Novels by Ayla Ren

The phrase refuses to leave my mind.Fenrir Subject 01 – Bite Compatibility Unknown. It repeats over and over. I can feel my heart thumping against my ribs with every breath. Kieran is frozen in his chair, leaning forward, his thick arms locked against his thighs. He’s holding the report so loosely it looks like he doesn’t care, but his knuckles are white. If he flexes even a little bit, the paper is going to tear. Or maybe he’s just barely holding himself together.“Kieran,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.He looks up. For a second, his storm-gray eyes look human, but then molten gold flashes beneath the surface. It’s like fire trapped under ice. It’s gone as fast as it appeared, but I can still see it burned into my vision.“What does ‘bite compatibility’ even mean?” I ask. I meant to sound calm, but the words cut through the room like a knife.He doesn’t answer right away. Somewhere out in the woods, a wolf howls so close the sound vibrates through the glass walls. It feels like

I run for two hours.Full shift. Low to the ground, lungs burning, the forest blurring past in long dark ribbons of shadow and root. My wolf doesn't want to stop. My wolf wants to keep running until the scent of her is gone from my nose, until the ghost of her pulse is gone from my memory, until the sound of her voice — I didn't say I didn't — stops replaying in a loop underneath every other thought.It doesn't work.I shift back at the edge of the eastern ridge, dragging on the clothes I left folded under a rock like a civilised creature, and I stand there in the cold dark and breathe, and I think about Lilian Hart.Not Sienna.Her mother.Because that is something I can be angry about without it unravelling me.***I find her in the library.Of course I do.It's past midnight, and she's sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the lowest shelf, her shoes off, her hair loose, three books open around her like she's conducting her own small council. She has a notebook balanced on

The hall empties the way a storm clears, leaving everything changed.I watch the last wolf disappear through the carved wooden doors, and then there is nothing. Just me, the vast silence of the Revenant Pack's meeting hall, and Kieran Byrne.He exhales. It's a long, slow sound, like a man releasing something he has been holding for hours. His shoulders drop.He doesn't look at me."You should be terrified," he says flatly, like he's stating a weather forecast and not talking to me about my own survival.I think about lying. I think about straightening my spine and giving him the fearless version of myself I've been performing all evening."I am," I say instead.That surprises him. I see it in the slight tension at the corner of his jaw."But not of you."He finally turns to look at me, and there is something in his expression I can't name. Not softness. Not quite. But something cracked open underneath all that iron.He doesn't answer. He just looks at me for one long, suspended moment

The pack meeting is brutal.The main hall is packed with the wolf pack: enforcers line the walls, elders sit rigidly in rows, and young wolves nervously change between their human and wolf forms. The air is thick with a storm of emotions: anger, fear, distrust, and something far more sinister.All of it is aimed at the girl sitting beside me.Sienna shouldn’t be here, not after what she’s just seen. But she’s brave to stand up here and let them watch her. Her scent is a mix of things: almost pleasant fear.I grit my teeth and try to sit still. Try.She sits straight-backed, chin lifted, and hands folded tightly in her lap. She pretends she isn’t overwhelmed. She pretends the room of wolves doesn’t terrify her.That bravery? That quiet defiance? It’s killing me.Tabitha trembles on her other side, but Sienna? She barely flinches as wolves three times her size stare her down like she’s a threat or prey.I stand. Alpha dominance rolls out automatically, stamping down the tension like a b

The territory is nothing like I imagined.I expected cold, fortified labs. Instead, there are forest clearings, lantern-lit paths, and sleek, modern buildings. Wolves move through the twilight like they’ve always belong.It’s… beautiful and wild.Everyone goes still when Kieran’s car rolls past. They bow to him, but their eyes stay glued to me.The human in the Alpha’s passenger seat.I try to fold into myself, but Kieran’s hand finds mine without warning.“Don’t look at them,” he mutters.“They’re staring at me like I’m a threat.”“You’re not.” His thumb slides over my hand, steady and warm. “You’re just new.”“That is not a friendly look.”He glances their way, and every wolf immediately snaps their gaze aside.“They’ll adjust,” he says quietly.The certainty in his tone wraps around me like a shield, and my chest tightens. He says it like a promise, like he’s already decided where I belong.With him.The car stops in front of a massive modern lodge carved into the hillside. Glass w

The car ride feels like torture. Sienna sits next to me. Close enough that I catch her scent with every breath: herbs, coffee, and something uniquely her. It hits harder than it should. Every tiny movement tests my control. My wolf paces inside me, restless. Tabitha babbles excitedly in the backseat, thrilled to watch the chaos unfold, but I barely hear her. My focus stays locked on the girl beside me. She keeps glancing at me like I’m a puzzle she can solve. Good luck with that, little human. I haven’t figured myself out since the night I first smelled you. Suddenly, she speaks. "What do you know about my house?" Her voice is steady. Her pulse isn’t. I tighten my grip on the wheel because I know too much. I remember the exact moment Cora crossed her boundary. The sound her skull made when I slammed her into the wall for breaking into Sienna’s home. For leaving that note. My wolf had snapped instantly: You don’t touch what’s mine. You don’t mark what I haven’t claimed.