36. Roman Osprey
Roman Osprey
By late afternoon, the cottage smells like broth, clean laundry, cedar, and the fading sweetness of Scarlet’s heat. Her temperature holds below one hundred one. The urgent edge in her scent has softened into a warm, exhausted bloom that clings to the living room.
Wes built the nest across half the sofa and most of the rug, layering quilts, pillows, every shirt Scarlet requested, and the soft crocheted scarf she found until the space belonged to all three of us.
She sleeps with her cheek against my thigh and one hand wrapped around Wes’s wrist. He has not shifted since she closed her eyes. He sits on the floor beside her, his back against the sofa, watching every breath as though vigilance alone can keep her safe.
I drag my fingers through his hair. “She’s cooling down.”
“She lost your scent.” His attention remains fixed on her face. “She looked at you like you were a stranger.”
“And then she found me.”
“She should never have been exposed.” The words come from the same place as his alpha’s growl, low and beneath his control.
I lean closer and press my mouth to his temple. “You kept her safe through it.”
“I left her.”
“For like six minutes.”
“The wrong six minutes could have killed her.”
Scarlet stirs against my leg, and Wes stops speaking. Her fingers tighten around his wrist before her eyes open. Sleep leaves her slowly. Auburn strands cling to her cheek, and the fever flush has faded to a softer pink. “You’re arguing over me,” she says.
“Reviewing operational decisions,” I answer.
“Quietly enough to wake me.”
“I’m sorry we woke you, sweetheart.” Wes lifts her hand to his mouth. “How do you feel?”
“Tired.” She shifts beneath the blankets, testing sore muscles. “Tender. Hungry.”
“I’ll reheat the soup.”
She catches the front of Wes’s shirt before he can rise. “Stay.”
Wes resettles beside her without hesitation.
I reach for the tray on the coffee table. The broth has cooled, but Scarlet accepts the mug and drinks several careful swallows while Wes holds the blanket around her shoulders.
When she finishes, she leans into him. She places her cheek against his chest and lets his hand travel down her back. “You can breathe,” she tells him.
“I’m breathing.”
“Barely.”
His palm spreads against her lower back. “You asked me to keep you safe.”
“I asked you to take care of me.” Scarlet lifts her head. “Those are not always the same thing.”
Wes looks toward me. The distinction reaches an old bruise shared between us.
I set the empty mug aside. “That’s why we joined BESTF,” I say.
Scarlet turns toward me.
Wes continues stroking her back.
“We were already bonded when he entered federal service,” I say. “I worked in victim advocacy for the county courts. Wes kept seeing cases where the law protected the registration of a bond more fiercely than the people living inside it.”
“Registered bonds are supposed to provide protection,” Scarlet says.
“They often do,” Wes replies. “Until the paperwork becomes more important than consent.”
“One of my clients tried to leave an alpha who controlled her suppressants, finances, and medical care. The court ordered her to return because the bond remained legally intact.”
Scarlet’s fingers curl into Wes’s shirt.
“He helped me move her before the order could be enforced,” I say.
She looks at him. “You broke the law.”
“I interpreted it aggressively.”
“That means yes.”
“It means she survived.” His voice doesn’t waver.
My throat tightens. “You would do that for a stranger.”
“She wasn’t a stranger by the time it mattered,” Wes says. “No one stays a stranger once you’ve seen what they’re willing to do to survive.”
I smooth Scarlet’s hair away from her neck.
“BESTF was forming a unit around bond coercion and interstate trafficking. Wes joined because he wanted enough authority to protect choice. I followed because he needs someone nearby who remembers that an arrest report doesn’t tell you whether a person feels safe. ”
Wes looks at me. “You followed because you hated your supervisor.”
“He microwaved fish in a shared office.”
Scarlet’s mouth curves.
The expression fades when Wes’s laptop sounds from the table. Wes reaches for the computer, but Scarlet’s hand remains tangled in his shirt. He brings the laptop into the nest rather than asking her to release him.
Tom sent the preservation shed access records, six weeks of activity, all of it routed through one shared festival-services login. Every code expires after a single use, which means there is no master password to crack, only a long list of ordinary errands.
“Shared login,” I say. “No individual credential attached to any of it.”
Wes nods. “Anyone with the password could generate a code in their own name and never leave a fingerprint.”
Scarlet shifts higher against him to see the screen. “Who has the password?”
Tom’s attached list answers her before either of us can: festival chair, historical society board, Heritage Hall director, preservation committee officers, archive staff, and approved vendor coordinators.
Myrtle Vane appears more often, but so do several names on the page.
Years of managing the same displays will do that.
Nothing on the list points anywhere by itself.
“Three entries are different,” Wes says, opening the comparison Tom’s analyst built. “These didn’t move volunteers or vendors.”
He lists them slowly.
“One, the copying request that gave someone access to your grandmother’s archive file. Two, the transfer code that moved a sealed museum container six days before the Love Stone went missing. Three, the codes Rusk used to collect his instructions from the shed.”
“All three are through the same account,” Scarlet says.
