Hux
EIGHT
His lion made a sound of pure disbelief.
Shut up.
The beast had been insufferable since that first meeting. Since the welcome ceremony debacle.
Hux pulled into the Wolf Moon Brewery parking lot and killed the engine.
Through the wide front windows, he could see the back booth already occupied.
Theo’s hair caught the overhead lights. Leo’s ridiculous laugh carried through the glass.
Beck was gesturing wildly about a beer, probably the new seasonal IPA he’d been developing.
He shoved out of the car and strode toward the entrance, rolling his shoulders to release the tension that had taken up permanent residence between his shoulder blades.
The brewery’s familiar scent hit him the moment he pushed through the door—hops and cedar and the faint undertone of wolf that Beck never quite managed to scrub out of the place.
“Well, well.” Leo spotted him first, leaning back in the booth with that shit-eating grin he’d perfected. “The mayor graces us with his presence. What happened, get lost on the way here?”
“Budget reviews.” Hux slid into the open seat next to Theo. “The fiscal quarter reports don’t prepare themselves.”
“On a Thursday night?” Wyatt’s voice was flat. The panther sheriff sat across the table, nursing what looked like his first beer, watching Hux with those too-perceptive eyes. “Since when do you work late on Guy Gathering nights?”
Since never. Hux had been attending these gatherings religiously for years. Work stopped at six on Thursdays. That was the rule.
A rule he’d ignored because he couldn’t decide on a fucking shirt.
“Things came up.”
Wyatt didn’t blink. “Mmm.”
The sound conveyed absolute disbelief. Classic Wyatt. The man had spent six years pretending he wasn’t obsessed with Narla Wright, and now he thought he was qualified to judge everyone else’s denial.
“Where’s Cal?” Hux asked, desperate to redirect.
“Video call.” Theo nodded toward the tablet propped against a beer flight at the end of the table. Cal’s face filled the screen, Dahlia visible in the background doing battle with chocolate in their Paris kitchen. “Time zones are a bitch.”
“I’m only staying for an hour,” Cal rumbled through the speakers. “Dahlia’s got a training session at 4:00 AM, and I’m not letting her walk home alone.”
“It’s two blocks,” Dahlia called from somewhere off-screen.
“Two blocks in a foreign city at four in the morning.”
“Paris isn’t a foreign city, it’s Paris.”
“Same thing.”
Beck slid a beer across the table toward Hux. Dark, hoppy, exactly what he needed. “Drink. You look like you need it.”
“Rough week?”
“Something like that.”
The lie tasted sour. The week hadn’t been rough. The week had been torture. Three days since Lunaria Reed had marched into his office with her sharp tongue and demands about archive access. Days of finding excuses to drive past the Celestial Gardens on his way to lunch.
“Where’s Delos?” Leo asked, scanning the brewery. “Didn’t his date end an hour ago?”
“About that.” Aero spoke for the first time, his ancient voice carrying a thread of dry amusement that would have been unreadable on anyone else.
The storm dragon sat at the end of the booth, his massive frame somehow folded into the cramped space.
“I received a rather frantic text message approximately forty-five minutes ago.”
“From Delos?”
“Indeed. The content was... alarming.”
On cue, the brewery door slammed open.
Delos Gefen stumbled through looking like a man who’d seen things. Terrible things. His usually immaculate hair was disheveled, his shirt half-untucked, and there was what appeared to be soup on his collar.
“I need alcohol,” he announced to the table. “All of it. Whatever you have.”
Beck waved to the bartender. “The usual?”
“Triple it.”
Delos collapsed into the seat next to Aero, his head dropping into his hands. For a long moment, no one spoke. The silence stretched, loaded with anticipation.
Finally, Beck cracked. “So. How was the date?”
Delos raised his head. His face was haunted.
“She cried.”
“Okay—”
“Into her soup.”
“That’s—”
“Twice.”
Leo’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “The selkie? Marina?”
“She cried into her soup twice about her ex.” Delos grabbed the beer that appeared in front of him and drained half of it in one go. “Her ex who is apparently the ocean.”
Theo frowned. “The ocean isn’t a person.”
“She’s a selkie, Theo. The ocean is a person to selkies.” Delos pressed his palms against his eyes. “She told me about the kelp.”
“The kelp?” Wyatt’s eyebrow twitched. It was the closest he ever came to visible emotion.
“The kelp that reminded her of their love. I sat there for forty-five minutes while she sobbed about seaweed, gentlemen. While my lobster bisque went cold.”
