26. Scarlet Sage
Scarlet Sage
The cottage keeps me upright until the front door closes. Then Maribel’s voice follows me through the entryway, scraped raw from calling her own beta a stranger. I see Ellis kneeling in front of her again, offering memories like handholds while the bond told her to be afraid.
Rain taps the porch roof. Mud dries in cool streaks over my calves. Roman reaches for my wet cardigan while Wes crosses the kitchen with his phone pressed to his ear, already talking to Tom about patrols, camera angles, and the blind stretch between the greenhouse and the cypress path.
I should take off my shoes. I should drink water. I should help.
My gaze catches on the evidence wall. At the edge of the wall, my grandmother’s handwriting waits beneath plastic. Held too tightly. Release worsens after false protection. Consent mark fails when only one side agrees. The phrases look different, now that I’ve heard Maribel’s cries.
Wes ends the call. Rain beads across the shoulders of his black shirt. “Pepper sent over a preliminary comparison.”
Roman’s hand settles at the back of my neck. His palm is warm, but my skin feels stretched too thin around my bones. “What did she find?”
“The material from Maribel’s bundle matches the residue from the arrangement left at your greenhouse,” Wes says.
“Same synthetic carrier found in the GatorX samples. Same plant binder Pepper isolated from the dock vegetation. We’ve got her coordinating with the BESTF lab.
They’ll send official confirmation in the next twenty-four. ”
The floor shifts under my feet.
Roman tightens his hold. “Easy.”
I force air through my lungs. “The bundle at my house was contaminated.”
“Low concentration,” Wes says. “Pepper thinks most of it had already washed into the soil by the time we collected it.”
Most of it. My ruined marigold bed swims into focus. Whoever placed the arrangement had woven my flowers through swamp grass, tied them with white thread, and tucked my grandmother’s words beneath them with enough care to keep the rain away.
They put GatorX in my flowers. “They expected me to touch it.”
Wes’s jaw flexes. “That is one possibility.”
I can’t think about the implications of that, or I’ll run screaming from the room. I force myself to move closer to the evidence wall, trying to think of anything else about this that makes sense. My grandmother’s handwriting slopes across the page, familiar enough to make my chest ache.
“Why these words?”
Roman looks at the copied note. “Maybe they wanted you to read those lines.”
“Do they mean anything together?” Wes asks.
“Maybe.” I trace the edge of the evidence sleeve without touching the paper. “Held too tightly could refer to a bond under strain. My grandmother wrote about pressure making damage worse.”
“Pressure from what?” Roman asks.
“She never used one word when six confusing ones would do.” My throat tightens. “It could mean control, a forced bond claim, or a pack refusing to release a bond that is already breaking.”
My eyes drop to the second line. Release worsens after false protection. Maribel said the bundle had calmed her. Hours later, Ellis felt like a stranger. “The relief came first,” I say. “Then the recognition failure.”
Wes steps beside me, and cedar cuts through the air. “You think that line describes the product.”
“I think it’s possible whoever circled it believes it does.” I look at him. “That is not the same as understanding what my grandmother meant.”
“And the consent mark?” Roman asks.
I read the sentence again. Consent mark fails when only one side agrees.
“It sounds like a bond that can’t settle unless both people choose it. Or a ritual mark. She wrote about both.” Frustration presses behind my eyes. “These are fragments. Whoever copied them removed the pages around them.”
“Which means context may be what they need from you,” Roman says.
That means the bundle was both a threat and a question. Whoever left it knew my family papers mattered. They knew I would recognize the handwriting. They knew I would try to finish the thought. And… they knew I would touch it. The idea settles cold in my stomach.
Wes’s phone vibrates. He reads the message, and the controlled set of his face sharpens.
“What?”
“Pepper says the greenhouse residue remained active after the rain. Weak, but active.” He looks at me. “She wants to know whether you’ve noticed anything off.”
The room tilts. My heart drops to my stomach.
Roman turns me toward him. “Scarlet?”
“They put it where I grow food. Where I walk barefoot.”
Wes is already moving. He grabs the camera case and checks the back door. “I’m securing the property again. No one goes near the greenhouse until Pepper clears it.”
The words should help.
