Werewolves favored a direct kind of courtship. In the past few months, we’d had several female and male visitors who’d arrived at Gertrude Hunt to declare their admiration and interest. Luckily for me, the man was very different from the legend he had inspired.

The image on the screen changed into a big timer counting down. 30… 29… 28…

My cake!

“I have to go,” I told her.

“I want to talk to him!” the werewolf woman snarled.

“He should be back soon.”

“When?”

“Hopefully not for another twenty minutes. It will give you a chance to rehearse your speech.”

She blinked but recovered. “I don’t have a speech!”

“You say it like it’s my first time. There is always a speech.”

The timer reached zero and went off.

“Got to go.”

I took off down the hallway, escorted by Beast, while the woman’s curses slowly grew fainter behind me.

2

Are we about to witness werewolf courtship? Will Orro discover the illicit baking happening in his very own kitchen, right under his quills? Or is something even more dangerous afoot?

The story continues…

The cake rested in the springform. The meringue topping was blush and slightly crispy. It cracked a little, which would get a side eye from Orro, but I didn’t care.

I reached out and poked the springform. Barely warm. Okay.

A familiar presence crossed the inn’s boundary. The magic of the inn shifted in response. If Gertrude Hunt was a dog, it would’ve raised its head and wagged its tail.

Sean was home.

Another presence followed, creeping up our driveway. I motioned to the inn, and it produced a screen for me and tossed the feed from the side cameras onto it. Sean’s truck had driven up and parked in front of the garage. Behind it, a massive white tri-axle with a black dump bed filled with firewood slowly backed its way up the gentle slope of the driveway and around the house.

I took a long knife and carefully worked it around the perimeter of the springform, slicing through the meringue. If you tried to open the pan without it, half of the meringue would come off.

Sean got out of his truck. He was tall and corded with hard, lean muscle. You could tell just by looking at him that he was both strong and fast, but there was more to it. Sean looked ready. He projected a kind of calm but alert assurance, and you knew with a deep, instinctual understanding that if a threat appeared, he would respond instantly and with overwhelming force.

People sensed it and felt the need to label it. Since we lived in Texas, most of the time they ended up asking him if he played football, because somehow saying “that guy played football” provided a reasonable explanation for Sean’s combat readiness.