Chapter 2

SAMANTHA (Present Day)

"Mama, look! I made a wolf!"

I turn and see my daughter run towards me.

Alisa holds up her drawing, and I crouch down to look at it properly, flour still dusted across my hands from the morning's baking. The wolf has six legs and a crooked purple grin, and it is, without question, the best drawing I have ever seen in my life.

"That's incredible, baby. Can I hang it up in the shop?" I smile widely at her and her drawing.

She nods so hard her braids swing, and I press a kiss to the top of her head before standing back up. My knees ache a little. It is what five years of standing twelve hours a day behind a counter can do to a person, but I don't mind it. This bakery is mine. Every loaf, every terrible 4 a.m. wake-up, every dollar in the register. They were all mine.

The morning rush has already come and gone. The smell of cinnamon and yeast still hangs thick in the air, and flour dust drifts lazily in the light coming through the front window. This place used to be a run-down storefront with a leaking roof and a landlord who didn't believe a twenty-year-old could keep up with the rent. Now the shelves are full, the case is nearly empty by nine most mornings, and there's a line out the door on weekends. I built every bit of this with my own two hands, and some days that fact still catches me off guard, like I'm waiting for someone to tell me it isn't real.

Sharon comes in through the back door balancing a crate of blueberries against her hip, takes one look at Alisa's drawing taped crooked to the wall, and grins.

"She's got your talent for art," Sharon says. "Which is to say, none."

"Rude," I tell her, but I'm laughing.

"I'm just saying, if she wants to be a baker instead, at least the wolves will still look edible." She sets the crate down on the counter and starts sorting through it, popping one blueberry into her mouth before I can stop her. "You look tired," she says softly.

"I'm always tired," I reply with a smile.

"You look more tired than usual." She studies me for a second too long, the way she's done since we were kids, like she can read whatever I'm hiding whether I want her to or not. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," I say. It isn't entirely a lie. Nothing is wrong yet. That's the thing about the life I've built. It’s quiet, steady, and fully mine. Some mornings that quiet feels like the only real proof I have that I survived what happened five years ago.

The bell over the front door jingles, and my smile drops half an inch before I catch myself and put it back. Alpha Lucian is standing in my bakery doorway, and the last time I saw that particular set of shoulders, I was walking out of Moonclaw Pack for the last time. He looks older too, I notice. Not unkind, just tired in the way people get when they carry other people's problems for a living.

"Samantha," he says, careful, like he's not sure how I'll react.

"Lucian." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "It's been a while."

"It has." He glances at Alisa, who's climbed onto a stool at the counter, swinging her legs and humming to herself, entirely unbothered by the stranger in the doorway. Something flickers across his face, recognition, maybe, or the beginning of a question he doesn't ask yet.

"What are you doing in Hollow Pine?" I ask, before he can look at her any longer.

"Official business. Alpha Darius called a meeting between Hollow Pine and Moonclaw." He hesitates, and I watch him choose his next words carefully, the way you'd choose your footing on ice. "Samantha…Stormfang Pack has been making moves again. Bigger ones this time. Darius wants an alliance, and Moonclaw needs one just as badly. We're drawing up terms this week."

My stomach drops. "And this concerns me how, exactly?"

"Darius wants pack representatives from both territories present for the signing. He specifically asked for you.” Lucian says as he finds a stool to sit on.

"Me? I haven't been part of a pack hierarchy in five years, Lucian. I bake bread for a living." I say to him.

"You're the daughter of one of the most respected warriors Hollow Pine ever adopted, and everyone in this town trusts you.” I heard him say.

“Darius wants a familiar face at the table, someone the people believe in. He asked, and I couldn't exactly tell him no." Lucian tries to convince me.

I look over at Alisa, still humming, still entirely unaware that the man standing in our bakery is about to drag her mother back into the one place I swore I'd never set foot in again. 

Sharon has gone very quiet behind the counter, watching this unfold with her hands frozen mid-sort over the blueberries.

"When?" I ask.

"In three days at Moonclaw,” He replies.

The name lands like a stone in my chest. Moonclaw. Where I was humiliated in front of an entire pack. Where the man who once told me I'd be his Luna forever told me, in front of everyone, that I wasn't fit to stand beside him. Five years, and the name still moves through me like a physical thing, settling somewhere behind my ribs where I can't quite reach it.

"I need to think about it," I say.

"Samantha." Lucian's voice softens, and for a second he looks almost sorry. "I know what he did to you. I was there. But this isn't about him.”

“Stormfang's been testing our borders for months, and if these two packs don't unite, a lot of people are going to get hurt. Including people here." Lucian continues.

I glance at Alisa again. At her crooked purple wolf drawing. At the life I built brick by brick out of nothing while the man who rejected me never once came looking. I think of every 4 a.m. shift, every month I wasn't sure I'd make rent, every time Alisa asked why she didn't have a daddy like the other kids at the park and I had to find some soft, careful lie to hand her instead of the truth.

I think about what it would cost the people in this town if I said no out of pride and something happened that I could have helped prevent.

"Three days," I say. "I'll be there."

Lucian nods, relief loosening something in his shoulders, and he leaves not long after with a promise to send details about travel.

Sharon waits until the bell over the door stops ringing before she rounds the counter and grips my arm.

"You don't have to do this," she says quietly.

"I know." I turn to look at her.

"He's going to see her, Sam. The second you walk through that gate, he's going to see her." Sharon looks worried and I don't blame her.

"I know that too," I say under my breath.

I look over at my daughter, still humming to herself, still safe in the only life she's ever known. I don't tell Sharon, not out loud, that I've already made peace with what's coming. I don't tell Lucian I'll be bringing someone with me. I don't tell anyone that the moment Ayden Hogan lays eyes on my daughter, everything I've spent five years protecting is going to come apart in his hands.