Mane Hex (Haven Shores #6)

Lunaria

ONE

The sunset bleeding across Haven Shores’s coastline looked like a warning.

No, the sky didn’t give warnings. It gave certainties. And certainties were so much worse.

Her truck groaned as she crested the final hill, the engine protesting in that particular way that meant she’d need to find a mechanic within the week.

The bed was loaded with ceramic pots she’d collected from a dozen different towns—Savannah, Austin, Portland, Sedona, places that blurred in her memory because she’d never stayed long enough to know them properly.

Two suitcases. One box of gardening tools worn smooth from use.

Everything she owned in the world fitted neatly into a vehicle held in one piece by rust and sheer stubbornness.

Fourteen towns in a decade. And now number fifteen.

Haven Shores sprawled below her, tucked between forested hills and a stretch of rocky coastline that caught the dying light and scattered it into fragments of gold and crimson.

Pretty. Quaint, even. A small supernatural town that probably had a farmers’ market on Saturdays and a gossip network that moved faster than wildfire.

She’d be gone by spring.

Except.

Lunaria’s fingers tightened on the wheel until her knuckles ached. That was the problem, wasn’t it? The except. She’d checked her chart before leaving her last stop—a ritual, now, performed before every new place—and found an anomaly she’d never seen in years of reading her own fate.

A blank space.

Not the crisp lines of a destiny fulfilled. Not the dark certainty of an ending she could calculate down to the moment. Just... nothing. A void in her future centered directly on Haven Shores, someone having taken an eraser to the trajectory of her life and scrubbed until the page was bare.

She’d spent three sleepless nights staring at the charts, recalculating, triple-checking her readings. The result never changed. Her future simply ceased to exist when it reached this town.

Either I die here, or I become someone new.

A car horn blared, shattering her thoughts. A powder-blue convertible careened around the bend behind her, headlights flashing in a pattern that was probably meant to be friendly but came across as mildly unhinged.

Junie.

Lunaria pulled over to the shoulder, barely getting the truck to a stop before the convertible skidded in behind her, and a whirlwind of red hair and chaos magic came barreling out.

“You’re here!” Junie Reed-Castellan slammed into her before she’d fully exited the truck, arms wrapping around her in a hug that smelled of cinnamon and char. Chaos magic left that burnt-sugar residue. “You’re actually here. I had a bet with Leo that you’d bail at the state line—”

“You bet against me?”

“I bet that you’d bail and then turn around and come anyway because spite is a more powerful motivator than fear.

” Junie pulled back, grinning wide enough to show the slight crookedness of her canines.

Her cousin hadn’t changed in three years—still loud, still chaotic, still filling every room she entered to the point of overflow. “Was I wrong?”

“I didn’t bail at all.”

“But you thought about it.”

Lunaria didn’t answer. Of course, she’d thought about it. She’d thought about bailing at the state line, at the county line, at every gas station and rest stop along the way. Her bags stayed packed. Her exits stayed mapped. That was the entire point of how she lived.

“Come on.” Junie grabbed her arm and started tugging her toward the convertible. “Leave the truck. Leo can come get it later—he owes me for losing the bet anyway. I’m giving you the tour.”

“I have pots in the back—”

“The pots will survive. They’re ceramic, not crystal. Get in.”

The tour, as it turned out, consisted of Junie driving too fast through winding coastal roads while pointing out landmarks with one hand and gesticulating wildly with the other.

Haven Shores Pier jutted out into water gone deep purple with twilight—that was where Beck Driscoll’s family had run a brewery for three generations, serving craft beers that “might literally be magical, we’re still not sure.

” The Siren’s Rest perched on a hillside overlooking the harbor, a bed-and-breakfast owned by someone named Avine who was “lovely, you’ll adore her, she makes the best wine, and she gives the best advice. ”

Junie pointed out the stretch of beach where Leo had proposed by accidentally shifting into lion form mid-question and nearly swallowing the ring.

“He was so nervous, his lion just took over. I had to wait fifteen minutes for him to shift back, and the whole time he was making these pathetic growling sounds and pawing at the sand.”

“Romantic,” Lunaria said dryly.

“It was hilarious. I said yes while he was still coughing up fur. He claims it was ’dignified in a primal way.

’ It absolutely was not.” Junie swerved around a pothole that would have rattled Lunaria’s truck to pieces.

“Speaking of insufferable men—you have an official welcome ceremony tomorrow. With the mayor.”

“A ceremony.”

“He has a clipboard. Multiple forms. I watched him reorganize his desk for twenty minutes once because a stapler was at the wrong angle.” Junie waved her hand, searching for the word. “He’s very... official.”

“You’re making him sound insufferable.”

“Did I not lead with that? He’s completely insufferable.

