Hux
THREE
He was already awake.
He’d been awake since three, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom in the Holt family home, counting the cracks in the plaster that had been there since his childhood.
The master suite was tastefully decorated, expensively furnished, and completely impersonal.
He could have been sleeping in a high-end hotel room.
Sometimes it felt like he was a guest in a life that had never quite belonged to him.
He silenced the alarm before it could sound, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and began the routine that had structured his mornings for the past eight years. The routine was everything. The routine kept the gnawing ache at bay.
Running clothes pulled from the third drawer, arranged by workout type. The coastal path, stretching five miles along the cliffs, chosen for its isolation rather than its views. A pace that would have killed a human but barely winded his lion.
The beast acknowledged the physical demand without truly engaging.
It had been quiet for years, that animal part of him—conserving energy, waiting for a connection that wasn’t coming.
Most shifters described their beasts as constant companions, sources of strength and instinct.
His felt more like a tenant who’d stopped paying rent but refused to leave.
Shower. Coffee. Review the day’s agenda while standing at the kitchen counter in a house too large for one person, surrounded by family photographs of Holts who had all found mates, raised families, died with legacies intact.
Control. Routine. The scaffolding that held his life in place.
The walk to Town Hall took him through the heart of Haven Shores, past the coffee shop where Theo and Avine were sharing a table by the window.
Avine laughed at something her mate said, head tilted back, radiant with the kind of joy that came from belonging to someone completely.
Theo’s hand found hers across the table with the casual intimacy of a man who knew where his heart belonged and never had to question it.
Hux looked away. Kept walking.
Leo and Junie were in the park, their argument audible from half a block away.
An argument about whose turn it was to cook dinner, delivered in the affectionate sniping of two people who would die for each other and found joy in pretending otherwise.
Junie jabbed a finger at Leo’s chest; Leo caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm mid-sentence, derailing her entirely.
Leo caught Hux’s eye as he passed and grinned, raising a hand in greeting. Junie waved too, then immediately returned to telling her mate why he was wrong about the risotto.
Five mated pairs in Haven Shores now. Five couples who had found what the mating surge promised—that certainty of finally being complete.
Had never once felt anything close to it himself.
Three months ago, he’d lit one of Narla’s candles. Alone, in his office, after everyone else had gone home. He’d held it in hands that had never trembled before, had focused on the flame, had waited for the magic to show him—
Nothing.
Empty darkness. No face. No future. Just the void he’d felt his entire life, confirmed in flickering light.
He pushed the memory down. Locked it away with all the other things he didn’t let himself feel during daylight hours.
He was good at that.
Town Hall was a converted sea captain’s mansion from the 1880s, all grand staircases and crown molding and windows that let in too much light for comfortable brooding.
Hux’s office occupied what had once been the master bedroom, with a clear view of Main Street and, if you knew where to look, a distant glimpse of the Celestial Gardens’ overgrown gates.
Portraits of previous mayors lined the walls—every Holt who’d held the position staring down with expressions of competent severity. His grandfather. His great-uncle. A line of capable men who had served Haven Shores without complaint and died with their duty fulfilled.
None of them looked happy.
He settled behind his desk—mahogany, inherited from three mayors back—and pulled up the day’s schedule on his tablet.
9:00 AM: Official welcome ceremony for Lunaria Reed, celestial botanist.
The new hire. Junie’s cousin. The witch they’d spent three years trying to find, the only applicant with celestial magic strong enough to potentially restore the gardens.
Hux pulled out the welcome packet he’d prepared—talking points, historical documentation, a detailed overview of the gardens’ former glory. Fourteen forms requiring signature, each one necessary for liability purposes, property access, municipal employment standards.
Straightforward. Professional. Nothing complicated.
His phone buzzed. A text from Leo: Junie says her cousin arrived last night. Fair warning—she’s ‘a handful.’ Direct quote. Also, she apparently already went to the gardens at midnight like some kind of witch vampire hybrid.
Hux typed back: “Noted. I’ll have the forms ready.”
Leo’s response was a string of laughing emojis. Hux chose to ignore what that implied.
At 8:45, he straightened his tie—charcoal gray today, conservative—and gathered his materials.
The welcome was scheduled to take place in the small garden courtyard behind Town Hall, where they’d set up a podium and refreshments.
Nothing elaborate. A handshake, some photographs for the community newsletter, the formal transfer of keys and documentation.
By 9:15, Hux was standing at the podium alone.
By 9:20, his jaw had begun to ache from clenching.
