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Delilah brushed dirt from her palms and stood. “I should head back. Wren’s due for another tonic and her spirit candle’s acting up again.”

Rollo nodded, standing too. “Thanks for the help.”

She gave a half-smile. “Thanks for not being a total ass.”

His grin widened. “High praise.”

She turned to leave, but paused at the door unable to help herself.

“Hey, Rollo?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t trust you.”

He blinked. “Okay…”

“But I want to.”

That shut him up.

Delilah walked out with the last word and the breeze behind her, the scent of pine and old feelings clinging to her coat.

6

ROLLO

Rollo spent the afternoon pretending everything was fine.

He repaired a broken section of the chicken coop fencing. Hauled in a fresh load of enchanted straw for the thistle hares. Sprinkled anti-rot charm dust along the garden beds that had started to show signs of creeping blight. All while doing his best not to replay every second Delilah had spent at the sanctuary that morning.

It didn’t work.

Her laugh still echoed off the rafters, soft and surprised like it had snuck out before she could stop it. The way her fingers had brushed his, and how she hadn’t yanked them away like touching him would burn her.

He’d been ready to lock that part of himself up and throw away the key. But now? Now she was here, with her wild hair and sharp tongue and bruised kind of softness—and the bear inside him had started pacing.

Restless. Alert.

Hopeful.

Which was dangerous.

Because hope was the first thing to rot when things went wrong.

By late afternoon, the sun dipped low, casting the trees in warm gold. He rubbed a hand across chin and muttered to no one, “Need a damn reset.”

And there was only one place in town he could think clearly.

Hazel Fairweather’s garden didn’t grow—itlistened.

Which was saying something, considering it was the only place in Celestial Pines where the plants literally moved when you talked to them.

He walked the familiar path past the edge of the sanctuary and into the curve of the southern woods. Hazel’s home looked like a fairy tale, forgetting it was supposed to end happily—moss covering the roof, flowers blooming directly from the walls, and an ever-present hum in the air like lullabies carried on the wind.

He knocked gently, twice.

No one answered, but the door creaked open anyway.