MISTLETOE,MOONLIGHT AND MY SECRET

Smile, Maya," Julian murmured against my ear, his hand firm at my waist. "The cameras are watching."

I smiled, bright and glamorous, the kind of smile I'd practiced in the mirror until it looked like it cost me nothing at all.

Crystal chandeliers threw light across the Vance family ballroom like the whole room was on fire. My dress, designer, borrowed for the night, cinched to hide as much of the bump as fabric could manage, did its best.

My heart didn't.

Nobody here knew I was broke. Nobody knew I was a rogue werewolf hiding in plain sight.

And nobody, especially not the man with his hand on my waist, steering me past a wall of flashing cameras like I was something worth protecting, knew that the baby kicking under my ribs right now belonged to him.

Seven days earlier...

Four minutes left on the timer, and I still didn't listen to the blizzard alarm buzzing on my phone for the third time that hour.

"Maya, the news is not messing around this time." Chloe's voice carried from the back room, muffled by the sound of chairs going up onto tables. "State of emergency. That means actual emergency."

"Four minutes," I called back, sliding the tray of gingerbread out of the oven.

The smell hit me first, warm and sweet, cutting through the cold creeping in under the front door.

"The Hendersons need these for the school fundraiser. I'm not making a six year old cry on principle."

Outside, Main Street had already gone the soft, muffled white of a town settling in for something bigger than a normal snowfall.

The string lights over the toy shelves flickered, caught the light, went dark again. I'd strung them myself back in November, wound through the hand painted wooden sleighs and the shelf of nutcrackers I still hadn't managed to sell, and some stubborn, sentimental part of me refused to take them down even now that half the shop's profits depended on cookies instead of toys.

Chloe appeared in the doorway a minute later, coat already half on. "Lock up and go home. You look like you're about to fall asleep standing up."

"I'm fine."

"You're seven months pregnant in a blizzard warning, alone, above a bakery with questionable insulation. You're the opposite of fine, you're just too stubborn to admit it."

She kissed my cheek on her way past. "Text me when you're home."

The bell over the door jingled, softer this time, and then she was gone, swallowed up by the white outside.

I watched her taillights disappear down Main Street before the snow closed in behind her completely, then went straight back to the counter to box cookies, because the timer on the second batch had four minutes left, and four minutes wouldn't kill anyone.

I moved through the shop the way I always did at closing, wiping down the toy shelves, straightening a crooked row of wooden trains, turning the sign in the window without quite flipping it yet.

The baby chose that moment to do a slow, rolling somersault under my ribs, and I pressed a hand flat against the spot out of habit, the way I did a dozen times a day now, half comfort and half conversation with someone who couldn't hear me yet.

"Almost done," I said out loud, to no one, the way I'd started doing since I stopped having anyone else to say it to.

The oven beeped.

I pulled the second tray, balancing it against my hip the way I'd learned to balance everything lately, one hand always free for whatever my center of gravity decided to do next.

Behind me, the wind shifted. I felt it before I heard it, a pressure change against my ears, and I had just enough time to think that's strange before the front door blew open with a force that rattled the glass in its frame.

The bell didn't ring. It screamed, one violent clang, and a wall of snow and wind tore into the shop, scattering the stack of order forms off the counter and sending a dusting of flour up off the workstation like smoke.

"We're closed!" I spun around, tray still in my hands, already reaching for the door with my free hand.

And stopped.

A man stood in the doorway, the storm pouring through him rather than around him, ice cracking off the shoulders of a coat that had clearly never been designed for anything worse than a light drizzle.

His hair was plastered flat to his forehead. His chest heaved like he'd run the last quarter mile, and behind him the streetlight caught the snow in a wall of gold and white, so that for one strange, suspended second he looked less like a man who'd stumbled in out of the storm and more like something the storm had brought with it on purpose.

Above him, painted in curling gold script across the fogged glass, MAYA'S SUGAR PLUM BAKERY & TOY SHOP caught what little light there was.

He lifted his head.

And then the smell hit me, cedar and dark chocolate curling through the cold air, unmistakable even after seven months of trying to forget it.Rain right before it breaks open into a downpour.

Something low in my chest, something I had spent seven months convincing myself was dead and buried, sat straight up inside me and howled.

Mate, my wolf whimpered, scratching at the inside of my ribs like she could claw her way out and get to him faster than I could stop her. He's here.

I knew that scent. Seven months of trying and failing to forget it, telling myself it had only felt that overwhelming because the night itself had been unreal, a masquerade and a mask and a stranger who'd made me feel like the only person in the world for exactly one night before I made sure I would never see him again.

His eyes found mine across the shop, and whatever he'd been about to say died somewhere behind his teeth.

"You," he said. Just that. One word, wrecked, like it had been sitting loaded in his chest for months, waiting for a reason to come out.

I didn't move. I couldn't have, even if the bell above the door hadn't still been swinging, even if the wind hadn't still been howling through the open frame behind him.

I stood very still, the way you stand when something dangerous has wandered into a small space and you are not yet certain whether it has seen you.

He took one step inside. Snow slid off him in sheets, melting into dark patches on the wood floor. His gaze, slow and disbelieving, dropped from my face.

Down.

To the unmistakable, seven months round curve of my stomach.

Every bit of color drained out of his face like someone had pulled a plug.

"Maya." My name came out of him barely above a whisper, almost lost under the wind still gusting through the open door. "Is that?...."

He didn't finish it. He didn't have to. I already knew exactly what he was asking, and I had exactly one heartbeat to decide what to do about the fact that the answer was yes, it was his, and the last time this man had seen my face, I'd been wearing a mask and a lie and a promise to myself that he would never, ever find out what I really was.

Behind him, the wind gusted hard, slamming the door shut with a bang like a gunshot, and sealed us both inside together.

For a long moment neither of us moved. The oven ticked as it cooled. Somewhere under the counter, the string lights I refused to take down kept flickering, off, on, off, like the whole shop was holding its breath along with me.

I should have locked that door the second Chloe left. I've replayed that half second a hundred times since, the one where I could have flipped the sign and turned the deadbolt and none of what happened next would have happened at all.

Instead, the storm that would trap this whole town for a week had only just started.