Marked By Mistake: The Baker's Secret

Ivy's POV

"Mommy, is that a wolf man?"

Hazel's voice cut through the warm hum of the bakery, and the tray of cinnamon rolls nearly slipped right out of my hands.

"What did you just say?" I set the tray down too fast, sugar dust scattering across the counter like snow.

She pointed a sticky finger toward the window, eyes wide and delighted instead of scared, the way only a five year old could look at something that should have terrified her. "The big man outside. He smells like the forest."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"Hazel, baby, we do not say things like that in front of customers." I kept my voice light, but my hands were shaking as I wiped them on my apron.

She smells like the forest. That was not a phrase a normal five year old used. That was a phrase a wolf used, and my daughter had never once, not in five years, shown a single sign that her wolf existed.

Until today.

I followed her finger to the window, half expecting to see nothing, half hoping I would see nothing, and instead I saw him.

Tall. Broad shoulders straining against a black jacket that looked far too expensive for Maple Hollow. Dark hair pushed back like he had not bothered to fix it in days. And even through the glass, even from thirty feet away, I felt it. A pull low in my stomach, old and buried and furious that it was still alive after everything.

Roman Darkwood.

I had not said that name out loud in five years. I had not let myself think it either, not really, not the way I was thinking it now, watching him laugh at something his cousin said, watching the sun catch on a face I once pressed my hands against while he bled onto my sheets.

Four years of high school I had watched him from the edges of rooms, the quiet girl nobody noticed, loving a boy who belonged to my best friend and never once knowing I existed. I used to think that kind of loving was safe precisely because it went nowhere. I know better now. It went somewhere. It went somewhere terrible.

"Ivy, you are staring." Denise, my only employee and my only real friend in this town, nudged my elbow with hers. "You are staring so hard I am surprised the glass has not cracked." She laughed

"I am not staring." I lied 

"Uh huh. And who is he?" She asked 

"Nobody." The lie came out too fast, too sharp, and Denise's eyebrows shot up.

"That did not sound like nobody." She replied 

Hazel tugged on my apron before I had to answer. "Mommy, can we say hi to the wolf man?"

"No." I said it faster than I meant to, and Hazel's face fell, and guilt twisted through the panic already sitting in my chest. I crouched down to her level, softening my voice even though my heart was slamming against my ribs. 

"Sweetheart, he is just a customer, probably here for cake, okay? We do not need to say hi." I smiled shakily

"But he is looking at us." She pointed again

My whole body went cold.

I forced myself to look up, and Hazel was right. Roman was not laughing at his cousin's joke anymore. He was staring straight through the bakery window, straight at me, and his easy smile had slipped into something else entirely. Something focused. Something hungry.

He remembers me, I thought in my mind as fear rocketed through my whole body.

No. He could not. He had been drunk out of his mind that night, half dying in my arms, and I had made very, very sure he would not remember any of it. I had pressed my palms to his temples and I had taken the memory the same way I had taken his pain, and I had never, not once in five years, regretted anything the way I regretted protecting my secret that night.

The bell above the door chimed.

I nearly dropped the second tray.

"Afternoon." The woman coming in was not him, just Mrs. Farrow from the flower shop next door, and I let out a breath so shaky it embarrassed me. 

"You alright, hon?” She asked 

You look like you have seen a ghost." She added

You have no idea, I thought to myself 

"I am fine," I said instead. "Long morning." I smiled shakily 

Mrs. Farrow chattered on about the wedding cake order, about how excited the whole town was that the Darkwood wedding was finally happening, how the Alpha himself was in town for his cousin's big day, how handsome he still was after all these years away. I nodded in the right places. I did not hear a single word.

Because through the window, past Mrs. Farrow's shoulder, I watched Roman say something to his cousin, watched his cousin laugh and clap him on the back, and watched Roman start walking toward my door.

"Hazel." My voice came out strangled. "Go to the back with Denise, okay baby?"

"But I want to see the wolf man!" She said excitedly 

"Now, Hazel." I demanded 

Something in my tone must have scared her, because she went, casting one last curious glance over her shoulder before Denise scooped her up and disappeared into the kitchen.

The bell above the door chimed again.

I made myself turn around, trying to compose myself in the best possible manner.

Roman Darkwood filled the doorway the way he used to fill a room in high school, except now there was nothing boyish left about him. Five years had carved him into something harder, colder, more dangerous, and the second his eyes locked onto mine I felt my wolf stirred, my never once awakened wolf, stir somewhere deep in my chest for the very first time in my entire life.

"Well," he said, and his voice hit me like a physical rod, low and rough and painfully familiar. "I did not expect to walk into a bakery and feel like I had been hit by a truck." He said half smiling

I gripped the edge of the counter so hard my knuckles went white. "Can I help you with something?" I managed to say

He tilted his head, studying me the way you would study a puzzle you were furious you could not solve. "That is the thing. I am not sure yet." He smiles again

A slow, dangerous smile pulled at his mouth. "But I intend to find out." He finally said

My heart was pounding so loud I was sure he could hear it, and for one terrifying second I was certain he was about to say her name, Marisol's name, the woman whose memory should have made him hate me on sight if he knew even half of what I had done.

Instead he leaned against the counter, close enough that I caught the scent of him, cedar and rain and something underneath that made my knees grow weak.

"I am told you are the one baking my cousin's wedding cake." 

"That is right." I replied

"Good." His eyes dropped, just for a second, to my mouth, and my whole body lit up like I had been struck by lightning. 

"Then I guess I will be seeing a lot more of you then." He smiles again

Behind him, through the kitchen door left open a crack, I could see Hazel peeking out, her small face full of wonder instead of fear.

And that was when I understood, with a cold, sinking certainty, that whatever door I thought I had closed five years ago had just been kicked wide open, and there was no way in the world to shut it again before he found out everything.