Chapter 104
Emily
I was trying not to get used to surprises when Logan declared at breakfast that we were taking the day off.
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I meant to protest, but honestly, I could use a break… and I had enjoyed the craft fair and his company more than I let on.
But I knew the street before we even turned onto it. The narrow brick lane ran behind the old municipal hall, where ivy overtook the wrought–iron fence and the sidewalk was full of cracks.
I hadn’t been down this street in years. Not since I was seventeen and desperate to be anywhere that didn’t reek of my stepmother’s perfume and the judgment that clung to every hallway of the Blackwood Pack.
Logan pulled the car to a slow stop, eyes flicking toward the storefront beside us.
A green–painted door. Gold lettering on the glass, slightly faded but still intact: Wren & Wisp Bookshop & Café.
My chest tightened.
“You know this place?” I asked, voice light but brittle around the edges.
Logan unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door. “I didn’t know about it until recently.”
I hesitated, hand still resting on my lap. “Then how-?”
“One of the admin aides from your old Pack helped me with some background work. I was looking for local spots to avoid paparazzi.” He paused, glancing over the hood of the car at me.
“Your name came up. Apparently, someone on staff who used to run errands picked up an obscene number of orders here.” That stopped me. He’d gone looking. He’d asked someone to compile places I used to frequent.
It wasn’t the intrusion that caught me off guard. It was the fact that he’d noticed something quiet and personal about me. Something soft. And instead of exploiting it, he’d brought me here
“Right,” I murmured, stepping out.
The air smelled like baked stone and cinnamon bark, just like it always had. As we stepped inside, the bells above the door chimed in that familiar, delicate jangle.
Someone starts
It was all the same, exactly as I remembered. Mismatched tables and worn couches. The scatter of poetry books near the pastry case. The handwritten staff picks with phrases like “for when you’re manifesting peace but secretly drama.”
I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it until the memory hit me full in the chest: me curled in the b lavender milk, reading fairy tales while hiding away from the bullying of being dormant.
ble with a cup of
Logan scanned the room like it was a military map. “Table’s open.
Of course he picked my table.
I slid into a chair first, pressing my fingertips to the surface’s old carvings. Some initials still lived in the wood grain. Mine weren’t there, but I remembered imagining them. Back when I thought I’d never be someone’s Luna.
Logan went to order. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until he returned and set the drink down in front of me.
It was exactly right. My old order. Still made with the same loose–leaf blend. Still topped with that little curl of dried lavender and honey foam.
“How did you know?” I asked, voice hushed.
He shrugged. “You drank something similar at the “craft fair” as you called it.‘
Chapter 104
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That shouldn’t have meant anything. It should’ve felt awkward, but he had noticed. It felt like he’d reached back into my past and plucked out something I’d buried for safekeeping.
I looked at him, really looked, and saw no smugness. No calculation. Just intense observation.
“I used to come here when I needed to be away from everyone,” I said. Sharing that, letting anyone know how much this place had once saved me, made me pause. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
I covered my wince with a sip of tea instead. And told myself that none of this meant anything.
Logan just nodded like he understood and reached across the table and plucked a book from the “Staff Picks” shelf behind me.
He flipped it open with the kind of skeptical look one might reserve for suspicious contracts or unstable explosives.
“Let me guess,” he said, skimming the back cover. “Hidden royal bloodline, secret prophecy, forbidden romance with a tortured Alpha Prince?“”
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s award–winning.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So is sheep shearing at the county fair. Doesn’t mean I want to do it.”
I snatched the book out of his hands before he could bend the cover. “Says the man who used an annotated memoir on territorial legislation as bedtime reading.”
He leaned back, that amused tilt softening the sharp lines of his jaw. “That was strategy.”
“No, that was masochism. At least my books have characters who feel things.”
“Like talking ravens and ravishing maidens.”
I cracked a smile before I could stop it. “As opposed to your gripping tale of Pack finance reforms in 1997?”
“Historic. Influential.”
“Boring.”
We were both laughing now, genuinely, fully, that kind of surprised laughter that bubbles up when you were least expecting it. It felt warm, stupid, a little reckless. I hadn’t laughed like that in… gods, I didn’t know how long.
The café murmured around us; pages turning, dishes clinking, rain starting to tap faintly at the windows. Our corner table felt tucked away from it all. Like a pocket of air carved just for this moment.
I set the book down on the table between us, still grinning. Logan was watching me in that unreacar like he wasn’t sure whether to admire me or guard himself from me. Maybe both.
“You’re different here,” he said softly.
I tilted my head. “How so?”
“Less… sharp. Like you can finally take a full breath.”
That shouldn’t have made me feel anything. But it did.
he had sometimes,
My hand moved toward my mug just as he reached to slide it closer Our fingers brushed. Just that. Skin against skin. But it hit like a lightning snap under my ribs.
The air shifted again and Logan’s gaze met mine, steady and heated. He looked down, then slowly, deliberately turned my hand over on the table between us.
I could’ve stopped him. Instead, I wanted to know exactly what would happen next, like an out of body experience. His fingers curled gently around my wrist, his thumb brushing along the inside like he was memorizing my pulse. Then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss there–soft, warm, maddeningly tender. It was reverent. It was careful.
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I forgot how to breathe.
When he lifted his head, his eyes met mine again, asking nothing Demanding nothing. Just being there.
And gods, that was somehow worse.
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I pulled my hand back slowly, not in rejection, just… retreat. I wrapped it around my mug like I needed something solid to hold.
My skin still tingled where his lips had touched. Like I was marked by it now. Like no one would ever kiss that spot again without being compared.
He leaned back in his seat, fingers folding loosely in front of him like nothing had happened. But it had. Everything in the air between us had changed. The rhythm. The gravity.
I sipped my tea to ground myself. It had gone lukewarm. I barely tasted it.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just… gratitude. Affection. A moment in a bookshop and nothing more.
But as we stood to leave, I caught myself glancing at his hand. Wondering if he felt it too.
And knowing, deep in the place I didn’t want to name, that he absolutely did.
Chapter 105
Chapter 105
