Page 15 of Growl Me, Maybe

Calla grinned. “Most good things are.”

That night, Lyra couldn’t sleep.

She lay curled in her bed above the apothecary, staring at the twinkle charms strung along her windowsill. The town outside was quiet, cloaked in moonlight and the soft shimmer of magical wards.

Her thoughts raced like spell sparks.

She kept seeing his face. That look he’d had when she’d fallen. The fury. The fear. The protectiveness. It hadn’t been professional. It hadn’t beenjustalpha duty.

It was the kiss they didn’t share. The heat in his gaze. The way he’d lingered just a breath too long.

She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the echo of something that hadn’t even happened and still managed to change her.

If Jace Montgomery was her mate...

He didn’t want to be.

But if he wasn’t...

Why did she feel like her magic leaned toward him without asking?

8

JACE

Jace sat at the end of the long oak council table, arms crossed, jaw set, the weight of old magic pressing down like a second skin.

The council chambers of Celestial Pines weren’t grand. No glittering chandeliers or marble floors. Just stone walls covered in living moss, a table older than the town itself, and ward runes etched in every wooden groove—glowing faintly with the heartbeat of the Veil.

Hazel Fairweather, dryad elder and unofficial oracle of bad timing, leaned forward with flowers blooming from her braid and worry blooming in her gaze. “Ezra’s wolves were spotted again near the northern ridge. This time closer. More confident.”

“Let them circle,” Jace said evenly. “We’ve fortified the wards. They won’t get through.”

“Confidence like that gets people dead,” muttered Marciel Drake, the town’s oldest vampire and unofficial tavern therapist. “And Ezra Wolfe’s not one to bluff.”

“He’s not a fool either,” Jace replied. “If he wanted to fight, he’d have done it already.”

Hazel frowned. “He’s doing something worse. He’s planting seeds.”

Jace didn’t answer right away. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, the carved wolf heads at his elbows cool under his hands. Every word Hazel said carried truth, but he couldn’t show concern. Not now. Not here.

He wasn’t just Jace in this room.

He wasAlpha Montgomery.

“Ezra’s been circling this town for three years,” he said at last, tone clipped. “We haven’t bent. We won’t start now.”

Hazel’s green eyes narrowed. “He’s not circling anymore, Alpha. He’s stalking.”

The room fell quiet.

And Jace couldn’t stop the echo of her voice from yesterday, Lyra’s voice, breathless and confused after he’d pulled her from the wards.

You saved me. How did you know where I was?

He hadn’t answered then. He couldn’t. Because the truth that hefelther was too dangerous to admit, even to himself.

Not when Ezra Wolfe had a nose for blood and weakness, and right now,Lyra Ravenshadewas both.

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