Chapter 3
ARE YOU SURE?
Mother is trying to feed a wolf.
I don’t approve, but she is kind.
She is my Mother.
— gus
If I thought that yesterday’s minor disaster meant that Dough You Believe in Magic would be a ghost town, I would be wrong.
I should’ve known better. This is a supe town, after all, run by shifters with more than a few witches.
I sell charmed cupcakes proudly. Something like that was bound to happen, even if it was embarrassing that it wasn’t on purpose.
In fact, I had more than a few customers come in to see if there was a new batch of honesty cupcakes for them to buy.
I had to refuse them all with a sorry shake of my head.
I could just see it now. Unsuspecting supes being charmed into telling the truth—telling secrets—would definitely bring the sheriff back to my door.
Uh-uh.
No, thanks.
I did, however, guess something like that would happen. Following another one of Grandma Jean’s recipes, I made Lift You Up Meringues. Delightful little pillows with a tart cherry taste, one of the meringues promised a whole hour of a great mood with no crash afterward.
I sold out of them by ten, and started pushing the almond croissants I made just in case Roxy came by. There was no sign of her, but we definitely didn’t lack for customers.
It finally starts to slow around two. Taking advantage of having the store empty for a few minutes, I scarf down a magic-free danish, chase it with two slices of sourdough with my namesake smeared between the thick slabs of bread, before grabbing a lemonade from the small fridge I keep for personal use.
I’m just re-capping the bottle when the doorbell jingles, announcing a new customer.
And I do mean new. Around my age or maybe a few years older, it’s a female shifter that I’ve never met before. She has dark hair cut in a fetching bob, a flatter nose with wide-set eyes… and they’re pink. She has pink eyes.
I don’t know who she is, but at least I know what she is.
I give her my customer service smile. “Welcome to Dough You Believe in Magic. What can I do for you?”
She doesn’t quite hop, though there’s undeniably a bounce to the way she walks over to me, a grin splitting her pretty face.
“Hi. I’m Betsy.”
Betsy the bunny shifter. How cute. “Honey, hi.”
She waves her hand, brushing away my introduction. “Oh, I know who you are. Everyone in Moonburrow knows that you’re Jeannette Douce’s granddaughter.”
Jeannette… Grandma Jean. I nod.
“You’ve been the talk of Moonburrow since you arrived, and I’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to visit. Your grandmother made the most divine carrot cakes. If you added that to your repertoire, I’d stop by more.”
Something… probably my opossum’s instincts that I should probably listen to more than I do…
tells me that I might ‘forget’ to look for that recipe in Grandma Jean’s recipe book for a while—a suspicion that is only proven to be more true when Betsy leans her elbows on the countertop, smiling up at me.
“So… I heard you spent some time with Sheriff Lobo yesterday.”
I nearly choke on her casual statement. Deny, Honey. Deny deny deny. “What? Where did you… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She lifts her eyebrows. “Hm. Maybe you need one of those honesty cupcakes that had Frannie admitting she doctors up her tail.” Leaning in, the bunny confesses, “We all knew it, but none of us had the heart to point it out whenever she’d boast about it.
They say foxes are sly, but in my experience, they’re very insecure. ”
And bunnies, I’m betting, are part of the gossip circle in Moonburrow.
When I don’t say anything about my unfortunate customer from yesterday, Betsy looks at me curiously. “What about you?”
I go still. Don’t faint, Honey. I’ve been so good.
I haven’t dropped since I’ve been in Moonburrow, though the first time I caught Sheriff Lobo’s scent and realized what exactly that meant had me touch and go for a while there.
I don’t want to faint now all because a curious bunny is sticking her wiggly nose in where it doesn’t belong.
“What about me?”
Her pink eyes darken slightly. “You’re a witch, sure, but there’s something else there… something… I don’t mean to offend or nothing, but a little musky.”
Huh. I know my scent-dampener is geared specifically to a wolf’s nose—especially an Alpha’s sniffer—but I didn’t expect any other shifter to pick up on my true supe side.
Unless they spend time around opossum clans, the purple eyes might not tip ‘em off… but Betsy isn’t wrong.
Opossums have a musk—and I have an excuse.
I click my tongue, catching Gus’s attention. He lifts his head from where he was—you guessed it—fast asleep. Tapping my fingers against the counter has my sidekick getting up slowly, stretching his oversized body, and doing that strange half-run, half-gallop that belongs to us opossums.
“This is Gus,” I say solemnly. “He manages Dough You Believe in Magic. I just bake here.”
Betsy’s mouth opens slightly, taking in the wild opossum. A second later, she giggles, and I relax.
