Hux
FOUR
They compromised on five minutes of official remarks—condensed to the point of near-meaninglessness—followed by the presentation of keys and the photograph for the newsletter. Lunaria smiled for the camera with the practiced ease of someone who’d done this before and would rather be anywhere else.
The camera flashed. He stepped away like he’d been burned.
Then came the forms.
“Fourteen?” She stared at the stack he’d placed on the table between them. The crowd had dispersed; only Wyatt and Narla remained, lingering near the gate with poorly concealed curiosity. “You need fourteen forms for a garden restoration?”
“The gardens are municipal property. There are liability considerations, access requirements, and employment documentation—”
“This one.” She pulled a form from the middle of the stack. “This one is for the garden shed.”
“Yes. Form 7-B. Authorization to access ancillary structures.”
“It’s a shed.”
“It’s a municipal structure containing potentially hazardous equipment—”
“It’s a shed with rakes in it.” She waved the form at him, and he tried not to notice the way her bicep flexed with the motion. Failed. “What am I going to do, impale myself on a trowel?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Have they? In Haven Shores, where apparently the biggest excitement in sixty years has been a bunch of shifters finding their fated mates?”
Hux’s spine stiffened. Fated mates. The words hit like a blow, aimed precisely at the wound he’d been pretending didn’t exist. “The forms are standard procedure—”
“The forms are bureaucratic overkill designed by someone who’s never actually worked in a garden.” She pulled a pen from behind her ear—he hadn’t even noticed it there—and began signing with aggressive swoops of ink. “Does anyone ever actually read these?”
“I read them.”
“Of course, you do.” Her pen moved faster. Signature after signature, each one a small act of defiance. “I bet you read them twice. I bet you have a filing system. Color-coded. Alphabetized.”
“Three times, actually. And yes. The color-coding is by department.”
She looked up at that, her hand pausing mid-signature.
Those dark eyes met his, and for a moment, the sarcasm dropped away.
He saw vulnerability underneath—exhaustion, maybe.
Wariness. The look of someone who’d learned to keep the world at arm’s length and didn’t quite know what to do when someone refused to maintain the expected distance.
“You actually care about this stuff,” she said. Not mocking now. Genuinely curious. “All the forms and procedures. It matters to you.”
“Someone has to.”
“Does it have to be you?”
The question caught him off guard. He didn’t have an answer that wasn’t also a confession—that the forms and procedures were the only things keeping him grounded.
“It’s my job,” he said instead.
“Right.” She finished signing the last form and slid the stack across the table. “Your job.”
There was understanding in her voice. Recognition. She could see right through the mayoral polish to the void beneath.
His lion stirred again, and this time the sensation wasn’t just desire. It was kinship—more unsettling still.
Kinship.
“I’ll have a preliminary restoration report on your desk by the end of the week.” She stood, tucking her pen back behind her ear. The sunflower had given up the ghost at some point during the signing, drooping sadly against her hair. “Try not to faint from excitement.”
“I’ll brace myself.”
Another almost-laugh. “See you around, Mayor Clipboard.”
She turned and walked toward the gate.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of meetings and paperwork that Hux couldn’t quite focus on. His mind kept drifting back to her dirt-marked skin. To the way she’d looked at him when she asked if it had to be him—knowing the answer and finding it unexpectedly interesting.
Mayor Clipboard. He should have been offended. He was offended. He was also, despite every logical reason against it, fighting the urge to smile.
Get a grip.
By evening, the office had emptied. His assistant had left an hour ago, and the building had settled into the particular quiet of after-hours—creaking floors, humming electricity, the distant sound of the harbor.
Hux sat at his desk, paperwork completed, schedule reviewed, everything in its proper place. The portrait of his grandfather stared down from the wall, stern and competent, the quintessential Holt mayor.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk.
The candle sat where he’d left it three months ago, half-burned, wick blackened from that single use. Narla’s craftsmanship was evident in the elegant shape, the subtle shimmer in the wax that spoke of the magic woven into its making. Half-burned. Unanswered.
His phone rang. The screen showed his father’s name.
“Dad.” He closed the drawer, pushed back from his desk. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you tonight.”
“I heard the new botanist arrived.” Isandro Holt’s voice was careful, measured. The tone he used when discussing family matters, when navigating the invisible minefields of Holt history. “The Reed girl.”
“She’s... unconventional.” That was one word for it. Several others came to mind, most of them unprintable and several of them uncomfortably close to complimentary.
“She’s a celestial witch.” A pause, heavy with a feeling Hux couldn’t identify. “A powerful one, from what I understand.”
“Junie vouches for her. Says she’s one of the strongest in their family.”
“The gardens.” His father’s voice shifted, tightening around the edges. “They’ve been dormant since Deia passed. If this Reed woman has the power to wake them...”
“That’s what we’re hoping for. The restoration could be significant for the town.”
“Be careful, son.” The words came out rougher than Isandro probably intended. “Those gardens hold old memories. Some things are better left buried.”
Hux frowned. His father sat on the Elder Council and had been involved in Haven Shores governance for decades. He knew the gardens’ history as well as anyone. But an edge in his voice suggested more than historical concern.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” Too quick. Too defensive. “Just... keep an eye on the situation. Report anything unusual.”
“Unusual how?”
Silence stretched across the line. When Isandro spoke again, his voice had the careful neutrality of a man choosing each word with surgical precision.
“The gardens were more than just decorative, Hux. They served purposes that most people have forgotten. If Ms. Reed is as powerful as her cousin claims, she might uncover things that... complicate matters.”
“What kind of things?”
“Old things. Council matters.” His father’s breath came heavy through the phone, the words physically difficult to produce. “I can’t—just be careful. Please.”
The line went dead.
Hux stared at his phone, the unease that had been prickling at him all day crystallizing into genuine alarm. His father was many things—formal, distant, burdened by a family legacy that had shaped every Holt for generations—but he wasn’t the type for cryptic warnings.
Things that complicate matters. Old things. Council matters.
His lion paced restlessly, alert now in a way that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with instinct. Danger. That’s what the beast sensed. Not immediate, not physical, but danger, nonetheless.
He should have gone home.
Instead, Hux found himself at the window, staring north toward the edge of town where the Celestial Gardens sat in their decades of neglect. From here, he couldn’t see them—just the dark mass of forest and the faint glow of stars above.
The stars seemed brighter tonight. More present. More aware, if such a thing were possible.
You’d be surprised, she’d said when he mentioned the gardens were dormant.
What had she found out there? What had distracted her enough to make her twenty minutes late to her own ceremony, covered in moss and dirt and looking like she’d been wrestling with the very earth itself?
His hand found the windowsill, fingers pressing against the cool glass. Forty years old, eight years as mayor, and he’d never once felt the pull to investigate those gardens himself. They were dormant. Historical. A project for restoration, not a mystery to solve.
Hux pressed his forehead to the glass, breathing slowly, fighting for the control that had come so easily before today.
The candle in his desk showed nothing. Whatever his lion thought it sensed was a mistake. A glitch. A malfunction in instincts that had been dormant so long, they’d forgotten how to work properly.
And yet.
Memories of the way she’d looked at him filled his mind. The flash of recognition when she asked if it had to be him. The understanding in her voice when she said your job like she knew what it cost him.
Hux closed his eyes against the wanting that shouldn’t exist.
He would keep his distance. Maintain professionalism. She was a contractor, here to do a job, and he was the mayor who would oversee her work. Nothing more.
His lion called him a liar again.
This time, standing alone in his office with the stars burning bright and the vacant candle waiting in his desk and his father’s cryptic warning echoing in his ears, Hux wasn’t entirely sure the beast was wrong.