my name should be illegal. My wolf agrees with alarming enthusiasm.
I stand, and she has to tilt her head back to keep glaring at me.
The height difference hits us both at the same time.
Her breath catches, and my body goes tight.
The bond stretches between us, hot and trembling.
Her pupils widen, and the scent of her desire slips into the air so sweetly I nearly lose my grip on every decent intention I have.
My hand twitches, and hers does too. Then she steps back, and I let her, even if it feels like chewing glass.
I take a slow breath. “I’ll bring you an estimate this afternoon.”
“You don’t have to rush.”
“I know.”
Her eyes narrow again. “Then why are you rushing?”
Because being away from you already feels like a bad idea. Because my wolf is memorizing the sound of your heartbeat. Because fate just dropped me at your feet and for once in my life, I don’t want to run.
I say none of that. “I like happy mixers,” I answer.
“You’re deeply strange.”
“Says the woman who named her oven Patricia.”
Holly gasps. “Don’t speak about Patricia like she isn’t in the room.”
“I apologize to Patricia.”
“She’s sensitive,” she whispers, giving the oven a side glance.
“I’ll be gentle.”
Her cheeks flush as the words land between us. We both hear everything I did not mean to say. Or maybe everything I did.
Holly turns away first, busying herself with wiping down a counter that is already clean. “You should go.”
I nod. “I should.” But neither of us moves.
Maisie walks into the kitchen, takes one look at us, grabs a tray, and walks right back out. “Nope,” she mutters. “Not today. I don’t have insurance for whatever this is.”
Holly closes her eyes. “I’m firing her.”
“She seems efficient.”
“She’s a menace.”
“I like her.”
“Of course you do. Menaces travel in packs.”
I laugh, and that makes her mouth soften again. For a second, I see it. Not the guarded baker, or the rejected mate. Not the woman holding herself together with sarcasm and sugar.
Just Holly.
The woman fate says is mine. The woman I will not claim until she chooses me.
I pick up my tool bag and move toward the back door because the front of the bakery is still too full of curious eyes. At the door, I stop.
“Holly.” She looks over, and my wolf presses forward, but this time there’s no demand in him. Only longing. “I meant what I said.”
“About Patricia?”
I smile. “About the bond. I won’t touch it unless you ask me to.”
Her face goes still again, but softer this time. “And if I never ask?” she says.
The question is not casual, but neither is my answer. “Then I’ll fix your mixer and leave you in peace.”
Her throat moves as she swallows. “That easy?”
“No.” I hold her gaze. “But that simple.”
For a long moment, she says nothing. Then she nods once. Small. Almost invisible. But I feel it like a hand around my heart. I step outside before I do something stupid, and the morning air hits me cool and sharp. I drag it into my lungs, trying to clear the bakery from my system.
It does not work. She’s everywhere now. Sugar in my blood. Heat under my skin. A laugh caught behind my ribs. A wound I did not cause but already want to guard like it’s my own.
I make it halfway down the alley before I stop and brace one hand against the brick wall.
My wolf snarls softly. Mate.
“Yes,” I mutter. “I got that.”
He growls again, impatient and insulted by my restraint. I look back at the bakery door. Inside, Holly is moving through the life she built for herself. A life with no pack. No mate. No one to claim her, corner her, or decide what she can survive.
If I’m smart, I will walk away now. I’m good at walking away. Excellent, really. Practically an artist. Instead, I pull out my phone and call the parts supplier two towns over.
“Hey,” I say when Carl answers. “I need a rush order.”
Carl groans. “You always need a rush order.”
“This one matters.”
“They all matter when you say that.”
“No,” I say, looking back at Sweetique Bakery and the woman behind its walls. “This one really does.”
Because Holly Black does not need me to save her, she already saved herself.
But maybe, if I’m careful, if I’m patient, if I keep my damn wolf on a leash and my hands to myself until she asks otherwise, she might let me stand beside her.
Not as fate’s demand. Not as another wound. As a choice. And Goddess help me, for the first time in years, I want to be chosen and not needed. Not useful. Chosen.
By her.