“Well, that would explain the scent,” she says.
“Sorry. I heard you were a prey shifter, like me. Like so much of the town. Sheriff Lobo is a good male, but he’s a wolf.
A predator. If he was sniffing around the new female in town, I thought I’d stop by, introduce myself, and see if you’re alright. ”
Pointedly ignoring how she told me that the gossips have been musing about me and my heritage, I nervously adjust the spacing between the remaining pumpkin muffins I have, then say, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She gives me a look like she thinks my head is stuffed with cotton candy instead of brains. “Because he’s the top predator.” Glancing over her shoulder, checking to make sure that the sheriff didn’t suddenly appear while she was talking, she adds in a stage-whisper, “The Alpha.”
Thanks, Betsy. I had no idea.
“He seems nice enough,” I murmur.
Betsy snorts softly. “For a wolf, maybe. But if you get caught in his sight, watch out, that’s all I’m going to say.”
I give her a thin-lipped smile. “Thanks.”
I guess.
Maybe.
“Well, that’s that then,” she chirps, oblivious to my discomfort.
“I just wanted to stop by and welcome you to Moonburrow! I work at the newspaper, so if you ever want to post an ad for your bakery, you let me know. Oh! I almost forgot. We also have our prey circle meetings at the community center every other Monday evening.”
I blink. Shifters aren’t really religious; at least, not like humans are. We’re devoted to our own gods and goddesses. For the wolves, it’s their moon goddess, the Luna. For opossums, we put all our trust in Fate and Luck.
I try not to think about how bad my luck’s been lately ever since I turned my back on accepting my fated mate. Then again, my quarter of witch blood could be to blame for how often I get myself into trouble since, well, I’ve always been a bit of a troublemaker, on purpose or not…
Even so, I wrinkle my nose. “Prayer circle?”
Betsy shakes her head. “No. Prey circle. Where we share snacks and safety tips and sometimes even swap stories about what it’s like to date predators.”
I blink. “That’s… oddly specific.”
“And helpful,” she adds. “Even if you’re a full-blooded witch, compared to the wolves in the pack, you’re one of us. Stop by on Monday.” Her expression turns coy. “If you really do have Sheriff Lobo’s attention, who knows? You might appreciate some tips.”
If I have Sheriff Lobo’s attention, I’ll keel over the moment he figures out that he’s stuck with a prey shifter as a fated mate.
I open my mouth to give her some non-committal response while knowing that I have no intention of ever joining their prey circle, but before I can, the bell above the door chimes again.
And I freeze.
There’s a wolf stalking into the bakery. Not my wolf. Not the one my traitorous instincts scream ‘mate’ at constantly, but definitely one with sharp senses and even sharper teeth.
He’s good-looking. I might be biased, but most of the wolves I’ve met are.
There’s something way too tempting about such a fierce predator regardless of the fact that one growl will have me flat on my back in an instant—and I don’t mean prepared to mate.
I’ll be ‘dead’, and have a whole lot of explaining to do.
In Moonburrow, I’ve had to get used to predators lurking everywhere. The Moonshadow Pack runs the town so it’s no surprise they’re always on patrol. And when they’re on patrol, they’re bound to get hungry.
This wolf has the usual golden eyes, only a lighter shade than Sheriff Lobo’s. His hair is a lighter brown, too, with a smattering of freckles dotting his almost pretty face.
Sheriff Lobo isn’t pretty. He’s rugged and sexy and… and if I really want to convince myself that he can’t be my mate, I need to stop comparing every male I meet in Moonburrow to its sheriff.
Betsy steps away from the counter as the wolf approaches it. True to her prey nature, she gives him a wide berth even as she says, “Hey, Declan.”
He nods at her. “Stopping by for a snack, Bets?”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh. Um—”
I grab a small brown paper bag, shoving in the closest thing I can reach from the display case. “Here, Betsy. I almost forgot to give you your order.”
She throws me a look of pure relief. I shrug. Whether I’m hiding what I am or not, us prey shifters have to stick together.
Betsy takes the bag from my hand, careful not to get too close to the wolf, Declan. Once she cradles it to her chest, she waves in thanks, then bolts to the door.
One last chirp from Betsy—“Bye, Honey!”—and the bunny goes hopping away, leaving me and one of Moonburrow’s big, bad wolves all alone.
Too bad it’s not the one the other half of my soul is interested in… though from the way his lips quirk, revealing the points of his canines, I’m not so sure that I can’t say the same for this wolf.
“Honey? Is that your name or do you and Betsy have something going on?”