The phone rang five times before Daphne picked it up, which was long enough for Emma to take it away from her ear to make sure she’d hit the right button in her contacts. Daphne never didn’t pick up, not even when she was dealing with a crying toddler or hungry baby. Daphne’s husband Peter and Shiori both joked about how Daphne would have a phone surgically attached to her hand if she could.

“Emma,” Daphne huffed out.

Emma laughed. “Were you running?” Daphne didn’t do exercise unless you counted the steps from the car to brunch, which Daphne did.

“No, I . . . Are you okay?”

Emma clenched the phone tighter, hit the button to turn it off speaker, and held it to her ear. Not that there was anyone around to eavesdrop on her phone call. The neighbors weren’t back from their winter stay in Florida. At least they understood the weather. The sun was shining today, all the snow had melted, and other than the darn cold wind, she would have called it a perfect day. She thought back to Flint’s face in Mirabel’s side mirror. The stupid grump in his gray Hundsburg T-shirt, the wind blowing at his hair. His scowl and the sad puppy dog expression. No, she wasn’t going to bite on his flip-flopping behavior.

“Yes. No.”

“It’s that wolf, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s that wolf.”

“I thought you said you were done with males, that you were going to take this time to grow as an individual.”

There were two types of friends out in the world . . . well, maybe more. But right now, there was the kind of friend who called you out on what you said, and there was the other type, the type she wanted Daphne to be. The keep-your-mouth-shut-and-listen kind.

Daphne had never been that kind of friend. Not when they were six, when she told Emma to stop eating peppermint candy. Turned out Emma was allergic to it, but Emma’s parents didn’t figure it out until she was twelve. Not when they were eleven, when she told Shiori and Emma that the three of them were strong enough and smart enough to perform the binding Power of Three spell. The one that tied the three of them together for the rest of their lives. Only, she said they should think it through because forever was, well, forever. Not when they were fifteen and Daphne said Emma picked train wrecks for boyfriends and it wasn’t Emma’s responsibility to fix every male in their school district. Or at twenty-four when Daphne met Sean and told Emma he didn’t have a good aura and she should run in the opposite direction. Instead, Emma had started a four-year relationship that ended with Carter hiring a helicopter to take her ex off the cruise ship.

“You got my texts earlier. I saw you’d read them.”

“Yes, Daphne. I saw your texts.” Those texts had pulled her out of her post-explosive-sex happy time.

“And?”

“What do you want me to say, Daff? That I won’t go near him again? I’m not sure I can follow through with that. He’s like a magnet. A grumpy, hot magnet. Even his scowl does something to me. Okay?” Emma crossed her arm in front of her chest.

“Goddess, Emma.”

“Daphne.” She didn’t know what . . . “You’re right, okay? Is that what you want me to say? You’re right. I should stay away from him. Floating isn’t worth having my heart ripped into a million pieces.”

“What?” Daphne was quieter now. “You floated?”

“Yeah, to the ceiling, after spinning like a top. Okay? Like ‘I might need to wear a space helmet’ floated.”

“Well, I mean, at least he knows his shit. But Emma, he’s not human. They all want their fated mate. What are you going to do when he runs into her on the river walk, or at some pack meeting? You’re going to be another ball on my sofa again. I can’t have that. I had to do something.”

“Daphne. What are you getting at?” Emma shook.

“Nothing, I suppose. It’s just he’s in denial about being a witch.”

Nothing wasn’t the answer Daphne wanted to give. Emma understood her poignant friend. “And⁠—”

“He’s a wolf shifter, and they have that whole fated mate thing. Don’t mess around with him, Em. You’re going to get hurt.”

There was more. Emma could feel it. “Daphne, what did you do?”

“Do?”

“Yeah, what did you do?”

“You said you wanted to learn how to go it on your own.”

“I did . . .” Emma remembered vividly the days after the cruise when her whole life fell apart again.

“I put a blocking spell on you.” Daphne paused. “I’m sorry. I think I⁠—”

“Flint.” Emma’s world flipped on her. Was he her fated mate? When she thought of him, butterflies didn’t scamper in her stomach. No, Flint didn’t make her feel nervous—he made her confident, even when she was angry with him. When she focused on him, her skin heated and she wanted to dance. All the signs were there. Their magic bonding, the floating, his erratic behavior . . . they all made a lot more sense.

“He might be . . .”

Emma slowly blinked, thinking about how infuriating the male was. One minute he was “you’re all mine,” and then the next he was spouting off the opposite. Not special, she got it. Check. He’d said that himself, if not directly.

Actually, until a few minutes ago, he’d taken actions that had contradicted his words. He’d come to her. He’d invited her into his space. He’d trusted her with his secret. A greedy levitation witch would kill for his closet of power. Was Flint Larsen her mate?

Emma took a deep breath. She loved Daphne, loved her like a sister, which also meant right now she wanted to knock her into next week. She clenched her phone.

“Don’t get mad at me, Em, and don’t deny it. You said you wanted a clean start, moving away from our childhood coven, away from your parents. That’s only a start. You have to change your actions if you expect to get a different result. I’m sure the sex was off the charts if you floated. Hell, I married the first man who made me float.”

Emma humphed. Daphne and Peter were over the moon about each other, with two adorable children. He was a human and a billionaire. She owned a styling business. They were perfect. So yeah, Emma had given up on comparing herself to Daphne or Shiori a long time ago.

“I’m not mad, Daphne.” Emma’s voice was strained. She was most certainly mad.

“Yes, you are.”

“Goddess, just stop, okay? Maybe I’m mad. But don’t I have a little right to have some fun?”

“Of course you do. But it didn’t look like fun in the hospital.”

“That’s not Flint’s fault.”

“No, of course not. But it is his fault his magic is going all haywire. He needs to accept who he is.”

Emma wanted to let out one of Flint’s growls at her best friend. “You might be right, but if we are mates? Your fiddling didn’t help, me or him.”

“You need to focus on you, not changing everyone around you.”

“He’s not Sean.”

“I never said he was. What I said was he’s got a truckload of issues, and you don’t need that.”

“Where was all this concern when I was with Sean?”

“That’s why it’s coming out now, Emma. You told us not to let this happen to you again. When you started dating Sean, you told both Shiori and I to back off.”

“Right.” Emma remembered the vodka-soaked night, crying on Daphne’s sofa and making Shiori and Daphne promise to stop her from making a big mistake again. Now it felt like the promise had been more of a mistake than the vodka. “Well, message heard. You think Flint is trash. You can back off now.”