Page 58 of Knot Baked Out For This
It's like watching a natural disaster in slow motion—beautiful, terrifying, and absolutely inevitable. Rowan enters first, still in his firefighter uniform because apparently he knows that's playing dirty. Levi follows, sunshine smile already in place, flannel sleeves rolled up to display forearms that should be registered as weapons. And Luca brings up the rear, silent and watchful, like he's cataloguing exit routes and potential threats.
Their scents hit me simultaneously—a triple wave of pheromones that makes my knees buckle and my omega hindbrain start shrieking in frequencies only dogs can hear.
Smoked cedar from Rowan, wrapping around me like a possessive embrace. Honey butter from Levi, warm and coaxing and dangerously comforting. Molasses gingerbread from Luca, dark and rich and tinged with that bitter coffee edge.
Together, they create something that shouldn't work but does—like someone mixed Christmas, summer barbecues, and really good sex into an airborne aphrodisiac.
I need to open a window. Or leave the country. Or possibly just die right here.
"Hey sunshine," Levi says, because of course he speaks first. "You look?—"
"EMERGENCY! THERE'S AN EMERGENCY!"
The door explodes open with enough force to rattle the windows, and Bea Crowe bursts through like a geriatric hurricane. Her lavender-gray curls bounce with the kind of manic energy usually reserved for Black Friday sales and custody battles. Her eyes are wild, her cardigan is inside-out, and she's waving her arms like she's trying to achieve liftoff.
"FIRE! DISASTER! CATASTROPHE OF UNPRECEDENTED PROPORTIONS!"
Rowan shifts immediately into professional mode, his entire body changing from relaxed to ready in a heartbeat. "Where's the fire, Mrs. Crowe?"
"The station! The fire station! It's—it's—" She clutches her chest dramatically, and I'm genuinely concerned she's having a cardiac event until I notice the slight smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.
Oh no. Oh no, she's not?—
"We need to go NOW!" Bea grabs Rowan's arm with surprising strength for a seventy-eight-year-old Beta. "All of you! Especially Hazel!"
"Me?" I squeak. "Why do I?—"
"No time! Lives are at stake! Reputations hang in the balance! THE VERY FABRIC OF SOCIETY IS THREATENED!"
Levi and Luca exchange glances that clearly translate to "what the fuck," but Rowan's already moving, training overriding skepticism.
"Let's go," he says, and there's something about an Alpha using his command voice that makes my feet move before my brain catches up.
I grab my purse on instinct, hands shaking as I lock the bakery behind us. My heart pounds against my ribs like it's trying to escape.What if something's really wrong? What if someone's hurt? What if?—
We rush outside in a cluster of confusion and Alpha pheromones. The October afternoon has gone crisp, the kind of cold that promises winter's coming whether we're ready or not. Leaves crunch under our feet as Bea leads us not toward the fire station, but toward?—
The town square?
"Mrs. Crowe," Luca says slowly, suspicion dripping from every syllable. "The fire station is that way."
"Details!" she waves dismissively. "Geographical technicalities!"
The town square comes into view, and I realize with dawning horror exactly what's happening.
Banners stretch between lamp posts: "OAKRIDGE ANNUAL HARVEST PIE CONTEST."
Tables line the square, covered in checkered tablecloths.
At least half the town mills about, and every single head turns when they see us approaching.
"The emergency," Rowan says flatly, "is a pie contest."
"The emergency," Bea corrects with the self-satisfaction of someone who's just pulled off a heist, "is that we're SHORT ONJUDGES and the contest starts in—" she checks her watch with theatrical precision, "—THIRTY SECONDS AGO!"
I'm going to commit elder abuse. It'll be justified. No jury would convict me.
"You said there was a fire," Rowan points out, his voice carrying that particular tone of someone reconsidering their life choices.