Very competent, very polished, very good at his job—and also insufferable.

Has that whole ‘I’m in control of everything’ energy that makes you want to muss up his hair just to see what he’d do.

” Junie shot her a sideways glance that held far too much speculation.

“You two will probably hate each other on sight.”

Unlikely. She didn’t stay long enough to hate anyone. That required investment, and investment was a practice she’d trained herself out of years ago.

“What’s his species?” She asked the question more to keep Junie from reading too much into her silence than out of genuine curiosity.

“Lion. The Holts have been lions forever—old family, lots of history. His dad’s an elder.” Junie drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Hux shift. Leo says he’s pretty private about his lion. Doesn’t let it out much.”

A lion shifter who kept his beast locked down. That spoke to control issues. Or deeper issues.

Not that she cared.

The road curved, and the forest thickened on either side. Through gaps in the trees, Lunaria caught glimpses of structures ahead—walls overtaken by climbing vines, the rusted spires of wrought iron gates, the suggestion of pathways long since surrendered to wilderness.

The Celestial Botanical Gardens.

Even through the car window, she could feel them.

The ley lines beneath the soil hummed with dormant power, calling to the magic in her blood.

Seven major currents intersecting at this point—she’d seen it on maps, studied the theoretical implications in texts older than the town itself.

But feeling it was different entirely. The pull. The ache.

“The gardens have been dead for sixty years,” Junie said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “Since Deia Tullio passed. She was the celestial witch who maintained them—basically a legend around here. No one’s had the magic to wake them since.”

“The job listing didn’t mention they were dead.”

“It said ‘extensive restoration required.’ That’s real estate speak for disaster zone.

” Junie pulled off the main road onto a gravel drive so overgrown that branches scraped the sides of the convertible.

“But you’ll fix that. You’re brilliant, and you have actual celestial magic, which apparently is rare enough that the town council spent three years trying to find someone for the job.

You were basically their only qualified applicant. ”

“Flattering.”

“I’m serious. The gardens used to be the crown jewel of Haven Shores.

People came from everywhere to see them.

And when Deia died, they just...” Junie trailed off, her usual manic energy dimming.

“Everything stopped. The flowers died. The fountains dried up. The whole place just gave up, and nobody could do anything about it.”

The driveway ended at a small cottage—one story, weathered shingles, a porch that sagged slightly on the left side. Overgrown flower beds hugged the foundation, the blooms long since choked out by invasive weeds.

“Home sweet home,” Junie announced. “It’s not much, but it comes with the contract. The groundskeeper used to live here, back when there was a garden to keep.”

Lunaria climbed out, her boots crunching on gravel that hadn’t been tended in decades.

The cottage faced the garden gates—massive wrought iron structures worked with celestial symbols that had oxidized to a deep verdigris.

Moons and stars and planetary alignments, frozen in metal.

The gates hadn’t been opened properly in years; rust and climbing vines had welded them nearly shut.

She approached them slowly, drawn by a pull she couldn’t explain. Her fingers brushed the iron, and a spark of recognition shot through her—not painful, not unpleasant, just undeniably there. The gates had been waiting for exactly this touch.

They swung open without resistance, hinges silent despite decades of neglect.

“Okay,” Junie said slowly from behind her. “That’s... not terrifying at all.”

But Lunaria wasn’t listening. The magic beneath her feet was singing, resonating with the celestial gift that ran through her bloodline, and the garden was calling to her. Calling her home.

“I should unpack,” she said, pulling herself back from the threshold. “Get settled.”

Junie’s gaze lingered on the open gates, her expression troubled. “Luna. The gardens haven’t responded to anyone in six decades. People have tried. Witches, druids, even a fae who specialized in botanical magic. Nothing worked.”

“Gates rust. Metal expands and contracts with temperature. It’s physics, not fate.”

“Since when do you believe in physics over fate?”

Since fate had shown her too many endings she couldn’t prevent. Since physics was cold and impersonal and didn’t ask her to care.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Lunaria said instead, turning away from the question in her cousin’s gaze. “The ceremony.”

“Try?”

“I’m making no promises.”

Junie snorted but climbed back into her convertible.

“You’re going to love it here. I know you don’t believe me, but you will.

This place has a way of getting under your skin.

” She paused, conflict crossing her face—hope and worry tangled up in the set of her mouth.

“Don’t bolt, Luna. Please? Just... give it a chance. ”

“When have I ever bolted?”

Junie gave her a look that said she wasn’t fooled for a second.

Then the convertible was disappearing down the gravel drive, taillights swallowed by the encroaching dark, leaving Lunaria alone with a cottage she wouldn’t unpack in and gardens that were trying to tell her truths she wasn’t ready to hear.