She was late. Twenty minutes late to her own welcome ceremony, which he had personally organized, which several community members had taken time out of their schedules to attend.
Mrs. Patterson was checking her watch pointedly.
Old Mr. Cho had already helped himself to two cups of punch.
Wyatt stood near the gate with Narla, the panther’s expression suggesting he found this entire situation deeply amusing.
“Sorry, sorry!” The voice came from the courtyard gate, accompanied by the sound of rapid footsteps on flagstone. “I got distracted. There was this moss, and I needed to see if it was—anyway, doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”
Hux turned, prepared speech already forming on his lips.
The speech died.
She was a disaster.
Overalls—actual denim overalls—streaked with dirt and what appeared to be dried moss.
A flowing shirt underneath in some deep jewel tone that should have clashed with the workwear and somehow didn’t.
Dark curls escaping from a haphazard bun, framing a face smudged with soil at the cheekbone and along the jaw.
A sunflower tucked behind one ear, wilting slightly but stubbornly cheerful.
And her body—
He shouldn’t be noticing her body. He was a professional. She was a contractor. But the overalls did nothing to hide the curves beneath them, and the way she moved—restless energy barely contained, hips swaying with each impatient stride—made it impossible to look anywhere else.
She smelled like night-blooming jasmine and fresh earth and electricity that made his lion snap to attention with a force that nearly buckled his knees.
What the—
The beast had been quiet for years. Decades. Barely stirring through the mating surge, through crisis after crisis, through the slow realization that whatever other shifters felt, he couldn’t.
Now it was very, very awake.
“You’re the one with the forms, right?” She crossed the courtyard with the easy stride of someone who had never worried about making a good impression and had no intention of starting now. Her boots left dirt prints on the flagstones. “Junie warned me about you.”
“I’m Mayor Holt.” He managed to keep his voice level. Professional. The voice of a man whose lion wasn’t currently trying to claw its way out of his chest toward this woman it had no business wanting. “Welcome to Haven Shores, Ms. Reed.”
“Lunaria.” She extended her hand. Dirt under the fingernails. Calluses on the palm. Hands that did real work, not the manicured hands of the socialites and politicians he usually dealt with. “Ms. Reed makes me feel like I’m in trouble.”
“You’re twenty minutes late to an official ceremony.”
“So I am in trouble.” Her lips quirked. Full lips, he noticed against his will, curved in amusement at his expense. “In my defense, the gardens are very distracting.”
He took her hand. The contact sent a jolt up his arm that he refused to acknowledge—heat and electricity and a sensation that felt disturbingly like recognition. Her skin was warm, her grip firm, and his lion made a sound in the back of his mind that was disturbingly close to a purr.
No, he told it firmly. The candle showed nothing. This is impossible.
“The gardens have been dormant for sixty years.” He released her hand, stepped back, reached for the familiar armor of procedure. “I wouldn’t think there’s much to be distracted by yet.”
Wariness flickered across her face—there and gone, too fast to read. Caution, maybe. Or calculation. “You’d be surprised.”
The small crowd of community members was watching them with undisguised interest. Mrs. Patterson had stopped checking her watch.
Wyatt’s hand had moved to rest on Narla’s hip, possessive and casual, and both of them were watching the interaction with expressions that suggested they saw more than Hux wanted them to.
Hux straightened his already-straight tie. “Perhaps we should proceed with the official welcome. I have a brief overview prepared—”
“How brief?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“That’s not brief. That’s a TED talk.” She eyed the podium with open skepticism. “Can we skip to the part where I get keys and you give me the forms I apparently need to sign?”
“The overview contains important historical context—”
“I read the file you sent. Three times.” She held up her phone, which was smudged with the same dirt that covered her hands.
“Three hundred years of history, seven ley line intersections, Deia Tullio maintained the gardens for forty years until her death from ‘natural causes.’” The air quotes were audible.
“Built by a coalition of celestial witches. Crown jewel of Haven Shores. Very impressive stuff.”
She’d actually read the file. The forty-page file that he’d spent a week compiling, that he’d assumed would gather digital dust.
“You read the entire document?”
“I’m thorough when it comes to things I actually care about.” Her gaze swept the courtyard, lingering on the refreshment table, the podium, the carefully arranged chairs. “Ceremonies, not so much. No offense.”
“Some taken.”
That surprised a laugh out of her—short, startled, genuine. The sound made his chest tighten, made his lion rumble with satisfaction.
Stop that, he ordered it.