Chapter 2

Roman's POV

"You are doing the thing again." Marcus, my cousin, dropped into the chair across from me with two glasses of whiskey he clearly thought I needed. "The thing where you go quiet and stare at nothing for minutes." 

"I am not staring at nothing." I lied

"No?" He slid a glass toward me. "Then what exactly were you staring at back there? Because from where I was standing, it looked a whole lot like you forgot how to speak in front of a woman holding a tray of cinnamon rolls." He let out a quiet laughter

I did not answer, mostly because I did not have an answer that made any sense, not even to myself.

I took the whiskey and did not drink it.

Five years. Five years since Marisol died, since the bond I had carried my entire adult life snapped in half and left a hole in my chest that never fully closed, no matter how many cities I ran to or how many nights I spent trying to drown the silence where her voice used to be. Five years of being told by every Alpha, every healer, every so called expert that a wolf who lost his first mate rarely, if ever, found another.

And then I walked into a bakery for cake samples and got knocked flat by a woman I could have sworn I had never really known.

Except that was not quite true either.

Something about her felt familiar in a way I could not place, in a way that itched at the back of my skull like a word sitting on the tip of my tongue. Her voice. The particular way her hands had gripped the counter, knuckles white, like she was bracing for impact. I had felt that exact same bracing before, somewhere, sometime, and the not knowing was going to drive me insane.

"Roman." Marcus snapped his fingers in front of my face. "You are doing it again Couz." He said

"So you know Ivy?." Marcus asked

“Ivy” I finally said it out loud, and just saying it did something strange to my chest, a tightening that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with something I had not let myself feel in years.

"The baker." He added

"Yes, The baker." I stuttered “I think I do”

Marcus leaned back, studying me with the kind of careful patience he had perfected over years of managing my temper. "You know what that look means, right?"

"Do not." I retorted 

"I am just saying, I have seen that look exactly once before," he continued “Oh wait, I think I wore it when I met my fiancé” he smiled again

"It is not that." I said it too fast, the same way Ivy had said nobody too fast, and the thought of that, the thought that we had both lied badly in the exact same moment, made something in my chest crack open just a little wider.

"Then what is it?" He asked half curious half laugh 

I did not know how to explain the feeling without sounding insane, so I did not try. I just knew that somewhere between watching her nearly drop a tray and hearing her voice go sharp and protective the second her daughter pointed at me through the window, my wolf had gone from calm to fully awake for the first time in half a decade.

Her daughter, I let the word sink in again

The kid had looked right at me and called me a wolf man, easy as breathing, like she had known exactly what I was on sight. Most human raised kids could not do that. Most kids with even a drop of wolf blood could not do that until their wolf started stirring closer to thirteen or fourteen.

This kid looked five. Maybe six, I thought to myself 

"Roman." Marcus's voice had lost its teasing edge. "You have gone somewhere again."

"The kid." I finally looked at him. "Did that feel strange to you? The way she looked at me?"

Marcus frowned, thinking it over. "A little. Kids usually cry when they see you, you are not exactly a soft looking guy." He laughed at the joke

"She was not scared." I said 

"No," Marcus agreed slowly. "She looked delighted, a very brave kid if you ask me" he replied

I turned my glass in slow circles on the table, watching the whiskey catch the light, and let myself think the thought I had been actively avoiding since I walked out of that bakery with my whole chest feeling like it had been cracked open and put back together wrong.

What if my wolf recognized something in that bakery that had nothing to do with the mother.

I shoved the thought down hard enough that it hurt, because that was insane, that was grief talking, that was five years of loneliness inventing connections that did not exist. I did not have a child. I would know if I had a child. Someone would have told me.

Unless there was a very good reason nobody had told me anything.

"I want that bakery to cater more than the wedding cake," I said instead, shoving the spiraling thought somewhere I could deal with it later, somewhere quieter, somewhere that was not in front of Marcus's entirely too knowing stare. "Set up another meeting. Tomorrow."

"You do know most Alphas do not personally coordinate dessert logistics." Marcus replied looking at me with all seriousness 

"I am not most Alphas." I replied in the same breathe

Marcus laughed, low and disbelieving, but he did not argue, because five years of watching me refuse every single introduction, every arranged meeting, every well meaning attempt to set me up with some other pack's daughter had taught him better than to question the one time I actually wanted something.

"Alright." He raised his glass in a mock toast. "To dessert logistics." He said between laughs

I did not laugh. I was too busy replaying the exact moment Ivy's eyes had met mine through that window, the way something in my chest had roared awake so violently it nearly knocked the breath out of me, the same way it had felt the first and only other time in my life, five years ago, with a woman whose face I could not fully remember anymore except I used to see her around or so.

That thought stopped me cold.

I could not remember Marisol's face clearly anymore.

I had never noticed that before, not once in five years, and now that I had, I could not unnotice it, and underneath the grief that had defined half a decade of my life a new and far more dangerous question was starting to form.

What if my memory had not just faded on its own.

What if something, or someone, had taken it from me.

I looked back toward the direction of the bakery, toward the woman who had gone pale as a ghost the second she saw me, toward the child who smelled like the forest and looked at me like she already knew my name, and for the first time in five years I felt something other than grief settle into my chest.

I felt certain that whatever Ivy Kaletta was hiding, I was not leaving Maple Hollow until I found out exactly what it was.