“Yes. It links the operations together. It doesn’t tell us who was typing.”
I open the museum’s return record. “The container went back into storage as part of a bulk return. No one signature confirms anyone actually opened it to check what was inside.”
Scarlet cocks her head to the side. “Doesn’t that mean the Love Stone may have been gone before anyone thought to look for it? Do you think they replaced it with a fake?”
“It’s possible.” I scroll to the original transfer request. “Floral supports. Tissue. Archival ribbon. Temporary signage. One sealed museum container, logged in the same list as everything else moving through the festival that week.”
“Hidden in plain supply,” Wes says.
A knock sounds at the front door.
Wes closes the laptop and rises in one movement, shifting Scarlet into my arms before crossing the room.
Tom waits on the porch with Pepper beside him. Beyond them, two news vans idle near the county road.
“The mayor announced Rusk’s arrest,” Tom says. “He called the threat contained.”
Wes’s cedar sharpens. “Without consulting the investigation?”
“He saw the jail intake record. The festival committee already released a statement saying every event continues as scheduled.”
Pepper steps inside, carrying a paper bag fragrant with biscuits and rosemary. “Half the town is celebrating. The other half is deciding whether Scarlet helped catch a criminal or attracted him.”
Scarlet draws the blanket more tightly around herself.
Wes moves between her and the front windows. “Those vans leave.”
“I told them they can’t cross the property line,” Tom says. “They’re waiting for a comment.”
“They’ll keep waiting.”
Pepper sets the bag on the table and crouches beside Scarlet. “Honey locked the bakery office after three committee members tried to recruit her for a public safety photograph.”
Scarlet accepts the biscuit Pepper offers but holds it in her lap.
“The town needs Rusk to be the end,” Tom says. “Hotel cancellations went up after the package at Cypress Kiss Rentals. The mayor thinks the arrest stops the bleeding.”
“And if the person directing him uses that?” Scarlet asks.
No one answers right away.
Pepper glances at Scarlet. “We should let you rest.” She squeezes Scarlet’s hand once. “I’ll leave the biscuits. Eat them before Wes does.”
“Already planning that,” Wes says.
Tom nods toward the laptop. “I’ll request an analyst comparison tonight. Outside eyes, like you asked.”
“Thank you, Tom.”
He pauses at the door. “Get some rest, Scarlet. We’ve got the rest of it.”
The door closes behind them. Quiet settles back over the cottage, broken only by the low hum of the swamp outside the windows.
Wes reopens the laptop. “We need every use of that account compared against the museum logs, the archive requests, the Magnolia deliveries, and the Heritage Hall schedule.”
I open the photograph of Scarlet’s grandmother’s map. The public protection route curves toward the cypress glade. The older brown line leaves it near the post office, passes south of the repair yard, and vanishes where the smaller vellum section was removed.
“The access account can tell us who opened doors,” I say. “The missing vellum might be the only thing that tells us where the route goes after that.”
“Or where the Love Stone was taken to,” Scarlet says and takes a small bite of biscuit.
Her scent thickens before either of us can name what’s happening.
“Scarlet.”
She grips Wes’s shirt. “It’s coming back.”
I touch her forehead. She’s hotter.
Wes lifts her into the nest while I call Dr. Cole.
She answers from the lab, safety glasses pushed into her hair. “Temperature?” she asks.
“One hundred two point two and rising.”
“Scent recognition?”
Scarlet presses her face into Wes’s neck and breathes deeply. “Cedar,” she says. Then she reaches for me. “Cardamom and cinnamon. Roman.”
Recognition holds, thank fuck.
Dr. Cole’s attention shifts offscreen. “This may be a post-heat rebound rather than a renewed mating cycle. Keep cooling her. Fluids. Pressure against the cramping.”
Wes sits behind Scarlet and draws her against his chest. His purr rolls through the nest while I wrap a cooling cloth around her neck and press my palm low against her stomach. The cramp tightens, then gradually loosens. Scarlet’s hand finds mine.
Dr. Cole continues. “The results are consistent with delayed absorption from the binder. Her true heat peaked first. The recognition disruptions and this rebound followed later, as the carrier metabolized.”
“Maribel’s exposure was higher,” I say.
“And likely repeated. Scarlet’s dose was lower, and weather degraded the greenhouse sample. Her shorter episodes support a dose-dependent progression, but I need more cases before I can call that confirmed.”
Scarlet shivers once before her body relaxes against Wes.
Dr. Cole confirms what her body has already begun to tell us. “The heat is breaking. Continue monitoring through the night, but I don’t expect another wave.”
Her temperature drops by half a degree over the next twenty minutes. The sweetness in her scent recedes rather than swelling. Her breathing evens. When she opens her eyes, she looks at Wes, then me. “My alpha,” she whispers.
Wes presses his mouth to her hair.
Scarlet reaches for my hand. “My beta.”
I lace our fingers together.
Wes closes his eyes against Scarlet’s hair, and relief rolls through his scent.
Scarlet’s fever loosens its hold one breath at a time, and the truth waits, elusive as ever.