Instead, Maribel’s terror tears through me. Her bond lied to her. My home has been dosed. My body may already be reacting, and the person who did it left my grandmother’s voice behind as proof that they could reach inside every place I thought belonged to me.
My knees fold.
Roman catches me before I hit the rug. He lowers with me, gathering me against his chest while my breath breaks into short, useless pulls.
“I don’t want to become her.” My confession comes out wet and rough. “I don’t want to look at you and feel afraid. I don’t want that inside my body.”
Cardamom fills my next breath. Roman holds me close enough that I stop fighting his arms.
“You make your choices,” he says.
“What if I can’t tell the difference?”
“Then we slow down until you can.”
Roman waits until my breathing stops fighting me. “I’m running you a bath.”
“I should help.”
“You are helping by not doing anything.”
“That feels suspicious.”
His laugh loosens the tight band around my ribs.
He gets me upstairs with one arm around my waist. Steam gathers on the bathroom mirror while he fills the tub and adds lavender salts.
He tests the water with his forearm, then eases my cardigan from my shoulders.
Mud stains the hem of my skirt. My tank clings between my breasts.
He undresses me with patient hands and an appreciative gaze.
“Beautiful,” he says.
My eyes burn. “I feel poisoned.”
His expression softens. “What happened to you isn’t right, and I’m sorry it happened in your own yard. We’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
His words are too much, and I look away before I lose myself to tears. I step in and sink down, letting the bath close around my legs and hips. Heat loosens the cramped muscles along my spine.
Roman kneels beside the tub, wets my hair using the brass cup from the windowsill, and works shampoo through my tangled strands. When I close my eyes, he keeps his hand on my shoulder.
“I can hear her crying,” I whisper.
“I wish I could take that memory from you.”
“What if wanting you is part of the drug?”
Roman rinses soap through my hair. Warm water streams down my neck, and he brushes his hands through it before adding conditioner. “Then don’t treat wanting as proof. Look back at every choice you made before the bundle, every time you reached for us with a clear head.”
I turn that over.
The bakery. The swamp. Roman beneath my hands. Wes between my thighs. The nest forming before I understood what I was building. “You were here before the greenhouse.”
“We were.”
The bathroom door opens.
Wes fills the doorway, rain darkening his shoulders and forearms. “Two more cameras are up. Motion sensors cover the rear gate and greenhouse path. Tom has a deputy circling every hour.”
His gaze moves over me in the bath, then at Roman on the floor. Some of the hard tension leaves his face. “You ate?”
Roman glances at me. “She has not.”
Wes disappears. He returns a few minutes later, carrying Honey’s casserole, sweet tea, and two fried pies dusted in cinnamon sugar. He sits on the vanity chair and lifts a forkful of chicken and rice.
“Open.”
“I can feed myself.”
“You can. Right now, your hands are shaking.”
I open my mouth.
The casserole is warm and full of comfort. Wes feeds me while Roman rubs slow circles on my ankles beneath the water. They don’t ask me to be brave. They give my body smaller tasks instead. Chew. Swallow. Breathe.
By the time the bowl is empty, exhaustion weighs more than panic.
Roman drains the bath and wraps me in a towel.
He sits me on the edge of my ancient clawfoot tub, squeezes water from my hair, and works a comb through the tangles.
Wes crouches beside me and rubs lotion into my chilled feet, as if caring for them deserves his full concentration.
His purr fills the bathroom with the slow steady beat of comfort.
Roman slides one arm beneath my knees and carries me to the bedroom.
“I have legs.”
“I remain a devoted admirer of them.”
I give in without more protest and press my nose against his chest so I can breathe him in.
My nest has spread across the mattress in quilts, borrowed shirts, Roman’s sweater, and the green blanket from the linen cupboard. He places me in the center and arranges pillows around my hips and shoulders.
Wes bends to kiss my forehead. “I need to finish the report.”
“Come back.”
His eyes darken. “Always when you ask.”
Roman strips to his briefs and climbs into the nest. He cups my face and kisses me slowly until my breathing matches his. “What do you need?” he asks.
“You.”
His thumb traces my lower lip. “How?”
“Make love to me.”
The words change his expression.
