39. Roman Osprey
Roman Osprey
Scarlet stands between us, beneath the side awning of Sweetheart Haven Heritage Hall, while I fasten her silver moon pin beneath her collar.
Her hair is still soft from the bath, auburn waves drying against the back of her denim vest. The cream blouse and long black skirt make her look more put together than I know she feels.
Red flowers climb the dark fabric toward her knees, disappearing beneath the edge of the blanket Wes insisted she bring.
She compromised by folding it over one arm.
The clasp settles under my fingers the way a held breath settles once it’s finally let go. I have spent three days watching her body fight a war I couldn’t fight for her. Buttoning her collar shouldn’t feel like this much of a relief, yet it does.
Wes remains dissatisfied. He checks the side entrance, the rear service lane, the windows above us, and the deputy stationed near the shed before returning his attention to Scarlet. “Water.”
She takes the bottle from him and drinks without arguing.
The ease of it affects him more than he lets show. His hand settles against her lower back while she swallows. The touch is broad and possessive, but his thumb moves in a slow circle atop her vest, soothing rather than directing.
Scarlet lowers the bottle. “Better?”
“No,” Wes says.
Her expression softens. “I meant the water.”
“I know what you meant.”
She reaches up and smooths his collar. The gesture quiets part of him.
I touch the moon pin once to make sure the clasp holds. “There. You look beautiful.”
She glances toward the warped side door. “I look like I’m attending a funeral for municipal recordkeeping.”
“You look like yourself,” Wes says.
“I feel like I’m getting there.” Scarlet leans against his side for one breath, drawing cedar into her lungs before she takes my hand. The three of us enter together.
Heritage Hall smells exactly like an old Florida building in the swamp.
The air conditioning rattles overhead, and uneven hardwood shifts beneath our feet.
The converted boarding house wears its history badly, with bedrooms turned into galleries, closets packed with archival boxes, and festival banners hiding cracks in the plaster.
The front desk sits beneath a sign celebrating a hundred years of lasting love.
Beyond it, tourists crowd around the empty glass case where the Love Stone used to rest. A young pack poses beside the vacant pedestal while a volunteer takes their photograph.
The omega stands between her mates, both hands held, her smile wide enough to belong on a festival brochure.
Scarlet slows. I feel the change through her fingers before I see it in her face. “Two days until the Month of Heart and they’ve somehow made the theft part of the attraction,” she says.
The volunteer hands the pack a printed copy of the Everlasting Pack legend.
“They need the story to keep working,” I say.
I think of the letter folded inside the cedar box upstairs at the cottage, the one none of us have spoken of since the night Scarlet found it.
Legends survive because someone keeps choosing them over the truth.
I wonder, not for the first time, who chose this one for her family and what it cost them.
Scarlet watches the omega lean back into her alphas.
Her thumb brushes my knuckles. “The town keeps confusing truth and legend.”
Wes moves closer on her other side. “And ignoring the consequences.”
Tom waits near the former dining room, now labeled Preservation and Collections in polished brass. The museum director stands beside him with a ring of keys and an annoyed expression.
“We have written consent for the preservation office and rear shed,” Tom says. “The board refused to close the public galleries.”
Wes looks toward the tourists. “There is an active threat.”
“The board believes closure would cause panic.”
Scarlet’s mouth presses thin. “People are already panicking. They’re just buying souvenirs while they do it.”
The museum director clears his throat. “We have obligations to the festival.”
Wes’s cedar sharpens.
Scarlet rests her palm against his chest before he answers. The gesture is small, but it works.
Tom unlocks the staff door. The preservation office occupies what was once the boarding house kitchen.
Cloudy windows hang above painted cabinets, and the old fireplace was converted into a nest of cables feeding a battered computer.
Festival schedules, invoices, ribbon samples, and volunteer sheets cover the corkboard.
A county technician sits at the terminal while another photographs the printer.
Scarlet stops near the doorway.
Wes notices the fatigue crossing her face and moves a chair without asking. He places it close enough that she remains inside our reach but outside the work area.
She sits without protest. I drape the folded blanket over her lap, and her fingers close around the edge. “We won’t mention this.”
