Chapter 4
FOUR
WYATT
Wyatt hadn’t lost control of his panther since he was seventeen years old.
Twenty-three years of discipline. Twenty-three years of keeping the predator contained, controlled, civilized.
He’d built his entire identity around that control—the cold, calculating sheriff who never let emotion compromise his judgment.
The lawman everyone trusted precisely because he never, ever let the beast win.
Last night, he’d lost all of it in a storage tent.
With a woman he’d distrusted from the day she arrived.
Wyatt stood at his bathroom sink, gripping the porcelain hard enough to make the edges creak.
His reflection stared back—dark circles under bloodshot eyes, jaw tight enough to crack teeth.
There were scratches on the back of his neck.
Her scratches. Evidence of exactly how thoroughly his control had shattered.
He could still feel her.
That was the worst part. His panther wouldn’t stop reaching for her, searching for her presence across the miles between his cabin and her cottage.
The beast paced restlessly in the back of his mind, prowling along the edges of his consciousness, hungry and focused and absolutely certain of what it wanted.
Go back. Find her. Claim her properly this time.
Wyatt shut that down. Hard.
His morning routine was sacred. 5:47 wake-up, the same time he’d been rising for seventeen years. Black coffee, no sugar, no cream—anything else was weakness dressed up as preference. A five-mile run through the forest behind his cabin, pushing until his lungs burned and his muscles screamed.
This morning, the run felt like punishment.
He hit the trails before dawn had fully broken, feet pounding dirt paths he could navigate blind.
The Douglas firs rose around him in silent judgment, their shadows still deep with pre-dawn darkness.
Cold air sliced into his lungs with each breath.
His body moved on autopilot while his mind replayed every moment he wished he could forget.
The way she’d said don’t you dare stop. The sound she’d made when he’d—
He ran faster. Punished himself harder.
His panther laughed at him.
The beast had been insufferably smug since the moment Wyatt had dragged himself out of that tent, shirt half-untucked, the scent of her magic and her skin clinging to every inch of him. Years of careful suppression, and his panther had finally gotten what it wanted.
“She’s not—” The words came out hoarse, barely audible over his harsh breathing. “It was the surge. Just the surge.”
His panther’s response was a rumble of dark amusement. The beast knew the difference between magical interference and mate recognition. Had always known.
Wyatt had spent six years telling himself otherwise.
He pushed through another mile, then two, until his body was shaking and his vision had started to blur at the edges. Only then did he turn back toward the cabin, legs screaming, chest heaving. Physical exhaustion was supposed to quiet the beast. It had worked for two decades.
It wasn’t working now.
His cabin emerged from the tree line—cedar and stone, deliberately isolated, positioned so he could see anyone approaching while remaining invisible from the road. He’d chosen this location specifically. A predator’s lair. A place where he could be alone without being watched.
This morning, it felt like a cage.
He showered under water cold enough to numb, dressed in his uniform with mechanical precision, and forced himself to eat standing at the kitchen counter.
The cabin’s silence pressed in on him. No photographs on the walls.
No personal touches. Just clean lines and functional furniture and the faint, ever-present scent of a panther marking his territory.
For all those years, this space had been enough.
Now it smelled wrong. Empty. Like an essential presence was absent.
Her. His panther supplied helpfully. Bring her here. Fill this space with her scent.
Wyatt set his coffee mug down hard enough to crack the handle.
The drive to the station took twelve minutes. Wyatt spent all twelve trying not to think about Narla Wright.
He failed.
The first day she’d walked into his station to register as a new supernatural resident, he’d been undone.
Dark hair in a practical braid, warm brown skin, those deep brown eyes that saw too much and revealed nothing.
She’d moved with quiet grace, smelling like beeswax, lavender, and woodsmoke he couldn’t identify but desperately wanted more of.
Their gazes had met across the front desk.
The beast had roared one word—
MATE
—with a certainty that left no room for doubt.
Wyatt had ignored it.
He’d filled out the paperwork with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. Avoided eye contact. Told himself the reaction was anomalous, a fluke of surge energy or magical interference or anything except what his panther insisted it was.
And then he’d started digging.
Because Narla Wright didn’t add up. Her background was too clean, too carefully constructed.
A widow who’d moved across the country to start over—plausible enough on the surface.
But the details felt rehearsed. She never cracked, not once, not even when he’d pushed.
And she guarded her secrets with the fierce desperation of someone who believed exposure meant death.
Years of quiet investigation. Watching her from across crowded rooms, noting every inconsistency, cataloguing every suspicious moment. He had a drawer full of notes. Observations he’d told himself were professional, evidence of due diligence rather than obsession.
His panther had known the truth all along.
Not surveillance. Courtship.
Wyatt’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
The station came into view—converted firehouse, brick softened by decades of coastal weather. He pulled into his usual spot, killed the engine, and sat motionless for a long moment.
He felt her across town. Not a precise location, but an awareness. A pull.
Except she wasn’t a threat. And she definitely wasn’t prey.
I don’t trust her.
His panther’s response was a silent, knowing rumble that translated roughly to: And yet you fucked her against a support beam last night, so perhaps reconsider your priorities.
Wyatt got out of the car before he could argue with himself any further.