Page 13 of Match Made In Growl

Although, speaking of men she had nothing to say to…

The tiger shifter from the café surfaced in her thoughts uninvited, amber eyes and a confident lean and a smile that expected doors to open. She'd met a hundred versions of him. Charming, easy, built like a postcard and about as deep. The kind of man who made you feel like the center of the universe for exactly as long as it took to get what he wanted, and then you were yesterday's weather.

She was being unfair. She knew she was being unfair. She'd exchanged maybe forty words with the man and was already writing his biography based on the last guy who'd disappointed her. That was Grant's real legacy, not a broken heart but a broken filter, one that sorted every attractive man into the same category: not worth the risk.

She shoved the thought aside and went back to the carvings. The spiral pattern extended further than she'd initially mapped, running along the base of the ridge in a continuous line that disappeared under a shelf of moss-covered rock. She followed it on her hands and knees, brushing away soil and debris, the magnetometer at her hip clicking steadily as the energy readings climbed.

The deeper she went, the stronger the hum. Not just in her hands now but in her wrists, her forearms, a vibration that climbed through her bones like sound through water. The air in the basin grew warmer despite the morning still being cool, and she realized she was sweating, her flannel damp against her back.

She reached the end of the visible carving and pressed both palms flat against the stone where the line vanished under the shelf.

The hum stopped.

Not faded. Not diminished. Stopped, like someone had pressed a finger to a vibrating string and held it still. The silence was so sudden and so total that Steph heard her own heartbeat, loud and fast, echoing back at her from the rock face. Then something pushed back.

It came through her palms, a pulse of energy that wasn't heat and wasn't cold but was undeniably aware. Like pressing your hand against a window and feeling someone press back from the other side. The sensation traveled up her arms and across her shoulders, and for one disorienting second she felt the layers beneath her, all of them, stacked like pages in a book she'd just opened. Wards and seals and something underneath the lowest layer that was vast and patient and very, very old.

And watching her.

She yanked her hands back and scrambled to her feet, heart hammering. The basin was empty. The woods around her were still, no birdsong, no wind, nothing moving in the underbrush. Just the ridge and the carvings and the flat, waiting silence of magic that had been disturbed.

"What are you?" she whispered.

Lightning split the sky directly above her with a crack so violent she felt it in her teeth. The thunder came half a second later, a deep, rolling boom that shook the ground under her boots and sent a cascade of loose stones rattling down the ridge face. The sky, which had been clear and blue ten minutes ago, was suddenly black from horizon to horizon, clouds piling on top of each other.

The rain hit like a switch being thrown. Not a gradual build but an instant deluge, sheets of water so thick she couldn't see the tree line twenty feet away. It hammered the basin and turned the exposed carvings into rivers, water pouring across the symbols she'd spent the morning documenting, carrying sediment and soil back over surfaces she'd only just uncovered.

"No, no, no." Steph grabbed her journal and camera and shoved them inside her jacket against her body, then snatched her field pack from the base of the oak where she'd left it. The water was already ankle-deep in the lowest part of the basin, filling the depressions and obscuring the stone. Hours of careful work being buried again in minutes.

She couldn't save any of it. The rain was too heavy, the water rising too fast, and the lightning was striking close enough that standing in an open basin with a metal tool belt on was equivalent to holding up a sign that said hit me.

She ran for the tree line and ducked under the same broad oak that had sheltered her two days ago, pressing her back against the trunk and pulling her jacket tight around the equipment inside it. Rain pounded the canopy above her and streamed down in waterfalls through the gaps in the branches. She was soaked through in seconds, dark curls plastered to her face and neck, water running into her boots.

The storm raged for twenty minutes with a fury that felt personal. Steph sat with her knees drawn up and her gear clutched to her chest and watched the basin fill and drain and fill again, the beautiful carvings she'd spent the morning documenting disappearing under mud and runoff.

When it finally eased to a steady, heavy rain instead of a monsoon, she wiped the water from her face and opened her journal. The pages she'd written on were damp but legible, protected by the waxed cover she'd learned to invest in after another incident. Her sketches were intact. The photographs were safe in the waterproof camera. She hadn't lost everything.

But the site was wrecked. She'd need days to re-expose what the storm had just buried, and that was assuming the weather cooperated, which, based on the last seventy-two hours, was not a safe assumption.

Steph leaned her head back against the oak and stared up through the dripping canopy at the grey, churning sky. The hum was back. Faint, steady, coming up through the roots of the tree she was sitting under, as if the magic beneath the basin extended further than the carvings suggested. Much further.

Something down there had felt her touch and responded. Something that had been sealed away by generations of practitioners who'd considered it dangerous enough to lock down and walk away from. And when she'd pushed, it had pushed back, and the sky had opened like a warning. Or an invitation.

She pulled out her phone. The screen was wet but functional. She typed a message to Tom Brewster: Site compromised by storm. Carvings partially reburied. Will re-excavate when weather clears. Energy readings spiked significantly before the storm hit. Logging everything.

She almost added something down there is aware of me but deleted it before hitting send. That was the kind of thing that got your permits reviewed and your access restricted by nervous council liaisons who preferred their archaeology uneventful.

She'd keep that part to herself. For now.

8

CRISS

The Silver Fang Tavern was exactly what Criss needed on a night like this: loud, warm, and full of people who expected nothing from him except that he'd buy a round and tell a good story.

Maeve Cross ran the kind of bar that didn't apologize for itself. Stone walls, low ceilings, a massive firepit in the center that threw heat and amber light across rough-hewn tables and mismatched chairs. The whole place smelled like woodsmoke, whiskey, and the pine tar Maeve used on the floorboards to keep them from rotting. Antlers and old weapons hung on the walls alongside framed photographs of Hollow Oak's history, and the jukebox in the corner played whatever Maeve decided it would play, which tonight was blues guitar and something with a fiddle that Criss didn't recognize but liked anyway.

Maeve herself was behind the bar, short black hair pushed back from her face, sleeves rolled up on forearms corded with lean muscle. She had the build and bearing of a woman who'd thrown people out of this bar with her own hands and would do it again without hesitation. Lioness shifter, council guard, Callum's cousin, and the only person in Hollow Oak who scared Criss more than Kieran did. Not that he'd ever say that out loud.