3. Scarlet Sage
Scarlet Sage
My cottage usually knows how to give me back to myself. After my time in town, my dress feels too fitted, my bra feels like barbed wire, and every inch of exposed skin seems aware that nobody is touching it.
I change into worn denim shorts and the oversized cream sweater I keep draped over the back of my bedroom chair. The ensemble is too warm for May in Florida. I know that. The sweat already gathering behind my knees definitely knows that.
But my body needs the weight, no matter how much I sweat. The sweater settles over my shoulders, soft and heavy enough to create the illusion of contact. I tug one sleeve down over my hand and stand there for a moment, waiting for the familiar relief.
Usually, this helps. Right now, it’s being upstaged by an alpha whose scent followed me home. The alpha’s cedar is everywhere.
I carry what is left of Honey’s lavender coffee into the kitchen and set it beside the stack of notes I abandoned yesterday. Afternoon light stretches across the scarred wood table. The cottage is quiet except for the ceiling fan overhead and cicadas buzzing beyond the screened windows.
Despite trying to settle in my favorite spot with my notes, my body keeps reaching backwards toward the pack from the bakery.
Wes’s scent refuses to leave me. He is smoke and warm cedar wrapped around an alpha frequency so steady my omega noticed him before I had the good sense to be discerning.
There was strength in his presence, but none of the aggressive pressure I usually associate with unfamiliar alphas paying too much attention to me.
Roman made everything worse. His cardamom and cinnamon settled around Wes without disappearing into him, and the frequency between them was so balanced that my body nearly embarrassed me in the middle of Sweet Tooth.
I have been around bonded packs my entire life.
I know what stable pack frequency feels like.
Sometimes I stand a little too close to one at the farmers market because the warmth takes the edge off.
I stay longer than necessary at Sweet Tooth because Honey and Junie give me enough familiar affection to quiet the low ache for an hour.
I have learned how to take tiny amounts of comfort where I can find them without pretending they belong to me.
Wes and Roman feel different. Their presence didn’t just make the ache ease, it made me want to get closer, to let my scent curl around theirs until there was no distinction. Heat rolls low through my belly at the memory, and I grip the edge of the counter.
My omega has some serious opinions right now.
Even the memory of them has my body coming alive.
My nipples are still too sensitive beneath the sweater, and there is an insistent heaviness between my thighs that absolutely did not exist before two strangers walked into Sweet Tooth and started touching each other like affection was as ordinary as breathing.
Neither man is safe. Together, they are devastating.
Watching packs usually makes me feel like an outsider. But with them, some reckless part of me looked at the space between them and wondered what it might feel like if they made room.
My mind offers several suggestions. One involves Roman’s mouth. Another involves Wes’s hands. The third is less specific and mostly consists of being surrounded by cedar, cardamom, and enough skin-to-skin contact to finally make my body stop asking for more.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “No.”
The spoon in my abandoned morning coffee cup turns against the ceramic with a soft clink. I open one eye, narrowing in on the movement. The spoon settles.
“Exactly. And stay down.”
Sweetheart Haven has hundreds of little superstitions nobody admits to believing until one happens directly in front of them.
Flowers turning toward the house mean someone beloved is coming home.
When a broom falls across a doorway it means unwanted company.
And if a spoon moves in your cup, it means someone is speaking your name.
I pick up the cup and inspect the bottom as if faulty table construction might provide a more dignified explanation. The table is level.
“Coincidence.”
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that half the town is probably talking about me and the investigators right now.
The porch light clicks on.
My head turns slowly toward the front windows. Sunlight is pouring across the porch but the blue light glows cheerfully anyway.
I stare at it, annoyed that the cottage has so much to say today.
There is, unfortunately, a superstition for that one too. A blue porch light burning without reason means someone inside the house is lying to herself.
“You’re being dramatic.”
The cottage says nothing, but the light stays on.
I take a long drink of my iced coffee and immediately regret it because the ice has melted enough to turn Honey’s beautiful lavender concoction into floral sadness.
On the table, the spoon taps the side of the morning cup again. I pretend I don’t see it but my mind drifts back to the bonded pair of investigators. They are talking about the investigation, not me, I remind myself. Except Wes knew my name before I gave it to him and Roman knew about my books.
