Chapter 5

AYDEN

The scream rips through the air and every instinct in my body reacts before my mind catches up. I'm turning toward the packhouse, toward the sound, my wolf slamming against my ribs demanding to be let out. But my eyes are still locked on Samantha, on the truth sitting right there in her silence, and for one terrible second I don't know which direction to run in. Every year of training, every instinct that's kept this pack alive, and for one heartbeat I am frozen between the woman I never stopped loving and a threat I can't yet see.

"Alisa!” Samantha yells, already running toward the house, toward her daughter…toward someone who could be my daughter, if the last thirty seconds of my life mean anything at all. 

That breaks whatever held me still. Lucian is already sprinting, shouting orders into his mindlink, warriors converging from every direction at once. I follow, my wolf Ridge snarling beneath my skin, demanding I let him take over, and we round the corner of the packhouse to find three of my warriors on the ground and a body I don't recognize standing over them with blood on his hands that isn't his own.

Not a rogue. The mark on his shoulder is unmistakable even from here.

It was Stormfang.

My blood goes cold in a way it hasn't in years. Stormfang doesn't send lone wolves onto Moonclaw land for no reason, and they certainly don't do it in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, unless they wanted to be seen. This isn't an attack meant to weaken us through numbers. This is a message, delivered in blood on my own front steps, and I don't yet understand what it's supposed to mean.

One of my fallen warriors groans, alive but badly hurt, and I force myself not to look away from the intruder long enough to check on him properly.

Lucian drops to a crouch beside the wounded men, already barking for the pack healer, his voice steady even with fury written all over his face.

"Report," I snap at the intruder without looking away from him. "Now."

"They're inside the border," Lucian snarls beside me. "How did they get inside the border?!"

The intruder's eyes flick past us, past the fallen warriors, straight to the front steps of the packhouse where Sharon is standing frozen, one hand thrown protectively behind her, in front of a small girl with dark hair and ice-blue eyes who is staring at the chaos with far too much composure for a four-year-old.

Something in me that has no name and no mercy comes fully awake.

"Get away from her," I say, and my voice doesn't sound like my own anymore. It comes out low, guttural, more Ridge than me.

The Stormfang wolf smiles, slow and cold, entirely unbothered by three fallen warriors bleeding out on the grass behind him. "Alpha Hogan," he says. "We just wanted to see if the rumors were true." His eyes drop deliberately to Alisa, lingering there in a way that makes my whole body go rigid with fury. "Looks like they are."

The world goes very quiet and very red at the edges.

I don't remember deciding to shift. I don't remember crossing the distance between us. I only remember Ridge's snarl tearing out of my own throat as I slam into the intruder hard enough to put him through the porch railing, wood splintering beneath us, my claws at his throat before he can so much as flinch.

“What are you doing in our territory?” I snarl, low and lethal. "Who told you about her?"

He laughs, blood in his teeth, completely unafraid, which terrifies me more than anything else could. A wolf who isn't afraid with claws at his throat is either a fool or has already accepted he isn't walking away from this, and something about the calm certainty in his eyes tells me it's the second one.

"You should have kept your rejection quiet, Alpha," he says. "A pack that publicly rejects a mate makes it very easy to guess what she might be hiding for years and show up later.”

“Stormfang's known for months. We were just waiting to be sure," he continues.

Behind me, I hear Samantha's sharp intake of breath.

Months. They've known for months. Which means the danger to this little girl didn't start today, in my driveway. It's been building quietly for longer than she's even known. It had existed as more than a name on a map, and no one ever once suspected it.

It started the moment I stood in front of my entire pack five years ago and told the world Samantha Nonis meant nothing to me , and somewhere out there, Stormfang Pack had been listening the whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to use that lie against the one thing I never even knew I had to protect. Every cruel word I said to her in that clearing, every calculated cold sentence Elder Frois talked me into, has been sitting out there in the world for five years like a weapon someone else was patient enough to finally pick up.

I press the intruder harder into the splintered wood, forcing myself to hold back from doing something that would leave him unable to answer another question.

"Where's the rest of you?" I demand.

"Closer than you'd like," he says, and there's something almost gentle in the way he says it, like he pities me for not already knowing. "You built your whole life around pretending five years ago didn't happen, Alpha. Did you really think the rest of the world forgot it too?"

My grip tightens without my permission. Somewhere behind me I hear Darius shouting orders of his own, his warriors fanning out across the grounds, and I'm dimly aware that whatever alliance we came here to discuss has just become a great deal more urgent than either side expected.

He just smiles wider, and somewhere in the trees behind us, I hear it , the first distant howl, low and long, answered a moment later by something closer.

I look up, over the wreckage of the porch, straight at Samantha standing frozen with her daughter…one who could possibly be my own, pressed against her side, both of them staring at me with matching expressions of fear I never wanted either of them to feel because of me.

"Samantha," I say, and my voice is shaking now, for an entirely different reason than before. "How long have they known where you live?" I ask. “How long have they known about this child?”

Her face goes white and she replies, “How am I supposed to know?”

“Is she mine?” I ask an obvious question in the midst of the turmoil. 

I watch her almost stutter a response. 

The Stormfang wolf laughs and howls almost immediately.

And somewhere behind us, deeper in the trees at the edge of Moonclaw territory, a second, closer howl answers the first one.

I realise they didn't come alone.