25. Roman Osprey
Roman Osprey
Cypress Kiss Rentals sits three streets from the square, close enough for tourists to hear festival music and far enough from the swamp to pretend the water doesn’t own this town.
The cottages are painted in pastels, each door dressed with a heart-shaped wreath and a little plaque naming its cottage after one of Sweetheart Haven’s famous romances. The one Tom sends us to is called Alpha’s Promise, because this town has yet to meet a tender legend it didn’t want to monetize.
Scarlet reads the plaque, then looks toward the cottage windows, where the curtains have been pulled tight against the afternoon glare. She looks worn down by the last twenty-four hours, yet the softness in her expression is no longer buried beneath mockery.
Wes and I check the camera feed from Scarlet’s property before he pockets his phone.
The greenhouse view is clear. The porch sensor is active.
Whoever threatened her hasn’t disappeared simply because the case moved into town, and none of us have forgotten it.
His hand settles at the small of Scarlet’s back.
A bond medic opens the door. “BESTF?”
Wes nods. “Wes Osprey. Roman Osprey and Scarlet Sage.”
Recognition crosses the medic’s face when he looks at Scarlet, followed by the cautious pause people in this town rarely manage to hide. Her fingers tighten around mine. She lifts her chin but doesn’t retreat behind a cutting remark.
Inside, the cottage smells of lavender cleaner, cold coffee, flowers, and the bitter edge of fear sweat.
Festival blooms sit in a pink mason jar on the table.
A sweetheart welcome basket rests half-unpacked near the kitchenette, tissue paper spilling over the counter beside a discarded flyer.
Wes sees it when I do. His gaze shifts from the flyer to a dried bundle lying on the table, then toward the bedroom door.
Across the room, a beta sits on the edge of the couch with his hands open on his knees, trying to make himself look harmless.
He’s sandy-haired, perhaps thirty, with shadows beneath his eyes and a shirt wrinkled from a night without sleep.
The alpha stands near the bedroom door, broad shoulders curved beneath a blue polo, every protective instinct in him focused on the omega beyond it.
Tom waits beside the window with his hat in his hands. “Grant and Ellis Pruitt. Their omega is Maribel. They came down from Savannah for the early festival ceremonies.”
Grant looks at Scarlet first. “Are you the woman from the bakery?”
Wes shifts closer, though he leaves Scarlet room to answer.
“Yes,” she says, her voice gentle.
Grant’s eyes shine. “Then tell me how to make her hear me.”
Scarlet’s face opens with compassion. This is why we need her here. Her knowledge of the swamp and the town’s rituals helps, but Maribel needs the omega who understands how fear can twist care until it sounds like a threat.
“What is she hearing?” Scarlet asks.
Ellis rubs both of his hands over his face. “That I’m not me.”
The bedroom door opens a few inches. Maribel stands there wrapped in a white hotel robe with pink hearts embroidered at the cuffs.
Her dark curls are flattened on one side, and exhaustion has dulled the warmth of her brown skin.
She looks across the room, finds Ellis, and crumples around the sight of him. “You came back wrong,” she whispers.
Ellis makes a broken sound.
Grant takes one step toward her, then stops before he crowds the doorway. “Baby, he’s Ellis.”
Maribel shakes her head. “He smells like him. He looks like him. The bond says no.”
Scarlet’s hand finds mine again. I close my fingers around hers while Wes lowers his voice.
“Have you used GatorX before?”
Grant recoils. “No. We don’t touch that.”
“We’re tracing exposure, not accusing you,” I say. “Walk us through everything you used after you arrived.”
Ellis points toward the table. “The bundle. A vendor said it would help with early bond strain. We’re newly courted, and Mari has been nervous about the ceremony. When the Love Stone disappeared, she worried the trip had been ruined.”
Scarlet studies the welcome basket. “How did you use it?”
Maribel keeps one hand wrapped around the doorframe. “The card said to put the flowers beneath my pillow and breathe through the relief prayer.” Her voice frays as she continues. “It worked at first.”
Wes focuses on her with the patience he uses when every detail matters. “Tell me what changed.”
“For a few hours, everything felt quiet.” Tears spill down her cheeks. “Then Ellis touched my hand, and the bond rejected him. I know his face. I know his scent. Inside, he feels like a stranger. The bond won’t hold.”
Grant closes his eyes.
Scarlet moves forward. Wes follows one pace but stops when she glances back.
“I’m coming closer,” Scarlet tells Maribel. “I’ll stay over here unless you ask for more.”
Maribel nods.
Scarlet crosses the room with measured steps, her skirt brushing her boots and her cardigan sleeves pulled over her palms. There is no armor now.