Leo was shaking with suppressed laughter. Even Theo’s mouth had curved into a near-smile.
“How did you get out?” Beck asked, sliding another beer across the table.
“I told her I needed to use the restroom.”
“And?”
“I climbed out the window.”
Silence.
Then the table exploded.
“You climbed out a window?” Leo was crying now, tears streaming down his face. “You’re a dragon. You’re a literal fire-breathing dragon, and you escaped a sad selkie through a bathroom window?”
“The restaurant was small! I couldn’t shift without destroying the building!” Delos’s voice rose defensively. “I hate all of you.”
Hux found himself laughing. Actually laughing, the tension in his shoulders loosening for the first time in days. There was an absurd comfort in watching a hundred-year-old dragon describe his catastrophic first date with the same misery as a human teenager.
“Sue Tidewell set this up?” Theo asked, recovering enough to speak.
“Of course, she did.” Delos scowled. “She said Marina was ‘perfect for me.’ That we had ‘compatible temperaments.’” He crossed his arms. “I’m done. Finished. The elders can take their matchmaking and shove it directly into the Mariana Trench.”
Delos opened his mouth to elaborate, then closed it. Defeated. Because they all knew Sue Tidewell got her way, and the next terrible date was probably already being arranged.
The conversation drifted into safer territory—Beck’s new IPA recipe, Theo’s upcoming expansion of the wolf pack territory, Cal’s detailed descriptions of French pastries that had everyone groaning with food envy. Normal talk. Comfortable talk.
Until Leo, because he was a bastard, turned to Hux with that gleam in his eye.
“So. I hear you met Junie’s cousin.”
The table went quiet.
Every head swiveled toward Hux. Even Cal’s pixelated face on the tablet screen seemed to lean forward.
“The new botanist.” Hux kept his voice level. “Yes. Standard introduction. Standard procedure.”
“She also said you watched her walk away for a full thirty seconds.”
“I was ensuring she left the premises safely.”
“Through her ass?”
Hux’s hands tightened on his beer glass. The urge to leap across the table and strangle Leo with his own stupid smile was almost overwhelming.
“There was nothing inappropriate about my conduct.” The words came out stiff. Formal. Mayor’s voice.
“Sure, there wasn’t.” Leo exchanged a look with Beck. “That’s why you showed up late tonight for the first time in three years.”
“Budget reviews—”
“And that’s why you’ve driven past the Celestial Gardens four times this week.”
Hux’s jaw clenched. How the hell did Leo know about that?
“The pride talks,” Leo said, answering the unasked question. “You really think lions don’t notice when their mayor suddenly develops an interest in botanical restoration?”
“The gardens are a significant municipal project. It’s appropriate for me to monitor progress.”
“From your car. Without stopping. Multiple times a day.”
Damn it.
“This is ridiculous.” Hux set his beer down harder than necessary. “She’s a contractor. I’m her administrative oversight. That’s the extent of our interaction.”
“You sound defensive,” Wyatt observed.
“I’m not defensive.”
“You sound extremely defensive.”
“I watched Narla for six years before I did anything about it.” Wyatt’s voice remained completely flat. “Thirty seconds seems efficient by comparison.”
The words landed like a punch. Six years. Wyatt had spent six years watching the woman he wanted, pretending he wasn’t interested, maintaining distance while his panther clawed at the inside of his ribs.
Six years of loneliness. Six years of that ache Hux knew too well.
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” Hux met Wyatt’s gaze.
The words came out before he could stop them.
The table went silent.
Beck set down his beer. Theo straightened in his seat. Leo’s grin faded into concern.
“Hux—” Theo started.
“Don’t.” Hux held up a hand. “I’m fine. It is what it is. Some people have fated mates waiting for them. Some people don’t. I’ve made my peace with it.”
Liar, his lion snarled.
“The mating surge doesn’t care about candle visions,” Leo said carefully. “The flames don’t always tell the whole story.”
“Or maybe they tell exactly the story they’re supposed to.” Hux’s voice came out harder than he intended. “Not everyone gets a happy ending, Leo. Some of us just get endings.”
Another silence. Longer this time. Heavy.
“That’s depressing as hell,” Delos said finally. “And I’m the one who got dumped for an ocean.”
Despite everything, Hux’s mouth twitched. “Fair point.”
