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Well, technically, I’m only using my vacation days for the next few weeks. Hearth HQ will call me back to my headquarters-based office soon, but that’s a problem for another day.

I walk up Sycamore Street, absorbing the beauty of the Community Garden to my left, and the gingerbread pink and white Annabelle Inn to my right. The Inn waves white shutters at me as I walk up the pathway toward her front entryway.

“Hello, darling Annabelle,” I say, leaving the path to walk around the back of the Inn.

Her siding ripples playfully, so I stroke my fingers down the wooden planks. The Annabelle has a sense of humor, I’ve come to realize. Once, when I was staring at my Louanna, the Inn whacked me in the arse with a plank of wood. The Annabelle might have a crush, come to think of it.

“Don’t be jealous, darling,” I whisper. “Yer always in my heart, Annabelle.”

She preens mightily, all the planked siding rippling and waving as if delighted.

“Knew yeh had a crush,” I say on a snicker, tickling the section of wall closest to me as I round the corner.

Behind the Annabelle is a gorgeous rose garden with a giant pedestal in the middle. Technically, it’s behind both the Annabelle and Alo’s cottage next door. The roses are in full bloom as always, helped along by magic, I assume. They’ve been blooming since I arrived in Ever months ago.

The sun has dipped low behind the trees, casting the garden and Inn in pale, muted light. It’s my favorite time of day, the time when wind plays through the air, diving and dancing like it’s calling to me. I glance up at the giant bay window to the room my Louanna is currently staying in.

Reaching to the crisscrossed leather straps over my bare chest, I slap a giant sapphire gem in the middle. Immediately, my physical body dissipates, and I become the wind. Like this, it’s nigh impossible for anyone to see me, a fact that’s made me incredibly popular with my boss, Evenia. Being invisible does lend itself to hunting rogue monsters—criminals and misfits and the like.

Rising through the chilling air, I pause outside the bay window, looking inside.

Louanna stands in front of a tall mirror, unbraiding her incredible strawberry blonde hair. It’s so long, it reaches her arse. Gods, I would give my right arm to fist that hair around my hand and use it for leverage to do naughty, naughty things.

I can’t groan or speak in wind form, but, gods, I can fantasize with the best of ‘em.

Louanna’s pale, freckled fingers move deftly through her hair. I get lost, watching the long strands tangle and be untangled by her. When she’s done, her hair hangs in a glorious sheet at her back while I resist the urge to crawl through the window and muss it.

That done, she turns to the ornate wooden desk in her room, seating herself gracefully as she tucks her hair over her opposite shoulder. She’s wearing a long nightgown with ruffles on the edges and shoulder straps. I’ve never seen anything more womanly than this fookin’ nightgown she wears.

She opens a box on the desk and brings out a single sheet of blank paper. Like always, there’s a pen next to the box. She reaches for it and begins writing. If this is like other nights, she’ll write for hours.

And this is where I wish I had a shifter’s hearing, because Louanna mutters while she writes, but I cannae hear her through the thick window. I’d consider using my wind to open it, but then she’d certainly know I was here, and I adore thethought of spying on her. Because, one day, she’s gonna pace to the window, say, “Hello, Dirk,” and invite me in.

My mate.

Even though she hasn’t acknowledged it yet.

I’m playing the long game with Lou. She arrived at a time when her triplet nieces needed her. Thralls, soul-sucking monsters, chased her into town, scratching and biting her. Instead of turning into one, she remained human.

Maybe the first being ever to do that. So far, nobody’s been able to explain it.

And then she was intimately involved in the accidental death of one of the shifters from the other side of Ever.

Louanna’s had a hellsuva time since she arrived.

So, the long game it is.

Which is fine for me, tae be honest. I’m a long game sort of male. I love a good tease. Because when Louanna finally unleashes with me, we’ll be hot enough to burn alive.

I float quietly, watching my mate scribble a letter to…someone. I haven’t invaded her privacy far enough to read the letters. But I know she’ll follow the same pattern as every other night. She’ll write it, reread it, maybe have a good cry, and then she’ll tuck the letter into the box and never take it out again.

I’ve a theory about the letters. Her dead sister Caroline was the Hector triplets’ mother. She’d have been far older than Lou, because Lou is only a few years older than the triplets. But I surmise she and her sister were close, and it’s my theory that Caroline is the recipient of those letters, and it’s some sort of human trauma process to write to a woman who can never read them.

Louanna. I ache to enter the room and pull her into my arms, to ask her to let me shoulder some of her burden. But she has a dozen layers of walls built around her heart, and so far, her nieces seem to be the ones who are allowed into the inner circle.I reckon I’ve got about eight layers of walls left before she lets me fully into where all that pain and hurt thrives.

Lou’s door swings open, slapping the wall with a bang. The Annabelle Inn lets out an angry groan as Iggy zips through the door with a box under each arm.

Scratch my earlier thought. Iggy barged directly through Lou’s walls right to the center of her soul, even though she grumbles about how impossibly direct and meddlesome he is.