She stops several feet from the doorway.
“Fear changed the meaning of everything for me yesterday. Help sounded like control. Care sounded like blame. I could recognize the people in front of me and still mistrust what they said.”
“I don’t understand.” Maribel watches her with desperate attention. “What helped?”
“Choice,” Scarlet says. Her gaze moves to Wes, then to me, and she doesn’t look away from what the answer reveals. “They gave me room to decide what I could handle. They reminded me of what I knew before fear took over.”
Wes’s steady cedar scent warms the room.
I look at Ellis. “Give her one memory that belongs only to the two of you.”
Ellis swallows. “You hate when I eat orange marmalade on my toast because your grandmother called it sunshine jam and made you eat it whenever you were sick.”
A wet laugh escapes Maribel, and she breaks into a sob.
Scarlet’s voice softens. “Stay with that memory. Let it be true, even while the bond feels wrong.”
Grant looks at Wes. “Can we fix this?”
Wes doesn’t offer comfort he can’t guarantee.
“The medic can help reduce the exposure and monitor her symptoms. Remove the bundle and anything stored with it. Keep contact at the level she chooses. If she wants touch, familiar scents and a steady purr may help her regulate. Let her nest if she wants to, and use memories she trusts to help her orient while we work out what happened.”
Tom clears his throat. “We’ll collect the basket, bundle, card, and packaging after you’ve taken a sample.”
I pull gloves from my bag. The bundle is put together with the kind of care that makes it look trustworthy.
A dried swamp lily curls around marigold stems, white thread, and a cheap stone charm.
The card carries the same faint chemical sweetness we found in the crate behind the old post office, sitting beneath the sour flower rot, like something that doesn’t belong there.
Scarlet watches my face. “Same odor?”
“Yes.”
Wes comes beside me and studies the bundle without touching it. “The booth materials, the flyer, and this bundle are starting to form a drug delivery system. We test for the compound, but the pattern is no longer random.”
Scarlet nods. “The vendor sold relief to people already afraid of bond failure. Maribel used it and felt better briefly, then became worse.”
“We need to find out who else has been exposed to similar bundles,” I say.
The medic gives Maribel a grounding cloth carrying Grant’s scent and arranges the men where she can see them. Ellis talks about their first trip together, his voice rough but steady. Grant’s purr rolls low through the cottage, warm enough to ease the sharpest edge of her panic.
Scarlet stands beside me while we finish the evidence bags, her shoulder resting lightly against my arm.
When we step onto the porch, late-afternoon light gleams through water dripping from the eaves. Festival banners flutter down the street, pink and cheerful against the muffled crying inside the cottage.
Tom follows us out. “Lena’s pack is worse.”
Scarlet grips the porch rail. I lay my palm over the back of her hand, and she turns hers beneath mine and threads our fingers together.
“Tell us,” she says.
“Lena keeps insisting her alpha already left. Her beta started showing symptoms this morning: headache, nausea, scent drop. The medic says the whole pack is destabilizing.”
Wes looks toward the cottage door. “Did they use a bundle?”
“Not that we know. Her cousin bought one yesterday and brought it to the bakery.”
Scarlet draws a slow breath through her nose. “The booth may be using the town’s fear to place the same materials in several locations,” she says.
Wes nods. “We trace the booth permit, the Magnolia crate, and whoever printed the flyers. We compare Maribel’s bundle with the post office samples and see if we can recover one that made it to the bakery.”
Tom settles his hat back on his head. “When I get back to the station, I’ll pull the vendor records and have a deputy see about tracking down the bakery bundle.”
A movement across the street catches Wes’s attention. A tourist raises a phone toward the porch, then lowers it when Wes looks over. The tourist thinks better of it.
Scarlet turns toward me, fatigue visible in the way her shoulders lower. “Can we go home after this?”
Home. The word catches my attention because she uses it easily, without correcting herself.
I lift our joined hands and press my mouth to her knuckles. “We need to get samples out for testing to Pepper and the lab, but then yes, sweetheart.”
Wes opens the truck door for her. Scarlet pauses beside him, lays one hand against his chest, and kisses him with quiet affection before climbing inside. His eyes stay on her after she climbs inside, and cedar deepens through the humid afternoon air.
I slide into the back seat beside her. She settles against my shoulder while Wes checks the mirrors, the rear camera, and the road behind us before pulling away.
Maribel’s sob follows through the cracked cottage window, thin and wounded beneath the bright snap of festival banners.
Beneath the charm of the upcoming Month of Heart festival, pack bonds are paying the price.