Chapter Eight

When I near the vineyard, I can already see there's a long line of traffic waiting to turn in. I join the queue and stare at the large logo on the roadside sign; a pale crescent moon hiding behind clouds, sitting over a simplified depiction of rolling hills. LOST MOON ESTATE WINERY. MOTUWAI ISLAND.

I already feel like my dress shirt is suffocating me, and I haven't even put my suit jacket on yet. I can tell it's going to be one of those days where my acting skills are put to full use, because inside I'm a mess of stress and anxiety, but there's no fucking way I'm letting anyone from this particular friend group see that.

I would much rather be at home waiting for Rose, than here on this island, ready to celebrate my ex getting married. I'm happy for her. I am not at all upset about the wedding. It's our joint friends that I'm not exactly excited to see. It's the hours of socialising among the people who are now successful doctors and lawyers, who have careers and own their own homes, while from the outside looking in, I'm floundering.

I shouldn't care what they think, but my first career was built on what everyone else thought of me, and old habits die hard. I don't know if any of them know I'm a male entertainer now. I really like my job, but I've spent the last week imagining their faces when it does come up in conversation, and each time I've gotten more and more riled up as a result.

I can't even talk about Rose either. It's not like I can say to them, Oh I've met the love of my life but she's a ghost or maybe something else, and she was last alive in 1915. She grew antlers last week and then disappeared for four days straight and left me an absolute fucking mess because I was beginning to think I would never see her again.

"I've met someone, but it's still really new, and I'd already RSVP'd for only one person," I say out loud as I pull into a parking spot and cut the engine, practising my lines for the day. "She's beautiful, and sweet, and funny, and her name is Rose. Yes , I'm happy for Zara. It was nice of her to invite me. No , I'm not in any upcoming movies. I've been doing smaller gigs; the hourly rate for commercials is really good. Yeah, I'm living in Grey Lynn now, in a really nice old bungalow. The neighbours are great."

I climb out of my ute, grabbing my suit jacket from where I left it slung over the back of the passenger seat. At least I know how to dress well; years of attending local red carpet events means I've had plenty of experience dressing to suit my body type, accentuating my broad back and large biceps, and the ass that so many people love. I know I look good in my tailored jacket. This is one of the outfits that I've carefully kept from the early post-Unravelling days, where I was often used by organisations — the Actors Guild, the new Ministry of Non-Humans — as a spokesperson, bridging the gap between the panicked humans and the (often equally as panicked) non-humans such as myself. I was still Zak Carlson , after all. I might have grown a foot taller and sprouted tusks and turned green, but my face was still recognisably the same, my voice just a tad deeper than before, and people trusted me.

I should have asked for better compensation for those interviews. I should have known the work would dry up.

"Zak! Oh my god , you made it! You look great!"

I plaster a grin on my face, ready for my performance. "Hey!"

The wedding goes well. It's a pleasant day for winter; the sun is shining, the ocean that this place overlooks is dead calm, and the garden setting within the vineyard grounds is beautiful. Zara marries her mate — a wolf shifter, the same as her — and honestly, it makes sense that we never worked out, because I can tell they're meant to be. And I'm meant to be with Rose.

Shifters outnumber everyone else at this wedding and it's one of the few functions I've ever been to where humans are clearly in the minority. A few humans have that slightly stunned look on their face as the crowd mingles in the garden post-ceremony while we all wait for various group photos to be taken, and it's obvious that they feel like fish out of water.

I half-listen to the conversation about the upcoming election cycle and how many MPs are likely to be non-human, my eyes scanning the crowd. I've always found people watching fascinating and —

There's a short woman with long honey-blonde hair, dressed like the other guests for the wedding in a long-sleeved dress, but instead of mingling, she's crouched down, fussing around with one of the plants in the garden. She stands, pushing back her hair with her hand, turning so that her face is in profile, and the breath catches in my lungs. Rose I think for a split second before I blink and realise it's not her.

She's not Rose at all, but there's enough similarities in her small build, in the hair, in the delicately pointed ears , and her pretty-but-not-Rose face, to have tricked me for the briefest moment into thinking that my girl had somehow made it here, to this vineyard, in the flesh.

I watch her, staring at her ears, trying to imagine this woman with antlers on her head. The image I conjure fits too well; this woman has to be the same as her. It's too uncanny. She smiles, and even her grin looks similar to Rose's.

I can't take my eyes off of her, trying to figure out what to do. Someone asks me a question about what I'm doing for work these days and I give a vague answer about commercials and a regular gig, and when the conversation turns again I scan the crowd once more, relieved to find her still there.

Do I go talk to her? Does she even know what she is? Since last week, when I finally realised I should have been searching the term fae all along, I read through all I could find on changelings — the term used for people with fae heritage, and the increasing trend of changelings disappearing into thin air. I found references to a documentary that aired on TV a couple of years ago, but I haven't been able to find a single version of Stolen By Magic anywhere online, and I feel like I'm slowly going insane reading all these conspiracy theories about fairies stealing people away.

What if she knows how to save Rose?