My body warms again, an ache settling between my legs.
“Traitors,” I mutter, with no clear idea whether I mean the spoon, my hormones, or the entire concept of attraction.
I cross to the kitchen window and push it wider. Wet heat rolls in from the swamp. It helps a little.
Their case should be the problem occupying my attention. Why do they think GatorX is coming from here? What wetland compounds have they found? Who put swamp lilies among sweetheart offerings where they do not belong? And the pack in the square, their breaking bond… is that connected?
The wrongness of it presses against me, even though I don’t understand it.
That’s the way it seems to work. I can tell when something is wrong but never anything useful like how to fix it.
Just like I knew something was wrong with Junie’s pack before their bond failed.
I knew it while everyone around me smiled and congratulated her and talked about how beautiful the ceremony would be. I could not explain it then either.
People call that prediction because prediction is easier to understand than knowing.
My grandmother called it paying attention.
She also kept enough notebooks full of crossed-out dates, corrected legends, strange dreams, and tarot spreads to suggest her definition of what counted as paying attention was unusually broad.
My gaze drops to the deck beside my notebook.
The cards have been in my family for generations.
The corners are softened from use, the backs faded enough that I know which card has the tiny white nick along one edge.
They don’t tell the future, which is never what anyone wants to hear.
At their best, they give me a way to see things I already know but have not figured out how to name.
At their worst, they tell me what I am afraid of and leave me to decide what to do with that fear.
I pull out a chair.
The porch light continues glowing.
“Fine.”
The deck is warm when I pick it up. I shuffle slowly, letting the familiar motion settle my hands. The fountain comes to mind first. I picture the flowers covering the stone ledge. Then the pale swamp lilies tucked among them like a sentence written in the wrong language.
I cut the deck. The strained pack comes next. The alpha reaching for his omega and stopping. Her confusion. The sudden absence where their connection had been. Another shuffle. Then GatorX in my swamp. My fingers slow. Wes and Roman slip into the thought before I can stop them.
I shuffle harder but I can almost smell cedar and cardamom and that warm, steady pack frequency between them. My body gives a small answering pulse.
“Still not relevant.”
I cut the deck into three piles. My grandmother used to say that if you have to keep telling a thing it does not matter, you have already answered the question.
My gran was irritatingly right. I put the deck back together and pull three cards.
The first turns over beneath my fingers to reveal The Moon.
It warns of illusion, distortion, and things seen badly because the light is wrong.
My stomach tightens but I flip the second card. Judgment.
I sit back like I’ve been burned. Judgment is recognition or seeing what has been buried. It means someone is being called to answer for what is true after spending too long pretending not to hear it.
The third card sticks against the deck. I tug it free. Two of Cups. For several seconds, I simply stare. Then I laugh once, because apparently the universe thinks it has got jokes.
“No.”
I reach for the card but my fingers stop before touching it. The image shows two figures facing each other, cups raised between them. The same knowing from the fountain brushes beneath my skin.
My smile disappears.
I look at the three cards again. Distortion. Recognition. Connection.
They do not answer anything. They never do. But something about the spread feels unfinished, like a sentence with the last line torn away. I gather the cards and shuffle again. The deck catches. One card slips free and lands faceup beside my coffee. The Tower.
A chill moves over my arms despite the sweater and the Florida heat. “Nope.”
I scoop it up and shove it back into the deck. Buildings fall in tarot all the time. It’s metaphorical, not actual buildings. That feeling is not an omen. Sweetheart Haven is perfectly fine.
The porch light continues burning.
I glare at it. “Not one word.”
A vehicle moves somewhere along the distant road, tires crunching over shell and gravel before the sound fades again. I gather the cards into one neat stack but leave them on the table beside my cold coffee.
The unease remains. So does the heat in my body when I remember Wes looking at me or Roman smiling.
And the effortless way Wes’s hand found Roman while Roman leaned into him.
I want that. The admission sits heavily enough that I can’t joke it away.
I want them and the frequency they make together.
Stupidly, I wish there was a possibility there might be room inside their pack for me.
I pull my sweater tighter around myself, shivering.
Something splashes in the water beyond the reeds of the deck. The porch light finally goes dark.
“Thank you.”
The spoon in my coffee cup gives one last quiet stir.
I decide not to think about what that means.