40. Scarlet Sage
Scarlet Sage
Wes fastens the borrowed protective vest around me himself.
We are gathered beside the sheriff’s mobile command table, outside Old Cypress Refrigeration Annex, while Tom finishes the warrant briefing.
The vest is heavier than it looks, pressing into muscles that haven’t forgiven my heat, my collapse, or the fact that I apparently intend to spend the remainder of the day chasing criminals through town.
Wes adjusts the shoulder straps until the weight sits evenly. Then he slides two fingers beneath the collar to make sure it doesn’t rub my neck.
He has checked it three times. His alpha needs the reassurance, and I let him.
Roman stands behind me, with one hand resting at my waist and the other holding a cup of sweet tea near my mouth. I drink because he raises it, and because resisting his care now would feel like rejecting the new life our pack is building.
“Enough?” he asks.
“One more.”
His hazel eyes warm as I take another swallow.
Across the folding table, Tom points at a printed floor plan.
Old Cypress Refrigeration began as produce storage before the festival leased it for equipment overflow.
Mercer Transport holds the current access agreement.
No one has answered the business number, and Sullivan Mercer’s registered address is empty.
A deputy found no vehicles behind the annex. The power is running, but the loading-bay cameras stopped recording shortly after the fire at Heritage Hall. The outside analyst is still working through payments, registrations, and Rusk’s phone records.
We have a destination, but like everything over the last few days, it just raises more questions.
Wes lowers his face to my hair and draws a careful breath.
“Cedar,” I tell him.
His hand settles over the center of my vest.
Roman leans closer from behind.
“Cardamom. Cinnamon. Roman.”
“Good omega,” Wes murmus.
The praise sinks through me, warm and settling.
Roman kisses my temple. “Stay in the clean zone, love. The entry team records everything.”
“I understand.” I catch one of each of their hands. “Come back to me too.”
Wes’s expression softens. The hard focus he wears for the case gives way to the alpha who held me while I cried until there was nothing left to hide. “Always, sweetheart.”
Roman squeezes my fingers. “You couldn’t lose us if you tried.”
The annex sits beyond the final festival marker on the southern service road.
It’s half a mile north of where the public protection path ends, and painted sweetheart signs turn tourists back toward downtown shops.
Past that point, the road narrows beneath cypress branches and disappears into wet green shadow.
From the marsh, the building rises on a cracked concrete foundation. Rust streaks its white metal siding. Two refrigerated trailers sit behind a chain-link fence, their cooling units silent in the afternoon heat.
Tom’s deputies announce the warrant before cutting the gate lock.
The first team enters in protective coveralls, gloves, respirators, and body cameras.
Wes goes with them as far as the loading bay, after the air monitor clears the entrance.
Roman and I remain beneath a shade canopy beside the command table, where Tom has mounted a tablet large enough for all three of us to see the live feed.
Wes’s camera moves through a narrow front office.
Empty desk. Open filing cabinet. A calendar left on last month.
Then the loading bay. Concrete walls. Rusted shelving. A closed interior door marked Cold Storage.
The video shifts as Wes turns back toward the entrance. “I’m at the clean line,” he says over the radio. “Bring Scarlet to the exterior viewing station.”
Roman’s hand remains at my back as we move closer to the tablet.
Wes returns a moment later and takes his place on my other side. He curls one gloved finger around the edge of my vest.
The air sampler inside the loading bay beeps.
A technician checks the reading. “Unknown volatile compound beyond the interior door,” she says. “Entry team only. Everyone else stays outside.”
Wes’s cedar turns sharp beneath the faint plastic scent of his respirator.
“I’m staying here,” I tell him.
His eyes meet mine. “I know.”
The entry technician opens the cold-storage door. Her camera shows metal shelves lined with Magnolia shipping crates and clear plastic bins. Each bin carries a typed label.
Swamp Lily.
Marigold.
White Thread.
Stone.
The technician pans slowly, giving the recording time to capture every label.
My hand closes around Roman’s. “These are the bundle materials.”
Roman points toward the screen. “And these ingredients are separated in bulk. This is not discarded festival stock. Someone was assembling products here.”
“Mercer Transport brought material here,” I say. “Rusk delivered the finished packages. This is the place between those two steps.”
The technician swabs the worktable. She seals the sample, then uses a field strip from Dr. Cole’s kit. The strip darkens.
Tom reads the result aloud. “Presumptive match for the local GatorX carrier.”
A sweet odor feels thicker in the air, even through the distance and open air.
The camera moves to a rack of pale imitation sweetheart stones resting on wire mesh. Paper tags hang from each row.
Thirty Minutes.
Three Hours.
Delayed Response.
Recognition Loss.
I lean closer to the tablet. “They were timing the delivery.”
Wes looks at the rows. “Through the fake stones?”
“The relief charms were porous.” I think of Maribel’s bundle, the grit and the binder that survived moisture. “The drug soaked into them. A person wore the charm or handled it, and the compound absorbed slowly.”
Roman follows the logic. “That explains why Maribel felt better before she stopped recognizing Ellis.”
“The first effect was relief,” I say. “The recognition loss came later.”
The technician photographs every tag before moving to a second table.
Copied pages from the public Everlasting Pack legend cover its surface. The section describing the omega’s dangerous heat and the artifact anchoring the original pack has been underlined in red.
Beside it, someone has written notes.
To cast protection circle, use anchor during heat?
Relief before failure.
Artifact may hold recognition.
The release language is nowhere on the page. My grandmother’s warning moves through me. “They used the town’s version of the ritual,” I say.
