Chapter 4

SAMANTHA

Moonclaw territory looks exactly the same as it did five years ago, and somehow that makes it worse. The same tree line. The same gravel drive up to the packhouse. The same ache in my chest that I thought I'd buried a long time ago, clawing its way back up the second the car crosses the border.

I watch the trees blur past the window and try to remember why I thought I could do this calmly. I rehearsed this drive a hundred times in my head over the last three days.

I rehearsed what I'd say, how I'd hold myself, how I would not, under any circumstances, let Ayden Hogan see even a flicker of what his name still does to me. Every version of that rehearsal feels useless now, sitting here with my hands pressed flat against my thighs to keep them from shaking.

"Mama, is this where you used to live?" Alisa asks, nose pressed to the window.

"A long time ago, baby."

"It's pretty."

"It is," I admit, and it is, that's the cruel part of it. The forest here is thicker and greener than anything around Hollow Pine. The mountains behind it sharp and beautiful against the sky, and some old, foolish part of me used to imagine raising a whole houseful of children under that same skyline.

Alisa hums a little to herself, unbothered, kicking her feet against the seat in front of her. She has no idea what this place means. To her it's just a car ride, a new pack to visit, maybe new kids to play with. I've kept it that way on purpose. I've never once told her the name Moonclaw, never once let it slip in a bedtime story or an idle comment, because some part of me has always known that the day she learned where she came from would be the day my carefully built life stopped being simple.

Sharon reaches back from the front seat and squeezes my knee. "You don't have to do this," she says quietly.

"I do. For Hollow Pine. For all of us." I don't say the other reason…that some stubborn part of me needs to walk back into this place and prove I don't fall apart just because I'm standing on Moonclaw ground again. That I need him, of all people, to see exactly what I built without him.

We pull up in front of the packhouse, and Alpha Darius is already there to greet us, along with Lucian. The packhouse looks the same too, same wide stone steps, same old oak doors, same faint woodsmoke smell drifting from somewhere inside. 

I get out of the vehicle and help Alisa out of her booster seat, and take her hand, grounding myself in the small, warm weight of her fingers curled around mine.

"Samantha." Darius greets me warmly, the way he always does, like I actually matter to him, which after five years, still catches me off guard every time. "Thank you for coming."

"Of course, Alpha Darius."

That's when I feel it. A shift in the air, like the whole world just went quiet. I don't need to turn around to know who's standing behind me. I never needed anything to tell me when he was near. 

I started to feel some broken, still-bonded piece of me has always known, the way you know a storm is coming before the first cloud even breaks the horizon.

I turn anyway.

Ayden looks older. Harder around the eyes than he used to be. Still the same broad shoulders, the same ice-blue stare that used to make grown warriors flinch, now locked directly onto me like I'm the only person standing in this driveway. There's a beat of silence between us that stretches too long, long enough that I feel Darius shift uncomfortably beside me.

"Samantha," he says, and my name in his voice does something to my chest that I refuse to acknowledge.

"Alpha Hogan," I say, cold and formal, the way I practiced in the car.

Behind me, I feel Darius glance between us, sensing the weight in the air but not yet understanding it. This is not a reunion he's prepared for, and I can tell by the slight stiffening of his shoulders that he's already recalculating everything he thought he knew about why I hesitated to come here.

His jaw tightens at the title, like it costs him something to hear it from me. His eyes flick down, just briefly, to the small hand wrapped around mine.

And then they stop.

I watch it happen in real time…the exact second his gaze lands on Alisa's face and doesn't move. Her dark hair. Her stubborn little chin. And underneath thick dark eye brows, a pair of ice-blue eyes that are a perfect, unmistakable copy of his own. 

I watch every piece of him rearrange itself around that single fact. I watch five years of certainty collapse in the space of a single breath.

The color drains out of his face.

"Samantha." His voice has gone rough, barely above a whisper. "Who is this?"

Behind me, I feel Sharon go rigid. Lucian has gone very, very still, and Darius is looking between the three of us with the dawning expression of a man realizing he's just walked into something far bigger than a treaty signing.

I could lie. I could say she's a niece, a friend's daughter, anyone at all. Five years of practiced answers rise up in my throat, all the small, careful lies I've told strangers in Hollow Pine when they asked about Alisa's father. But Ayden Hogan is staring at my daughter's face like the ground has opened up beneath him, and some small, tired part of me is exhausted from carrying this secret alone for five long years.

"Alisa," I say, "sweetheart, can you go with Aunt Sharon for a minute?"

Alisa looks between us with the sharp, quiet awareness she's always had, the same awareness that's made her seem older than four since the day she was born, and lets Sharon lead her away without a word. 

I watch them go, watch my daughter's small back disappear around the side of the packhouse, and force myself to turn back around.

Ayden doesn't move. He doesn't breathe. He just stares at me with an expression I've never seen on his face before…not the cold alpha who rejected me, not the boy who once told me forever, but something raw and unguarded and terrified all at once, like every wall he's spent five years building has come down in a single instant.

"Samantha," he says again, and this time his voice cracks clean down the middle. "Is she mine?"

Five years of careful answers rise up in my throat all at once, every explanation I ever gave myself for why I never told him, every reason I convinced myself was good enough. None of them feel like enough now, standing here with his eyes locked on mine and our daughter's laughter still faintly audible somewhere around the side of the house.

I open my mouth to answer him.

And that's when we heard the first scream tear through the packhouse behind us.