Chapter 21
Owen
I don’t know what’s going on in my apartment right now.
Which is a problem.
Because I’m Sheriff.
Because the town is teetering on the edge of supernatural chaos.
And because I’d very much like to walk through my own damn front door without worrying that a surprise ritual or unsolicited furniture rearrangement is underway.
But mostly? Because I want to see her.
Megan. Mate. Mine.
After staying up all night with her—combing through crumbling books of bloodlines and whispered legends, flipping through dusty volumes on spirit anchors and warlock hauntings—I finally have something resembling a solution to our dead Warlock problem.
A real one.
One that doesn’t end with everyone dead or possessed.
And I want to share it with her first.
She’s not just my partner on this.
She’s my mate.
My everything.
So I unlock the door, step inside—and immediately freeze.
Because there she is.
Megan.
Sitting pretty at the tiny kitchen table, wearing my shirt, sipping coffee like she does this every morning. Like she belongs here.
And next to her?
My mother.
Oh fuck.
My mother is at the stove. Frying up what has to be a full mountain of bologna sandwiches, grease sizzling and spatula flying like she’s auditioning for Iron Chef: Trailer Park Edition.
I blink. “What the heck are you doing here?”
She doesn’t even turn around.
“Owen! How dare you talk to me like that!” she scolds, flipping a sandwich with flair. “Now I forgive you, ’cause you’re hungry. Sit down, dear.”
Megan chokes on a laugh and covers it with a fake cough that fools no one.
I narrow my eyes at her. She grins into her coffee.
“Mother, uh, you met Megan?”
“Of course, I did, son. She was half naked in your bed when I came to do your laundry like I do every other week,” she continues mildly, but I can hear the scold behind her words.
I mutter underneath my breath, hazarding a glance at Megan, who looks like she’s trying not to laugh, presumably at me. I admit, it’s better than her screaming and running, so yeah, I’ll take it.
See, my mother is a lot.
She is.
A lot of things.
A Wolf Shifter.
An unconscionable gossip.
A hurricane of opinion and unsolicited wisdom.
I love her, I do. But gods above and below, the woman does not understand boundaries.
“Mama, I don’t want a sandwich. Megan and I have work to do—”
“Hush now and eat, son.” She drops a plate in front of me with a loud clatter. “You look like death warmed over. Food first. Ghost hunting second.”
I sit down. Begrudgingly. Because apparently being a grown-ass man and the Sheriff of a cursed town means nothing when your mama’s making your favorite meal.
Megan tries—tries—not to laugh again, but her eyes are sparkling and her lip is twitching.
I shoot her a look.
Really? This is your moment?
She lifts her mug like a toast. “Owen, your Mama’s been telling me a little bit about you.”
And just like that—panic.
Not the kind I feel when a rogue shifter breaks a treaty. Not the kind when the warding stones go dim or a vampire gets territorial.
No. This is pure fear.
Because I’ve been here before.
I’ve let exactly one woman get close to me before Megan. It was years and years ago—but still.
A man remembers. And hell, if he’s a Wolf like me? He never forgets.
So yeah, once upon a time I let my guard down.
Thought maybe—just maybe—someone might want all of me.
The man. The Wolf. The chaos.
And then Mama had tea with her.
And that woman was gone by sundown.
Vanished like smoke in the wind.
See, my mother doesn’t lie. She doesn’t sugarcoat.
She tells them the truth.
About me. About the monster I carry inside.
About what it means to love a man whose other half is half-mad and wholly possessive.
Mama thinks she’s protecting me.
Maybe she is.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
And now, sitting here with Megan beside her, smiling, listening—my heart is in my goddamn throat.
I stare at her, waiting for it. The shift in her expression. The retreat. The “wow, this was fun but I need to rethink everything.”
Because if she says it—if she looks me in the eye and tells me she can’t do this—I don’t think I’ll recover.
I don’t think I’ll survive losing her.
I always figured I was too stubborn to break.
Too mean, too scarred, too stupidly loyal to crack under anything as soft as love.
But damn, turns out love isn’t soft at all.
It’s a fucking freight train.
Somewhere between the first night I touched her—that kiss that shook me to my bones, the first slide into her tight heat—and every moment since.
Walking the town side-by-side. Her hand brushing mine like it was an accident—it wasn’t.
The way she studies my town like she’s already fighting for it. The scent of her skin warming my sheets. Her voice in the darkness, hushed and sleepy, telling me she trusts me.
Somewhere in all of that?
Yeah. I didn’t just claim her.
I fell.
Hard.
Helpless.
Headfirst into love.
Love so big it makes everything before her feel like a half-life I was forced to endure.
And now? I’m terrified.
Because my mother—I love her, but she has a way of ripping the wings off of hope before it learns to fly. She’s chased off every woman I ever tried to care about.
Truth is, they all ran because they could smell what lived under my skin.
The Wolf that isn’t some cuddly pack pet.
The Wolf with a curse in his blood and madness in his bones.
If Megan heard the wrong thing—heard it too soon—if she decides this is all too much, too chaotic, too dangerous, too me. If this is the part where she walks away, then I’m not just losing a lover.
I’m losing my mate.
The piece of my soul the universe carved out of my ribs and handed to me with a warning I was too blind to read until now.
And if she leaves—I won’t just be heartbroken.
I’ll be ruined.
Wolf-shattered.
Mind-gone.
A danger to myself and everyone who depends on me.
Because losing a mate isn’t something a Shifter survives.
Not really.
Forever, that’s what she is now.
And I don’t know how to breathe around the thought of forever without her.