He removes the towel and looks at me as if I’m precious. His mouth moves over my breasts, my ribs, and the soft curve of my stomach. Cardamom replaces the chemical sweetness lodged in my memory.
When he settles between my thighs, I tug him upward. “Inside me.”
His gaze searches mine. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. I need to feel you.”
He pushes his briefs down. His cock is hard and flushed, precum shining at the tip. He rubs through my slick, coating himself before pressing inside. The stretch of him is warm and familiar. Roman lowers over me and rests his forehead against mine.
“I chose you before the bundle,” I whisper.
“Yes.” His eyes close for a breath. Then he moves. “And I’ll choose you again and again.”
Roman makes love with patient attention, his hips rolling deep while his hand slides beneath my ass to tilt me into every stroke. His mouth stays against mine.
“You take me so well,” he murmurs against my lips, “like you were made to fit me.”
Pleasure gathers thick through my belly, spreading low and slow until every roll of his hips drags a sound out of me.
“That’s it,” he says softly, his voice rough with restraint. “Let me feel you fall apart for me.”
I come with my hands in his hair, my whole body curling toward him, pleasure pulsing in waves I can’t outrun. He keeps moving, slower now, kissing the tears from my cheeks until a rough breath sounds from the doorway.
Wes stands there with his shirt open and his hand over the hard ridge in his pants. He strokes himself while watching Roman fill me, restraint visible in the hard line of his body.
Want and need rise inside me, heat pooling low in my belly.
Roman glances back. “She wants you closer.”
Wes climbs into the nest near my head and unzips his pants. I reach for him, but he catches my hand and kisses my palm. “I want that pretty mouth.”
My pussy clenches, and Roman curses. “She likes that, Alpha.”
I let Wes feed me his cock while Roman moves harder. Wes threads his fingers through my hair, guiding without forcing. Roman’s cock drives into me in deep strokes, and each thrust pushes a moan around Wes.
Between the two of them, I can’t worry or think. They keep me in my body, caught in pleasure.
“You feel too good.” Wes pulls free before he comes and kisses me, tasting himself from my tongue.
Roman’s rhythm breaks, and I feel him lose the battle with his restraint. He buries his face against my neck and comes inside me with a shudder. When he eases out, he gathers me against his chest.
Wes settles between my thighs and presses the broad head of his cock against me. “Look at me.”
I meet his gaze.
“Do you want this?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I need your knot. I need you.”
Wes’s eyes darken, and his purr beats hard from his chest. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
He enters carefully, his eyes never leaving mine. Wes is thicker, the stretch fuller and more demanding. Roman holds me from behind while Wes pushes deeper, inch by patient inch, until our bodies meet.
His first stroke steals my breath. He moves with control sharpened by hunger. Roman cups my breast and circles my clit while Wes drives into me, surrounding every frightened thought with touch.
“That’s it. Let go, and let your alpha in,” Wes says.
He hits a spot deep inside, and an orgasm pulses through me, spotting my vision. I come in a wave of slick, my breathing shallow. The base of his cock swells.
Wes stops. “Scarlet.”
I wrap my legs around him. “Please.”
His eyes hold mine. “Why?”
“Because we’re real.”
Roman’s arm tightens around my waist. “That’s right.”
Wes kisses me deeply, his alpha rumbling with hunger in his chest. “Ask me.”
“Knot me, Alpha.”
He drives forward. The swelling presses against my entrance, broad enough to sting before my body opens around him. The knot pushes through in one controlled thrust.
Fullness steals my breath. Roman holds me through the sharp edge while Wes locks inside me. Pleasure follows, deep and consuming.
Wes comes with his face against my neck, teeth skimming my throat without closing.
Roman strokes my clit until another orgasm rolls through me, and I lose myself in the waves of bliss.
Later, after Wes’s knot softens, they clean me with warm cloths and rebuild the nest around us. Wes places his shirt beneath my cheek. Roman tucks his sweater against my stomach.
The evidence waits downstairs, proof that Maribel’s bundle and the arrangement at my home carried the same contaminated materials. My grandmother’s words remain unfinished. But tonight, I rest between cedar, cinnamon, and cardamom, held by men I choose even when I’m afraid.