Chapter 2
two
KAT—ALMOST EXACTLY FIVE YEARS LATER
A cinnamon roll slid across the table on a moon-shaped napkin, stopping right beside my laptop.
"Thanks," I said without looking up from the screen. Sable was snoozing, so focus came easy at the moment.
My curls were a wreck, like always. They seriously needed a cut, but I settled with tying them up in a bun every day because I just didn’t have time. My stretchy yoga shorts and loose, cropped t-shirt, paired with coffee-colored Crocs, were basically my uniform.
After my deal with Callum, my business had exploded a little too well, because I was absolutely swamped.
Constantly.
Jonah took the seat across from mine and folded his arms over his chest. I hoped the coffee cup in his hand was for me too.
"Have you seen the news?" he asked me.
I barely heard the question.
It was almost five AM, but I’d been up since three.
There wasn’t much time for sleep these days.
Plus, working in the café early in the morning, without anyone else around, was the highlight of my day.
It was the reason I’d opened our second location in our first year—because we had exploded to a point of absolute ridiculousness, and I’d wanted a cafe I could live above.
Two locations had turned into three.
Then four.
Then five.
We were up to twenty-three now, officially making us the biggest chain in the city and scattered throughout every part of Rumor. The Shadow District had even welcomed The Werewolf Café, despite their own Shadow Brewery, which was our biggest competitor.
Their coffee wasn't as good as ours, but people loved their beer.
I could already see a few vehicles lined up in our drive-through, and hear the morning crew's murmurs as they greeted each other.
"I should change the opening time to four-thirty at this location," I said absent-mindedly, pulling up the notes app on my phone. "The one on Fuel, and the one in the corner of Monster Alley, too."
There was always a line in the mornings at those three.
I probably should’ve bumped the opening time up years ago, but business had never been my strong point. I’d hired an advisor, so everything was going pretty well, but I was barely staying afloat. And the business just kept getting bigger.
"Kat," Jonah said, louder. "Hello?"
"Hmm? Sorry." I finally looked up from my laptop and met my best friend's hazel eyes.
His black hair was shaved almost completely, but slightly longer on the top than the sides. His dark brown skin was smooth, and strangely, there was a lot of it on display.
He usually wore clothes.
Why was he wearing nothing but sweatpants, and holding the coffee cup so tightly?
I wasn’t sure I had the energy to ask.
"Have you seen the news?" he repeated.
There was something in his eyes that told me I should’ve.
"No. I’m swamped with these orders. Three of the locations ran out of beans last week—beans, Jonah. How does a coffee shop run out of beans?" I rubbed my dry, itchy eyes. "And my stupid arm is aching again, which keeps distracting me."
The mark from my deal with Callum did that sometimes. The aching thing. I wasn’t sure why. Probably because that piece of my soul was missing.
"Read the news," Jonah said yet again.
He knew I checked it at some point every day.
We didn’t talk about it, but I was slightly obsessive with the way I followed the media’s updates about Callum.
I liked to tell myself it was because of our bargain, but that was a lie.
I sighed, taking a bite of the cinnamon roll he'd brought me as I navigated away from the many spreadsheets that I considered my arch nemeses, and over to our little section of the internet.
Rumor was a sanctuary for immortals, and our media was inaccessible to anyone outside the wards.
We had our own laws, businesses, farms, news outlets, and so much more.
Though we called Rumor a city, it was more like multiple cities that were all connected.
That was why different parts had different labels.
I pulled up the news site, and went still when I saw the headline at the top of the page.
FAE KING CALLUM FROST ANNOUNCES ENGAGEMENT TO KAT DAVIS OF THE WEREWOLF CAFé
I blinked.
Then read the headline again, hoping it might’ve changed in the millisecond since I read it.
FAE KING CALLUM FROST ANNOUNCES ENGAGEMENT TO KAT DAVIS OF THE WEREWOLF CAFE
No luck.
What the hell?
I clicked on the link, hoping they'd just twisted the contents of an interview or something, though I had no idea what interview that could’ve been.
People had been speculating on the internet about our "relationship" since we were photographed going into his private room in the nightclub to make a deal, but this was something else entirely.
The same title was on the top of the article.
I read it again, just to be sure I hadn’t lost my mind completely.