Tom glances at me. “Meaning?”
“The public story says the Love Stone protected the bond when the omega’s heat threatened it. Whoever did this must have believed the artifact could force recognition to keep holding.”
Roman studies the handwriting. “So when GatorX started making people forget their mates, someone looked to the legend for a solution.”
“But I think they only had half the instructions,” I say. “Protection without release. That’s important.”
Wes turns toward me. “What would release change?”
“I don’t fully understand it yet.” I force myself not to fill uncertainty with a prettier answer. “But my grandmother kept warning that a bond couldn’t be protected after choice had broken. The town preserved the part about holding on and removed the part about letting go.”
The entry team opens a deeper refrigerated room.
Inside, preservation crates line the walls around a stainless-steel cabinet. One crate contains ribbon, floral bundles, charms, and sealed bottles. Another holds compact laboratory equipment designed to be moved.
The technician stops in front of the center shelf.
A padded archival cloth rests inside an open museum transport case. Its hollow is long, narrow, and curved. A Heritage Hall inventory tag hangs from one corner, but no Love Stone lies inside it.
My pulse stumbles.
“Zoom in on the tag,” Tom orders.
The technician angles her camera closer.
Wes’s gloved hand tightens against my vest. “The Love Stone was here.”
Tom nods. “The number matches the museum transfer paperwork recovered at Heritage Hall. The stolen artifact was here.”
A swollen notebook lies beneath the empty cradle.
The technician doesn’t open it in the room. She photographs its position, seals it in a transparent evidence pouch, and brings it through the decontamination line. Only after the exterior is cleaned does another technician place it beneath the document camera at our table.
The enlarged pages appear on the tablet. It’s written in abbreviations, but it’s readable.
M. Initial relief. Recognition loss after twelve hours.
Greenhouse exposure degraded. Subject recovered.
Increase concentration before vow site.
My stomach turns over. “M is Maribel.”
Tom looks at me. “How can you be certain?”
“I can’t be certain from one initial alone.” I point at the first line. “But Maribel used a relief bundle, improved briefly, and then failed to recognize Ellis. That sequence matches this note.”
Roman points at the next entry. “And the greenhouse exposure matches what happened at Scarlet’s property.”
My skin goes cold. “The bundle in my greenhouse degraded in the rain,” I say. “I was exposed, but I recovered. They wrote down both outcomes.”
Wes removes one glove before touching me. His bare hand closes around mine. “They were using you as test results.”
The words make the evidence real in a different way. My heat. My missing recognition. Maribel’s terror.
These weren’t accidents. They were information.
Wes purrs. “I have you,” he says.
Roman kisses my temple. “We both do.”
My omega reaches for their frequencies and settles between them.
The notebook contains three more pages of measurements before the final entry.
Stone unstable in storage.
Move with final batch.
South route.
Release site before opening night.
Tom reads the entry twice. “They moved the artifact and the final batch.”
“South,” Wes says. “Which means it’s moving along the route from the museum fragment.”
I look from the empty museum case on the live feed to the copied legend, the racks of treated charms, and the notes describing Maribel and me.
“Okay. Simple version,” I say. “GatorX gives temporary relief from bond pain, but this batch can destroy bond recognition afterward. Someone with access to Heritage Hall found the old protection story and believed the real Love Stone could stop that from happening. Mercer Transport moved the supplies and the stolen artifact through this annex. Rusk handled deliveries. Maribel and I became test results.”
I point to the final notebook entry. “It still didn’t work. Now they’ve taken the Love Stone and the final batch to the release site to try again.”
No one speaks for a moment.
Tom looks toward the screen. “That makes a lot of assumptions about where this started and why someone was acting.”
“It’s a theory, with several pieces of evidence that line up,” Wes replies.
A cooling unit inside the annex coughs. The air monitor shrieks through the body-camera audio. The technician turns toward a gauge beside the refrigerated cabinet.
“Temperature is rising. Pressure is climbing in one of the sealed containers.”
Tom gives a hurried command into the radio. “Evacuate.”
“Tell them not to attempt to move the container. The carrier may aerosolize as it warms,” Wes says.
Tom relays the message. The body-camera feed jolts as the entry team retreats through cold storage, loading bay, and decontamination.
Wes pulls me farther from the fence and strips out of his gear. Roman removes my vest once Tom confirms the clean-zone boundary has shifted. He checks my face and hands while Wes scents my hair, neck, and wrists.
“Scarlet,” Roman says. “Look at me.”
I meet his eyes.
“Who am I?”
“Roman.”
Wes cups my cheek. “And me?”
“My alpha.” The answer comes without fear.
His eyes close for half a breath.
I reach for Roman too. “My beta.”
He kisses my fingers.
“I’m okay. I wasn’t exposed.”
Tom approaches, carrying the notebook’s final page inside a clear sleeve. “The annex was the processing and storage site. The Love Stone and final batch are gone.”
I picture the damaged thumbnail from Heritage Hall. The brown line didn’t end at the rectangular building. It continued past it before the file dissolved into broken pixels. “The route correction showed cypress beyond the annex,” I say.
“So the annex was never the destination.” Roman looks toward the trees south of the fence.
“It was a stop along the way.” I follow his gaze.
The public protection path ends behind us. Beyond the annex, cypress branches knit together above an old service track that the festival maps no longer show.
“The annex was only a stop,” I say. “My grandmother’s correction shows what comes after it.”
Wes keeps one arm around my waist as the alarm continues inside the fence.
I look south, toward the abandoned route. “The release site.”
Roman follows my gaze.
“That’s where they took the Love Stone.”