Page 11 of Roaring Spell

She’s new to town. Struggling. The last thing she needs is some massive shifter following her around, claiming the mate pull gives him rights to her attention.

THREE

SAKURA

One week since full opening.

Three clients total.

I rearrange the salt room for the fourth time this morning, repositioning crystals that don’t need repositioning, adjusting the ambient lighting that was already perfect. The walls glitter with embedded minerals, casting fractured rainbows across the floor. Beautiful. Pristine. Completely empty of anyone who might actually pay me for my services.

Word travels fast in small towns. Word about weather witches who create thunderstorms during client sessions travels faster.

At least no one’s asked me to leave yet.

The thought is bitter. Familiar. I shove it down and focus on the amethyst cluster that’s tilted slightly to the left. There. Fixed. The room is now marginally more perfect than it was thirty seconds ago.

The bell above my front door chimes.

I practically sprint out of the salt room, hope surging despite my best efforts to contain it. A client. Finally, a client. Someone willing to overlook one tiny atmospheric incident and give me a chance to⁠—

Berry Thornwick stands in my reception area, arms full of books, her familiar—or possibly the semi-sentient bookshop itself, no one’s quite sure—apparently having decided I needed reading material.

“Delivery!” She beams at me with the scattered enthusiasm of someone who spends more time with fictional characters than real people. Her hair is escaping its braid in approximately seventeen different directions. “The shop insisted. Very insistent. Wouldn’t let me leave until I grabbed these for you.”

I eye the stack. “The shop insisted?”

“It does that sometimes. Picks books for people. Usually right about it, too.” She deposits the pile on my reception desk with a thump. “These are specifically for you. The shop was very clear.”

I glance at the spines. Romance novels. Every single one of them. Paranormal romance, specifically—shifters and fated mates and all the tropes I’ve been avoiding because they hit too close to home. All by someone named Milly Taiden.

The top one is called Bearfoot and Pregnant. The cover features a woman and a massive, shirtless man with abs that could grate cheese.

“The shop picked these.” I keep my voice carefully neutral.

Berry nods earnestly. “I don’t question it anymore. The shop knows things.”

I flip through the stack. Fur-ocious Mate. Scaling Her Dragon. Her Purrfect Match. And at the bottom, like the shop saved the most pointed message for last: Wolf Protector.

Protector. Of course.

I set the books down harder than necessary.

“Tell the shop I said thanks.”

“Will do!” Berry waves and disappears back into the misty morning, leaving me alone with a stack of romance novels I don’t need and zero actual clients.

I stare at the books. The books stare back.

“I’m not reading you,” I inform them.

The rose quartz on my desk—still crooked, always crooked—seems to judge me.

“I’m not.”

The morning crawls by.

I clean things that don’t need cleaning. Reorganize my crystal inventory twice. Water plants that are already adequately hydrated. Practice my grounding exercises until I’m so centered I might actually sink through the floor.