“Never,” I assure her. I study the corkboard while we wait for the technician. “Every work session has overlapping staff. No clean separation anywhere on this list.”
I already know the names on the list from the file Tom sent earlier: Myrtle, the director, and volunteers whose families have run festival booths since before any of us were born, people with thirty years of reasons to be standing in this exact room on any given Tuesday night.
“It’s the same names we’ve already seen,” I explain. “All of them with a reason to be here.”
The technician glances toward Tom. “The browser history was cleared. The hard drive shows recent deletion activity, but the printer maintains a separate queue.”
“How recent?” Wes asks.
“Within the last forty-eight hours.”
The technician returns to the screen.
Waiting has its own pressure. I keep my voice level for Scarlet’s sake, though something in my chest paces like an animal in a cage too small. Wes’s stillness reads as control. Mine has always had to look like calm instead, a thing I built rather than a thing I have.
Wes stands behind Scarlet with both hands resting on her shoulders. I take the chair beside her and keep our knees touching. Her scent remains tired but steady, sage and rain wrapped inside cedar and spice. The pack has begun to carry its own weather.
A progress bar crawls across the monitor.
Scarlet’s head tips back against Wes’s stomach.
He threads his fingers through her hair.
The motion is careful, almost reverent. She closes her eyes.
I watch Wes’s shoulders lower one degree at a time as he combs through the ends with his fingers.
He doesn’t seem aware he is doing it. Scarlet is.
Her hand rises and covers one of his where it rests near her collar.
The technician breaks the moment. “I recovered part of the deleted queue.”
Three files appear: a photograph of Scarlet’s cottage, a one-use access code for the preservation shed, and a scan labeled Route Correction.
Wes’s hands stop moving.
Scarlet leans forward.
The file opens as a damaged thumbnail. A narrow green border frames the missing vellum. The brown line of the release path continues beyond the old access point before dissolving into corrupted pixels.
Scarlet’s breath catches. “That’s my grandmother’s correction.”
Tom moves closer. “You’re certain?”
“She used green backing when the town’s records changed her routes.”
I rest my hand at the base of her neck. “They scanned it before removing it.”
Scarlet nods. “Whoever took it wanted the route.”
The technician enlarges the thumbnail until the image breaks apart. Cypress shapes darken the far edge. A rectangular mark sits south of the public path, beside lettering too damaged to read.
“Can you recover the original?” Wes asks.
“I may get fragments, nothing complete.”
Scarlet studies the ruined image. The fear from the cottage moves beneath her scent.
I slide my fingers through hers. “You don’t have to understand it all right now, love.”
“I need to understand enough.”
Wes resumes stroking her hair. “You will.”
Tom leads us through the rear corridor after the technicians finish documenting the office.
The preservation shed connects to the boarding house by a covered walkway. Humidity thickens the air outside. Standing water glints beyond the fence, and dried magnolia leaves gather beneath the ramp.
Scarlet tires halfway across but doesn’t say anything.
Wes sees it anyway. His hand moves from her back to her waist, taking part of her weight. I keep hold of her hand. The adjustment happens without us stopping. We’re pack now, even if there is no bite bond yet.
The shed smells of floral foam, glue, dust, and flowers left too long without water. Metal shelves hold archival tissue, ribbons, empty crates, display frames, and stacks of festival signs.
Rusk’s document-transfer box sits beneath a counter near the rear door.
A technician kneels beside it and lifts a thin green fiber from the hinge. “Visual match to the backing paper recovered from Magnolia’s storage. The lab will have to confirm.”
Scarlet remains outside the evidence markers. “That only proves the same supply order passed through here.”
Tom nods. “Correct.”
I remind myself to stop thinking like an investigator for one second and to think like someone hiding something in plain sight. I survey the room again. Dust lies thick beneath the lower shelves, except for one narrow line ending short of the wall. “This shelf has been moved.”
The technician photographs the area and shifts a stack of framed maps. Behind them sits a plastic bin labeled Preservation Waste. The lid sticks before lifting. Inside are clipped vellum threads, scraps of green backing, disposable gloves, and the torn corner of a printed route sheet.
