Off Leash

I am NOT a fox.

Shota Tanaka is a Shiba Inu, a chef de cuisine, and the son of the most famous sushi chef in New York. He left his father's empire, trained on two continents, and moved to a fishing village in Downeast Maine to run someone else's kitchen until he can build his own. He is precise. He is disciplined. He folds his clothes during emergencies. He is not, has never been, and will never be a fox.

Ty Brennan is a Chocolate Lab who works at the daycare, changes majors the way other people change socks, and has been sitting at the cafe counter every morning for seven months making conversation with a man who answers in four-word sentences. The almost-smiles are enough. Ty is patient. Labs are always patient.

Then it's harbor day. Seven shifted preschoolers. A beaver heading for the water. A roadrunner at the end of the pier. A porcupine under a bench. A mouse nobody can find. A seagull running air patrol. A deputy with a clipboard and a flashlight at ten in the morning. A tourist pointing a camera at Shota and yelling "fox."

Both of them shift. The fated mate bond hits. The shrimp is getting warm on the dock. The shrimp is going to have to wait.

Now there's a fated mate bond between a man who controls everything and a man who plans nothing, a rut that won't wait for the seventh course to be plated, an apartment above the sheriff's station with a polar-bear-sized bed, and a town that started placing bets the day Shota walked past his own turn on Harbor Street because the lab was still walking.

The chef who left his father's kitchen. The lab who hasn't picked a direction. The bond that didn't ask either of them first.

(The blueberries on the north slope are three days from peak. The waxwings are a problem. The fox thing is going to come up again.)

Off Leash is a cozy, high-heat M/M omegaverse shifter romance with fated mates, knotting, small-town meddling, blueberry discourse, seven preschoolers on a rope, and a guaranteed HEA. Seventh in the Bad Little Falls series. Can be read as a standalone. Includes a bonus short story.