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An elderly man walking a terrier gives me a sympathetic look. “Talking to yourself?”

“No.”

He glances around me at the empty sidewalk. “Right.”

I keep moving. Toward Nightjar Row, apparently. I tell myself I’m getting lunch before going home. Marcel’s is there, and so is the diner. Plenty of meat. Plenty of perfectly reasonable reasons for a wolf to care where we’re going.

By the time I round the corner onto Nightjar Row, I know she’s there before I see her. My body knows first. Heat crawls across the back of my neck, and every sense sharpens at once. The sounds of the street separate into individual layers—the hum of an engine, cups knocking together inside Lucky Bean, someone laughing near the bakery. The smells do the same: coffee, sugar, damp leaves, hot bread, exhaust fumes.

And then hers cuts through all of it. Warm skin, coffee, and the faint aroma of citrus.

My wolf goes still. Focused.

I scan the street and find her outside Lucky Bean. She’s carrying a cardboard drink tray in one hand and a paper bag tucked beneath her arm. She’s still wearing the yellow sweater and jeans but her hair is now piled on her head in a messy bun. Several strands have escaped around her face, and she keeps blowing one away from her mouth because both hands are full.

I shouldn’t notice any of it.

She smiles at Melinda through the café window, then turns and walks directly toward me.

Fuck.

I move to the side.

She does too.

We both correct in the same direction, stop, try again, and repeat the whole thing.

A laugh escapes her. “Apparently, we’ve reached the awkward dance portion of the sidewalk.”

She’s close now. Too close. Her scent hits me properly, and my chest tightens so hard that I have to remind myself to breathe.

Mine, my wolf says.

The word lands with such absolute certainty that for half a second, I forget where I am.

No.

The woman looks up at me. For the first time, I see her properly. Brown eyes, but not flat brown. There’s gold around the center, catching the light. A small crease has appeared between her eyebrows as she tries to work out whether I’m going left or right.

Then she smiles directly at me, and her husky chuckle goes straight to my groin.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, her cheeks flushed.

I freeze. No one apologizes to me unless they think I’m about to bite them.

The coffee in her tray is tilting toward the edge. Before I can think better of it, I reach out and catch the cup.

My fingers brush hers and heat tears up my arm. My wolf slams forward with a force I haven’t felt since the night I changed, and for one terrible instant, I expect claws, bone, and pain.

But it isn’t rage or violence. It’s want. Pure, immediate, terrifying want.

The cup dents slightly beneath my grip, and her breath catches. My eyes fly to hers. Did she feel it too?

For a second, neither of us moves. Then her gaze drops to the scars on my hands. Here it comes—the quick look away and the polite attempt not to stare. That tiny flash of fear people think they’re good at hiding.

She looks at the pale ridges across my knuckles, then lifts her eyes back to mine. No fear. Just curiosity and something warmer I refuse to examine.

“Thanks,” she says softly.