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Said he wasn’t ready. Said fated mates were myths shifters clung to when they didn’t know how to build real relationships. Said love should comeafterlogic.

She’d stood in the garden behind the apothecary and begged him to look her in the eye and say it didn’t mean anything. And he couldn’t.

But he still left.

And she couldn’t stay in a town where every corner smelled like memory.

So she packed her bags, left Wren a note, and boarded the midnight carriage to Salem.

“Some things,” Nico said gently, “are worth forgiving.”

Delilah shook her head. “And some things are worth remembering.”

The bell over the door jingled again, and Delilah glanced up instinctively.

Not Rollo.

Just Cassian Drake, the vampire tavern keeper, humming a low tune and carrying a box of donated blood muffins.

“G’morning, darlings,” he crooned, nodding to them.

Delilah watched the town move around her—people waving from across the street, enchanted bicycles floating past, a broomstick delivery witch zipping overhead.

Life kept turning in Celestial Pines, even when hearts stopped.

“I should go,” she said, standing.

“Back to Wren’s?” Nico asked.

Delilah nodded. “And the sanctuary.”

He raised a perfectly shaped brow. “Yousureit’s not the bear and not the bunnies pulling you back?”

Delilah said nothing.

She stepped into the misty morning, the lemon mist still clinging to her lips like a dare.

Her heart softened—for a second. Then she remembered the garden. Remembered him pulling away from her touch like it burned. And the softness turned to stone again.

Rollo might’ve changed.

But she wasn’t ready to find out what that meant.

10

ROLLO

The woods didn’t whisper this morning. They hissed.

Rollo felt it the moment he crossed the outer border of the sanctuary—a tremor in the rootbed, a hum in the trees that sounded less like song and more like warning. The forest was unsettled. He’d hoped it was residual—leftover echo from Delilah’s ritual—but this was fresh.

He moved quietly, boots soft on moss and frost-laced leaves, his senses tuned sharp.

Something was off. And he had a gut feeling he knew exactly what.

He followed the unnatural pull, weaving deeper into the Whispering Woods, past the old split-rock altar and into the stretch of hollowed yews where the light didn’t touch. The further in he went, the more the air turned metallic—like blood and wet iron.

Then he saw him.