Page 45 of Accidentally Wedded to a Werewolf (Claw Haven #1)

“What? I’m glad you had fun. This—” he waved at the common room, meaning the inn “—the whole town, it seems like an adorable pet project. If it does well, who knows? Maybe your dad will let you do some actual work. Part-time or something.”

“Part-time,” Luna repeated.

“Yeah!” Hector bit another hunk off his bread roll, jaw slowing as he watched her.

Luna pulled up a hasty smile, but it was too late. He’d seen the look in her eyes. Haughty. Offended that he thought her work wasn’t full-time material.

“We’re not… Honey! You’re not—” he spluttered, incredulous. He tossed down the bread roll and grabbed her hands—not hard, never hard. Hector moved through life with a light touch and a wink. “Where’s my fun little Luna? Huh?”

He laughed. She laughed with him, wondering why it felt so difficult. Things weren’t difficult with Hector; that was the whole point of him. He made everything easy.

“I can’t believe you stayed here,” he admitted. “I expected you to bribe him to follow you to a resort. Somewhere that has room service. Someplace with stuff to do!”

“We have stuff,” Luna argued. “We have a fair!”

“Yeah! Yes, great!” He clapped hard enough that Vida jumped, although that might have been from a loud song starting, headphones forgotten around her neck.

“Fair,” Hector continued. “Awesome. So much hard work. Sucks you won’t get to see it. You guys will send pics, right?”

Uncle Roy grunted again. For a good five seconds, it was the only sound at the table except for Vida’s fork scraping a burned piece of skin off a baked potato.

Hector looked at Luna expectantly.

“Right,” Luna said. She prepped her cutest smile. “About that!”

Hector chuckled uncertainly. “It’s the day before the wedding, babe.”

“I know! I just think it would be fun!” Luna batted her eyes at him and slid a finger under his watch strap. “Games, chocolates—”

“A day fair in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska,” he said over her. Then he winced, eyebrows shooting up as he realized how that had sounded. He shot the table a reassuring grin. “I mean, hey, totally! I bet it will be super fun! I just— We have a lot of things booked.”

Luna sighed, propping her chin up in her hand. “Like what?”

He stared at her. Trying to see if she was joking, she realized. Hazy memories swam back through the flood of admin she’d been doing for Claw Haven, but before she could say them, Hector was telling her instead.

“That hot stone spa,” he reminded her. “With that state-of-the-art mud treatment? So we look peak hot for wedding pics. Their waitlist is a year, and you registered us the second we got engaged. It’s one of the reasons we booked the wedding in Bali.”

“Right,” Luna said. “No, yeah, I remember.”

She stared down at her plate, reeling. How could she have forgotten?

She had that spa treatment circled on her calendar at home.

Part of her—the part that had to discover a whole new range of skin products and subpar water pressure for her showers—longed for the glowing stress release that the pamphlet had promised.

Then she thought back to Oliver’s hands on her back, kneading the oil that Luna bought from the skin-care shop in town, which worked shockingly well.

His hot skin against her shoulders, working out her knots as the bond flared happily between them—

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” Luna said.

* * *

She looked cute, even when she was white-knuckling the sink. Luna tried to be gratified as she stared into her reflection, trying to dig up some semblance of relief. She was seeing her fiancé again! She should be over the moon! What was wrong with her?

Someone knocked on the bathroom door.

Luna’s heart spasmed. It only took a moment to remind herself that the bond in her chest wasn’t getting any warmer, so it couldn’t be Oliver.

She opened the door. Hector stood there, hands in his pockets, oddly bashful. It didn’t suit him.

“Hey,” he said. “You feeling okay? That steak was pretty rare.”

“They cook it more for us,” Luna said faintly. She dragged up a winning smile. “I’m fine! I’m good. I’m just—I’m crazy busy with the fair, and everything.”

He nodded. He looked mystified, like he was still expecting her to throw up a pair of jazz hands and reveal it was all a joke.

She could see how much he wanted her to go back to her regular self—careless and fun-seeking, always looking for the next party or spa treatment or adventure, as long as she got to go home with him at the end and laze around in their luxurious sheets.

He’d come here expecting her to throw herself into his arms, and why shouldn’t she?

She should be clamoring to get out of here. To get back to her old life.

It was tempting. Luna could feel her old habits coming back: the urge to brush anything serious aside in favor of fun and excitement. Then she remembered Oliver, his voice low and true. Nobody’s fun all the time.

“You were kind of weird back there,” Luna said in a rush. “With Oliver.”

He laughed again. It dimmed fast when she didn’t join in. To his credit, he looked genuinely surprised. “What? It was a joke. Okay, probably not the best move to say it in front of his whole fam, that was my bad. I just…”

“Got jealous?” Luna asked. She tried to throw in a giggle, something cute and airy to break the tension. It came out more as a wheeze, and she had to cough to hide it.

He hesitated. “Babe. I don’t care who you have sex with. As long as you come home to me.”

Luna squinted at him. “Your tone’s weird. What’s with the weirdness?”

“Nothing! I just…” His whole face twisted, messing up the smile he was still desperately clinging to. “You are coming home to me, right? You haven’t fallen for the guy with the one-ply shirt and the big, weird family who lives in a town that doesn’t even have a subpar spa?”

“No,” Luna blurted, face burning. “I— That’s— Why would you…”

The bond in her chest flared. Luna looked up to see Oliver standing in the hallway behind Hector, his face unreadable.

Luna swallowed. She focused back on Hector, pulling up a playful smirk she wasn’t feeling. “I’ve been here for two months. You think I’d throw away us, our whole life? I’m just going through a thing. I’ll be back to normal soon.”

She kissed him. She hadn’t kissed him yet, she realized with a dim sense of unease. Who had their fiancé show up and didn’t kiss him immediately?

Hector was frowning when he pulled back. But it was a Hector--frown, the faintest dent between his eyebrows.

“What?”

He shook his head. “You taste different.”

Oliver cleared his throat.

Hector startled, jolting around. “Jesus.”

Luna waved, trying to look like she didn’t know he was there.

She still felt guilty, and she didn’t know what for anymore.

For Hector, obviously. But also, for Oliver, his face stony and unrelenting.

And the bond in their chests, the warmth fluttering in confusion.

She couldn’t help but feel bad for it, like a small golden butterfly they were seconds from stepping on.

“What is it?” she asked.

For a second, he just stood there, watching them. Then he blinked, and his face cleared.

“Ben and Sabine are back.”