Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

POV: COLE VANCE

He should not have gone to the diner.

Cole knew this the moment he pulled out of Mae's parking lot, the truck pointed back toward Black Ridge, the forty dollars she had handed him sitting on the passenger seat like an accusation.

He came to Creston once a month. He sat with Mae for twenty minutes. He ate whatever she put in front of him, because refusing food from Mae was something his father had taught him not to do and it was one of the few lessons he had kept. Then he drove home.

He had been there for sixty-seven minutes today.

He was aware of every single one of them.

Cole drove with one hand loose on the wheel and the other pressed flat against his thigh, a habit he had when something was working itself out in the back of his head. The forest road wound away from the city lights and into the dark between the pines, and the truck's headlights cut two pale channels through it, and there was nothing to look at but trees and road and the thing he was trying not to think about.

Her.

He had known, of course, what she was the moment she crossed his border.

That was the problem.

Cole had spent four years since he turned twenty-six building a very specific understanding of his own life. He ran Black Ridge. He kept sixty-three pack members housed and fed and safe. He traded where he had to and refused where he could. He had no mate, no Second, no inner circle — just four trusted wolves and a territory that ran clean and quiet and did not ask him for more than he was able to give.

He had told himself, since the night his wolf first recognized the pull of a mate bond and he had walked in the opposite direction and kept walking, that he did not want it. That the bond was just biology. That the roaring in his chest was something he could outlast if he was patient enough and cold enough.

He had been patient. He had been cold. For four years.

And then a barefoot girl in a cotton slip had walked across his border at midnight and looked at him like she was not afraid of anything, and his wolf had said MINE so loudly that he had needed three seconds to remember how to breathe.

He had managed it, that first night. He had stayed controlled. He had given her a shirt and forty dollars and told himself it was just decency. Any Alpha would have done the same.

Sending her to Mae had been harder to justify. But Mae would keep her safe. That was the logic he had used. Mae knew Creston. Mae knew wolves. Mae would make sure she had what she needed.

Not because of the bond. Because it was the right thing to do.

He had believed that for thirty-one days.

Then he had walked into the diner and she had looked up from the counter with those grey-silver eyes, and said his name like she had been saying it for years, and he had sat down and stayed for an hour.

His wolf was not pacing anymore. His wolf had gone completely still, in the way it only did when it had made up its mind about something and was simply waiting for the rest of him to catch up.

Cole's phone buzzed on the seat beside him.

He glanced at it. Jared — his Second, the closest thing he had to a right hand. He picked up on the second ring.

"Alpha."

"Jared."

"There was a visitor at the eastern gate today." A pause, the kind Jared used when he was choosing his words. "Silver Creek. Beta Damon Cole. He asked for access to the territory."

Cole's grip on the wheel tightened. Not much. Just enough.

"What reason did he give?"

"Said he was looking for a missing pack member. Woman, early twenties, silver eyes." Another pause. "He had a description, Alpha. It was specific."

The trees moved past the windows. Cole kept his voice level.

"What did you tell him?"

"That Black Ridge does not receive unannounced visitors and that if Silver Creek had a missing member they were welcome to file a report through the Summit channels." Jared's voice was careful. "He pushed back. Said he knew she had been on our territory. Said she was his mate."

The word landed in Cole's chest like a stone through glass.

His mate.

She had told him, that first night in the cabin. Her mate kissed my cousin. He had filed it away without pulling on the thread underneath it, because pulling threads was not something he did when he was trying to stay controlled. But now it opened up: a mate claim. A Beta's mark on her, whether completed or not. The kind of thing that complicated everything.

"You turned him away?" Cole said.

"Yes, Alpha. He left. But he will come back."

"He will," Cole agreed.

He ended the call.

The road climbed uphill. Black Ridge territory opened up ahead of him, the pack lands spreading wide and dark and quiet under the night sky. His house was another twenty minutes — a stone and timber thing at the edge of the ridge, built by his grandfather, added to by his father, left exactly as it was when Cole moved in because changing it felt like erasing something he could not afford to lose.

He pulled over. Killed the headlights. Sat in the dark with his engine running.

Damon Cole had a mate claim on Nora. Possibly a partial bond — it depended on how long they had been together, whether she had accepted the mark. Cole did not know. He had not asked, that night. He had been too busy not looking at her the way his wolf wanted to look at her.

He pulled his phone out. Found the number he had saved three weeks ago and never texted. Had almost deleted it four times.

Had not deleted it.

He typed three words.

Put the phone down before he could change them.

Picked it up once more and sent them before he thought about it too long.

"Stay safe, Nora."

He put the truck in drive.

He was halfway up the ridge road when his wolf gave him the kind of warning it had not given in years — a sharp, cold pulse at the base of his skull. Something wrong. Something close.

Cole stopped the truck. Rolled down the window. The night air came in carrying pine and mud and—

There.

Six distinct scents. Wolves. Moving through the tree line on the south border of Black Ridge territory. Moving fast. Moving in formation.

Silver Creek.

They had not gone to the gate this time.

They had gone around it.

Cole's hand was already on his phone, already dialing Jared, his foot already pressing the accelerator toward the border. His wolf was not still anymore. It was up, fully, all the way — that vast black thing inside him that he kept leashed and quiet and aimed carefully — and it was not pacing.

It was running.

"Jared," he said, when the call connected.

"Alpha."

"South border. Six wolves, Silver Creek, moving without permission. Wake everyone."

A beat. "Done. And Alpha?"

"What."

"The girl." Jared's voice was quiet and careful and certain. "She is still in Creston. If they could not find her on Black Ridge, they will go to the city next."

Cole said nothing.

He did not need to.

His wolf had already decided, thirty-one days ago, standing in the dark with its silver eyes on a shaking girl who would not run.

Cole was just finishing catching up.

"Get the south border contained," he said. "I will handle the city."

He ended the call. Turned the truck around.

Creston was forty miles. He could do it in twenty-five minutes if he pushed.

He pushed.