It's that thought that has me excusing myself from the group with a quick, "Gotta find the loo," just as the conversation turns to the fact that a Thursday is a strange day for a wedding, but at least the weather's nice . I'm weaving my way through the crowd of people when a guy — another wolf, from the look of him, with his dark hair and tall, muscular build — suddenly steps in front of her, wrapping his arm around her waist and bending to say something in her ear. He turns his head, staring directly at me, shooting daggers with his gold eyes.

Fuck.

"Excuse me, are you…?" Someone touches my elbow, and I look down to find a wide-eyed human gaping up at me. "You're Zak Carlson," she says breathily, and I recognise the signs of a star-struck fan. "Oh my god. Do you… would you… um…"

"I can sign something for you," I smile, keenly aware of the wolf still watching me.

I guess I wasn't that subtle.

"Hello, troublemaker."

I grin at Zara, bending to give her a hug. "You look lovely. Congratulations," I tell her, meaning every word. Her cream-coloured wedding dress compliments her dark brown hair and amber eyes. We were only ever together pre-Unravelling, and I honestly think that's one of the reasons we're still able to get along so well. We're older, different people from when we were together, and the physical changes to us both just adds to that. "Why am I a troublemaker?" I ask her.

"I don't know, you tell me. How come my new pack alpha is on edge about you? He just asked me who you were before and he couldn't even keep the growl out of his voice… something about you staring at his mate?"

"Oh, fuck." I drop my voice low, making a small gesture with my head. "Is that him?" The guy in question — the wolf I pissed off earlier — is watching me again from across the huge indoor event space.

"Yeah," she nods. "That's Evander Livingston. Dude, you're keeping it real classy if you're trying to get laid at my wedding. But like, seriously, please make sure the targets of your affection aren't already mated to wolves, because I still care about you and I'd rather your throat be intact and not in tatters in the jaw of a shifter you've pissed off."

I shake my head. "It's really not like that, and I'm… I'm taken, anyway. I met someone special."

Zara's mouth hangs open. "Where is she? You didn't bring her? Zak!" She gently whacks my arm with the back of her hand. "You should have, you know I would have let you add on a plus one!"

I shake my head. "She couldn't make it. Hey, if he's your alpha, I've got a question about his mate. What is she?"

Zara seems to hesitate, a small frown crossing her features. "Why are you asking?" Her tone is more wary than I expected it to be.

"Because I know someone that looks like her. The ears, and the hair. She's not an elf, right? She seems different."

"She says she's a garden fairy. That's what she calls herself."

A fairy! Fae! "What even is that?" I ask, my mind reeling with the new information. "I've never heard anyone use that particular term for a species before."

She shakes her head. "I can't…" She looks pained, and I have a sudden memory of Zara making the same face after her old alpha ordered her not to disclose some pack information with me, even though we were living together at the time. Both of us had felt it was wrong, but there was nothing we could do about it back then.

Zara and her husband have only recently joined this new pack, and I had hoped that her new alpha would be a little less heavy-handed when it came to using their alpha bark, given the fact that it is essentially a tool for controlling the entire pack. Seeing Zara struggle to even answer a simple question makes me a little concerned that history is repeating itself.

"He's ordered you to keep quiet about it hasn't he?" I ask. "Does she ever have antlers on her head?"

"If you have questions like this, I think you should direct them to him," she replies. "To Evander and his wife."

It turns out Evander is the owner of this vineyard, as well as the alpha of the shifter pack on this island. He's also a werewolf, making him a rare hybrid mix of both wolf species. I find out all of this by asking a few people at my table about the guy after Zara gets pulled away, and then I spend some time quietly Googling his name on my phone in between the wedding speeches.

" Jesus ," I mutter under my breath, seeing the dollar amount attributed to his name, an article from the beginning of the year valuing Evander's wealth at upwards of two hundred million NZD. Another article discusses the vineyard and his wife's involvement, focusing on how Ellie Hinewai Livingston — or Ellie Harding, the name she still operates her own landscape design business under — draws on her Māori culture when it comes to her garden designs. The accompanying photo of her is an artistic black and white image of her staring off into the distance, and I swear I've seen Rose make that same face before when deep in thought.

I shake my head, scrolling through further search results. Evander's parents are billionaires, and —

Livingstons' Worst Nightmare: Youngest Daughter of American Billionaire Drowns in Northland Mansion Pool

There's a sick feeling in my gut as I look at the publication date, doing the maths quickly. Twelve years ago . I click into it, skimming through paragraphs, heart sinking as I read about his youngest sister. She was only six when she died. There's an aerial photo of the mansion in question, the outdoor pool circled, and then a paparazzi photo of a little girl with tanned skin and curly black hair holding the hand of a beautiful woman that I assume must be Evander's mother, looking sophisticated in dark oversized sunglasses, a designer handbag tucked under her arm.

I jump at the sound of a chair scraping over the polished floor, flipping my phone over and looking up as the man himself takes a seat across from me. He smiles, but it's the kind of smile that says my wolf will eat your face off if you come near my mate , and I lean back in my chair instinctively.

"Hey," I say. "I'm Zak."

"Zara said." His American accent is as smooth as I expected it to be. "I noticed something caught your eye earlier, so I thought it'd be best if I came and had a chat."