FAE KING CALLUM FROST ANNOUNCES ENGAGEMENT TO KAT DAVIS OF THE WEREWOLF CAFE
Damn.
I scanned the article.
The fae council announced late last night that the first of their royals, Callum Frost, and his long-time partner, Kat Davis, have finally decided to make things official by sealing a mate bond. Details about the ceremony have not been released yet, but will be made public soon.
I shook my head. My bun bounced a bit. I must’ve tied it too loose. "This has to be fake news."
I looked at the website name.
It was reputable.
"Someone’s just trying to get people's attention. They don't make money unless people read it," I added.
Jonah’s hazel eyes held none of their usual playfulness. "He's behind the announcement, Kat. It's everywhere."
"It can't be real. I would know if I were engaged."
He gestured to my arm. "Can he use that to force you to mate with him?"
"Of course not. There are rules."
"Do you know for sure that there are rules against that?"
I didn't.
Jonah knew that as well as I did. Neither of us had any understanding of fae magic. Researching anything other than where to find Callum and what it was like to make a bargain with a fae were the full extent of what a person could learn about them on the internet.
You had to be truly desperate, and have nothing to lose, to even consider making a deal. Both of which I had been when I found Callum in that nightclub five years ago.
I didn’t regret the decision… but it hadn’t exactly come back to bite me yet. And I did know that was probably going to happen at some point.
An engagement couldn’t be it, though. Right?
The sky rumbled in the distance. I didn't bother looking out the window.
The drizzle of rain was only one of Rumor’s many problems, and it was always raining.
It literally didn't stop. Some spellcaster had messed up one of their enchantments when building the wards that surrounded the city, and even after a hundred years, no one had managed to fix the spell.
They'd tried two years earlier, but had only managed to lighten the amount of rain.
So, we lived beneath an endless drizzle.
It was better than the constant thunderstorm I'd grown up in.
The water always disappeared right before it hit the ground, but I had no idea where it went when it did. The spellcasters had probably designed an extra spell to take care of that when they realized they couldn’t stop it altogether yet.
"You should hide out for a while," Jonah said. "You could manage everything with the cafes from my apartment. Callum wouldn't find you there."
"He's not going to come after me," I said, not entirely sure it was true.
And if he did decide to come after me, what good would hiding do? He literally held part of my soul. I was sure he could track me with it… because he had done it precisely twelve times in the five years since we made the deal.
"Why would he do this?" Jonah gestured toward the screen of my laptop.
"I don't know. The man's an enigma." I went back to my spreadsheets. "No reason to stress about it. He's going to do what he wants. It’s not like we could stop him if we wanted to."
"Kat, he just publicly announced you as his fiancée.
" Jonah gestured toward the screen again, a bit violently. As the beta I had never wanted, it was technically his job to protect me. Considering we were only a pack of two, and I’d been trying to get rid of him for years, it really was just a technicality.
"He's probably just posturing," I said.
"Was he posturing when he spent heat with you twelve times? You know he must have a spy in your cafe to even find out you were approaching it."
I pressed my lips together.
Didn't really have a good answer to that.
I hadn't heard from Callum for exactly one-hundred-twenty-three days after I drove myself home from the nightclub. The day before I went into my next heat, a box had appeared on my doorstep.
There were a dozen red roses in it, resting on top of a blue silk bralette and a pair of matching shorts that were far too delicate for anything but sleep and sex. Someone had enchanted both pieces of clothing to smell like the king.
He must’ve known how much scent meant to werewolves, if he'd gone to the trouble of paying a spellcaster to enchant them.
There was a note on top that had a date and time on it.
6 PM, tomorrow.
The message he hadn’t included was pretty obvious. Someone had told him I was going into heat, and he wanted to spend it with me.
I hadn’t been looking forward to suffering it alone, so I met him at the door in the lingerie.
He’d taken one long look at me, stepped inside, kissed me once, and spent the rest of the time worshipping my body with his hands and mouth.
He was good at that, to say the least.
He left as soon as my heat ended, once again.
It became a pattern after that. I didn’t see or hear from Callum unless I was going into heat, which was when I’d get a bouquet of roses, a new set of lingerie, and a visit from arguably the most attractive and cruel man in Rumor.