Page 58 of Mane Brew

“We weren’t distracted.” I release his hand—reluctantly—and drop into an empty chair. “We were being fashionably late. It’s called style.”

“It’s called denial.” Sakura grins around a mouthful of cobbler. “Little Bean says you’re both ridiculous, by the way. They’ve been kicking every time someone mentions your names in the same sentence.”

“Your unborn child does not have opinions⁠—”

“My unborn child has opinions about everything. It’s exhausting.”

Rhodes settles into the chair beside me. His shoulder brushes mine—accidental, then deliberate when neither of us moves away. The proximity sends a current of awareness through my chest that has nothing to do with the candles and everything to do with the man who spent hours holding my hand while the moon rose.

Grandmother Peach closes the filing hall doors with a soft click.

The sound carries more finality than it should. The candles flicker. The cabinets fall silent, their usual hum dampened by old magic—or just the weight of what’s about to be said.

“You’ve all been wondering.” Peach moves to the center of the circle, her movements measured in a way I’ve never seen from her. “About me. About the Registry. About why the matings have returned after years of silence.”

“We’ve had theories.” Caius keeps his delivery calm. Controlled. The measured authority of a leader who’s learned that panic helps no one. “The Severing weakening. The Preservers’ interference. Natural magical cycles.”

“All correct. All incomplete.” Peach’s gaze sweeps the circle, lingering on each couple in turn. Lingering longest on Rhodes and me, our shoulders still pressed together in the space between our chairs. “The truth is older. More complicated. More personal than any of you know.”

She takes a breath. The kind of breath that comes before revelations that change everything.

“I’ve told the ladies already. It’s time for the rest of you to know. Two hundred fifty years ago, I was mated to a lion shifter. One of Rhodes’s ancestors.”

No one moves. No one breathes. The candles themselves seem to freeze, their flames suddenly motionless in the still air.

Rhodes goes rigid beside me. I feel the tension lock through his body—shoulder to shoulder, his muscles suddenly wire-taut against mine.

I cover his hand with mine. Hold on.

“Before the Severing,” Peach continues, “witch-shifter matings were common. Celebrated. The magic between us—the way our powers complemented each other—was understood as a gift. Pairings formed naturally, strengthened both partners, created children with extraordinary abilities.”

She moves to the window, her silhouette framed against the moonlit glass. When she speaks again, centuries press through every word.

“The Severing was designed by those who feared what mated pairs could become. Individually, witches and shifters are powerful. When mated, we became formidable in ways that threatened the established order.”

“The Preservers,” Anouk says quietly. “Their ideology goes back that far?”

“Their ancestors created the Severing. Cast the ritual that severed the magical bond between our kinds. Made claiming difficult, rare, almost impossible.” Peach’s hand presses against the window glass. “The ritual targeted mated pairs specifically. It killed most of us instantly.”

Most of us.

The words land like stones in still water.

“You survived.” Rhodes’s voice is rough. Barely controlled. “How?”

Peach turns from the window. Her eyes find his with an intensity that pins me in place.

“I was pregnant. The Severing couldn’t destroy me without destroying the innocent life I carried—the child of my mating, the continuation of my line.” Her smile is bitter. Beautiful. Broken. “So instead, it bound me. To this place. To this duty. Guardian and prisoner both, for two hundred fifty years.”

“The child?” Sakura’s hand tightens over her own belly, the question raw. “What happened to your baby?”

Something in Peach’s face cracks—just for a moment, ancient composure giving way to a grief two hundred fifty years old. “A daughter. Born within these walls, because I couldn’t leave them except for brief moments. I gave her to a shifter family I trusted with my life. Not long after that, all three died in a house fire.”

The word lands like a physical blow. Beside me, Rhodes makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before—something between a growl and a sob, quickly swallowed.

“Arson?” Caius asks.

Grandmother Peach shrugs. “I don’t know. It wasn’t pursued, and I was caged here.”