Page 8 of Harvest Magic

“Great. We’ll leave from here tomorrow at eight a.m.”

I spent a restless night tossing and turning in the bed in my suite, my thoughts filled with a certain bear shifter. For someone I’d spent a sum total of two minutes with, Ollie had really made an impression. Every time I closed my eyes I could see those soulful eyes staring at me. I could tell that he’d wanted to approach me, to get closer, but he’d respected my boundaries, which I’d appreciated immensely. After a lifetime of men not listening to me, it was a pleasant surprise.

He’s a gentle giant, I thought to myself, even though I couldn’t say how I knew that.

When I came downstairs the next morning the three Rosewater sisters were in the kitchen, dressed in workout attire and sipping coffee.

“Jane’s on her way,” Pepper told me.

“I’m here,” a voice called from the hallway. “And ready to go.”

We headed outside, taking a few minutes to stretch. I watched my cousins and emulated their actions, stretching my quads, hamstrings, shoulders, and back before we headed down the driveway at a slow jog.

“Have you done any running in the past?” Meri asked.

“Not since I was first married,” I said. “I used to do a little jog around the neighborhood, but then I got pregnant with my oldest and never went back to it.”

I’d almost forgotten about my morning routine. Like a lot of women, once I had my kids my own hobbies had fallen to the wayside. My ex-husband used to grumble about ‘babysitting’ the kids, as if they weren’t his responsibility too. My steps sped up a bit as I remembered how he’d sit around on the couch playing video games while I cooked, cleaned, and took care of the kids after a full day of work. Jerk.

To my surprise once we started moving my body fell back into the rhythm of running. I wasn’t going to break any land speed records, but I kept up better than I expected. Maybe I should do this more often.

“How far are we going?” I asked when there was a break in the conversation.

“We usually do a three mile loop,” Meri said.

She pointed to a patch of trees that looked like all the other trees as far as I could tell. “That’s where I met Preston.”

“You met your husband… uh, mate on the side of the road?” I asked in confusion.

I’d heard from Sage that Meri had done some party planning for Preston when he first moved to town, so I’d assumed that’s how they met.

“Preston was a pretty new wolf,” Meri explained.

“I thought people were born shifters,” I interrupted, remembering what I’d read last night when I was obsessively googling everything I could find about shifters and fated mates.

“Usually that’s true, but it is possible to turn a full human into a shifter,” she explained. “It’s against the law, and anyone caught doing it without special dispensation from the Shifter Council is put to death, so that’s a good deterrent. But some rogue shifters jumped him in New York and turned him. He was really struggling with controlling his wolf so his friend Duncan, who was born and raised here in Greysden, suggested that they move here.”

When Meri fell silent Pepper picked up the story. “So Meri and I were jogging along this road and suddenly some giant wolf leaps out and knocks her down, flat on her back. Meri started yelling at him and he shifted back to human and immediately identified her as his mate.”

“That’s nice,” I said, unsure what the proper response to a story like this was.

“It wasn’t at first,” Meri said. “Preston had a giant stick up his ass back then, and he didn’t believe I was psychic. In fact, he thought I was crazy. He was a total jerk to me in the beginning, but I loosened him up.”

I could tell by the satisfied smile on her face that it involved more than talking. She caught me looking at her and gave me a smile.

“I’m betting you’re going to run into your own mate soon,” she said. “In a town this small it’s bound to happen, whether he seeks you out or not. You’d better figure out what you’re going to do when you see him again.”

“I’m just going to ignore him until he gets over his fascination with me.”

I didn’t like the way all my cousins started laughing like I’d said something hilarious.

Ollie

Ispent a sleepless night obsessing about my mate. I needed to get to know her better, but I wasn’t sure how. I’d heard enough stories about interspecies fated mates to know that a woman raised in the human world would need to be eased into the idea of mating. Plus I didn’t want to be one of those guys who didn’t listen when a woman said no.

If Nora was a bear or any other kind of shifter, it would be much easier. Shifters understood how this all worked. They didn’t have that human fear of trusting their instincts. As soon as we met her inner animal would have confirmed that I was her mate and we’d probably end up spending the next three days in bed having energetic sex and biting each other’s necks to seal the deal.

I almost wished Nora was a shifter.