“For what it’s worth,” Cal’s voice crackled through the tablet speakers, “I didn’t believe in any of this fate stuff until Dahlia literally fell into my arms during a panic attack. Sometimes the universe has a weird sense of timing.”
“The universe and I aren’t on speaking terms.”
“Then maybe it’s time to start the conversation.” Theo’s quiet authority cut through the noise. “You’ve spent your whole life managing everyone else’s problems, Hux. Maybe it’s time to let someone manage you for a change.”
The words burrowed somewhere beneath his ribs. Uncomfortable. True.
Lunaria Reed. The way she hadn’t blinked at his carefully constructed presence—just bulldozed right through it.
She wasn’t afraid of what she’d find underneath. That’s what made her dangerous.
His lion made a sound of pure want.
Inappropriate. Completely inappropriate.
“I need another beer,” Hux said.
Beck slid one across the table without comment.
The gathering wound down over the next hour.
Delos provided a dramatic recreation of his window escape that had even Aero’s lips twitching.
Cal signed off when Dahlia’s training session started, grumbling about French bakers and their ungodly hours.
Beck started closing up, turning chairs onto tables with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d grown up in this place.
Hux was gathering his jacket when Aero materialized beside him. For a dragon, the ancient storm creature moved with unsettling silence.
“A word.”
It wasn’t a question.
Hux followed Aero to a quiet corner near the emergency exit. The dragon’s dark gaze was unreadable, his face carved from the same ancient stone as the cliffs that overlooked Haven Shores.
“The celestial witch.” Aero’s voice dropped low enough that not even wolf ears would catch it. “Her magic is old. Older than most witches practice now.”
Hux’s spine stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“Celestial magic draws power from the stars themselves. From the movements of heavenly bodies, the alignment of cosmic forces. It’s not unlike dragon magic in that respect—ancient, vast, connected to things beyond mortal understanding.” Aero’s gaze was steady. “If she’s restoring those gardens...”
“What?”
“Something used Haven Shores once before.” The dragon’s voice dropped further, a low rumble barely audible.
“I was present during the last Convergence—120 years ago. I watched the ley lines spike in a pattern I had never seen in eight centuries. Every celestial current through this location flared simultaneously, then went dark for three days.”
The hair on Hux’s arms stood up. He remembered his father’s warning. The way Isandro’s face had gone blank when he’d mentioned the celestial witch.
Some things are better left buried.
“What caused it?”
“I could not determine it then.” Aero’s ancient gaze was steady.
“But I know what the pattern indicates. Something was feeding through the ley line network—not on magic, not on life force. On potential. On futures that had not yet formed. I have seen void entities before. This felt different. Deliberate. Anchored to something in this town rather than passing through it.” He paused.
“The gardens went silent the same week. I always believed that was connected.”
“The gardens were built as a warning system,” Hux said slowly.
“Among other things.” Aero met his gaze. “I came to Haven Shores specifically because of that Convergence. I have been watching this location for over a century, waiting for the pattern to repeat.”
Ice formed in Hux’s gut.
“You think it’s repeating.”
“I think danger has been waiting.” Aero straightened, the moment of confidence apparently over. “Be cautious, Hux. With the gardens. With the witch. With whatever doors she’s about to open.”
He walked away before Hux could respond, leaving the mayor standing alone in the quiet corner of the brewery.
Two warnings now. His father’s cryptic concern. Aero’s ancient caution. Both pointing toward Lunaria Reed and whatever she was about to uncover.
Outside, the night air was cool against his skin. Salt and pine and the distant crash of waves against the cliffs. Haven Shores at night, peaceful and sleeping, unaware of whatever dark things might be stirring beneath its surface.
Hux walked to his car and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine.
And now there was a witch in his town with bright eyes and a mouth that seemed designed specifically to drive him insane. A witch whose star-blooming flowers had started sprouting across the dead gardens as if they were reaching for something.
For her.
The way his lion was reaching.
Mine.
He started the car.
His assistant had left a stack of messages on his desk. Building permits, zoning disputes, a strongly worded letter from the Continental Council about Haven Shores’s “unprecedented accumulation of mated pairs.” Standard mayoral business.
And at the bottom of the stack, a handwritten note on paper that smelled faintly of night-blooming jasmine.
Mayor Clipboard—
Found a discovery in the gardens. Meet me at the pavilion tonight, 8 PM. Bring your skepticism and your nice shoulders.
—L
Hux stared at the note.
His lion roared with what could only be described as triumph.