Scarlet’s fingers tighten around mine. The fragment shows Old County Nine and a handwritten notation beside a pickup date: S. Mercer.
Tom photographs it before anyone speaks.
“Do we have that name in the festival vendor records?” Wes asks.
“I’ll call it in.” Tom steps into the walkway.
The wait feels longer in the shed.
Wes stands behind Scarlet again, his body sheltering hers from the open rear door.
I move in front of her and pull the blanket more securely around her shoulders. “You’re cold.”
She looks at me. Her expression softens, and she leans forward until her forehead rests against my chest. I stroke her hair while Wes rubs slow warmth into her upper arms through the blanket.
No one in the shed looks at us strangely. Perhaps they have finally learned better.
“Six days before the museum reported the Love Stone missing,” Scarlet says after a while. Her voice is muffled against my shirt.
Wes studies the date on the fragment. “The same day the sealed container left storage.”
The museum director has followed us as far as the walkway. His expression changes. “Mercer Transport,” he says.
Tom turns back. “You recognize it?”
“They handle overflow equipment: refrigeration trailers, fencing, heavy display frames.”
“Full name?”
“I don’t remember.”
Tom calls again. The answer takes several minutes.
During them, Scarlet remains against me while Wes watches every person moving near the service lane.
The deputy finally responds through Tom’s phone. “Sullivan Mercer owns Mercer Transport. Active Month of Heart contract. Three equipment pickups scheduled through Heritage Hall. We’re pulling invoices now.”
Scarlet looks from the pickup form to the waste bin. “So Rusk handled the deliveries. Mercer Transport moved the equipment. And whoever was using Heritage Hall supplied the records and access.”
“That’s what the evidence says so far,” I tell her.
Tom relays the information to the outside analyst.
The technician removes a second folder from the waste bin. Inside is a Heritage Hall pickup form.
Carrier: Mercer Transport.
Destination: Old Cypress Refrigeration Annex.
Scarlet straightens. “So, the container from Heritage Hall was moved through Sullivan’s company to the annex.”
I look at the route fragment. “And the annex is south of the public path.”
“Near where my grandmother’s missing correction begins.”
A metallic crash echoes inside the museum.
Every head turns.
The fire alarm blares before anyone speaks. Smoke pushes through the rear doorway, carrying scorched plastic and the bitter chemical bite of burning wire.
Wes pulls Scarlet against him. “Outside.”
Tom runs toward the corridor with the museum director while staff shout for visitors to leave. The alarm overwhelms the rattle of the air conditioner.
Scarlet’s scent spikes.
Smoke blurs the doorway and strips the cedar from the air. Scarlet reaches for Wes just as he steps toward the corridor, and her hand catches only air.
Her face drains.
I gather her against me. “Scarlet. Look at me.”
Her eyes find mine, wide and unfocused.
“Cardamom,” I say. “Cinnamon. Roman.” My pulse is hammering hard enough that I can’t tell anymore if I’m steadying her or borrowing her heartbeat to slow mine.
She drags in a breath. “Roman.”
I press her face into my neck. “That’s right, love.”
Wes reappears through the smoke.
Scarlet tears free of me just far enough to reach him. He catches her with both arms.
A motorcycle engine turns over beyond the south fence. Wes looks toward the sound, and his body prepares to move.
Scarlet’s hands close around his shirt. “Alpha.”
He stops.
The engine revs again, then fades toward Magnolia Street.
Wes remains with her. His purr rumbles, fierce and dense, while she presses her face to his chest and pulls me close with one hand.
The three of us stand together beneath the covered walkway as water runs through the old house.
Tom emerges with the pickup form sealed inside an evidence sleeve. “The fire started behind the network cabinet. The technician saved the printer module and partial queue. We have enough for the annex warrant.”
Scarlet keeps one hand in Wes’s shirt and the other wrapped around mine. “The public path ends before the annex.”
I look at the route fragment through the clear evidence bag. “The release path doesn’t.”
Behind us, water spreads across the uneven floors while the museum’s oldest promise of lasting love disappears into smoke.