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Oh, fuck. I hurt her. I broke her bed, and I broke her. My heart seizes.

Then I realize she’s laughing. She’s laughing so hard she’s crying, clutching my chest, her body trembling on top of mine. I shake my head, smiling.

She wheezes, “You broke my bed.”

I turn my head and look at the busted leg lying next to my face. “Was a shitty bed.”

She playfully punches my chest. “My grandpa built that bed!”

“Your grandpa didn’t plan for me.”

She fucking howls while we lie there with splinters in my hair, my omega laughing on my chest, my knot still locked deep inside her, and I’ve never felt anything like this. Not ever. Not even close.

I wrap both arms around her and drag the blanket over us.

“You okay?” I ask quieter. “For real?”

She lifts her head. Her eyes are wet, but she’s grinning.

“Rowan,” she says. “That was the best night of my life.”

I tuck a loose braid behind her ear, rubbing slow circles on her back while my knot goes down, and she falls asleep right there on the floor, sprawled across me, snoring softly into my chest.

I don’t sleep. I don’t need much rest. I was a tree.

I just lie there staring at the ceiling, thinking.

Tomorrow, I’ll build her a bigger bed.

Five

Chapter Five: Hattie

I wake up on the floor.

That’s the first clue that something happened last night. The second clue is that every muscle below my belly button is sore in a way I’ve never been in my life. The third clue is the bed, or what’s left of it, tilted sideways next to me with one leg snapped clean off.

I lie there under Grandma’s quilt, blinking at the ceiling, and it all comes back at once. The toy shop. The owl. The walk home. The kitchen table. The bed.

Rowan.

I sit up so fast my head spins… the spot next to me is empty.

Oh no. No, no, no!

For one horrible second, I’m sure I made the whole thing up. I’m thirty-one years old, I got rejected by the Pruitt boy’s mama; I paid Mother Wren a month of honey money for nothing, and I had a very detailed fever dream about a seven-foot wooden alpha and then fell out of bed and broke it. That tracks. That honestly tracks better than the alternative.

Then I hear something crack in the kitchen, and a deep voice snarls, “Fuck.”

I flop back down on the floor. Thank you, Lord. Then I wrap the quilt around myself and get up. My legs almost give out.

Okay. Definitely not a dream. Dreams don’t do this to your thighs.

I shuffle to the kitchen doorway and stop.

Rowan is standing at my stove with his back to me, wearing nothing but the pants from last night, which are hanging so low on his hips I can see the dimples at the base of his spine. His back is huge and brown, covered in grain, the lines curving over his shoulder blades and down his sides, and there are faint little scratches on it. From me. I did that.

He’s frowning down at my frying pan like it personally offended him. There are four broken eggs on the counter, one on the floor, and what might be a fifth one in the pan, burning.