Chapter 3

Alex POV

The hospital lobby was already crowded by the time I walked in, and every staff member who caught my eye straightened their posture a little. I didn’t ask them to. They just reacted that way. Old habits from pack culture never fully left anyone, even in a city where humans filled every corner.

I scanned my tablet as I moved, pretending the numbers on the screen held my attention. They didn’t. My focus kept drifting back to the house, to the girl my wolf acknowledged.

Elena.

Miguel’s daughter.

The same child I once held in a hospital hallway twenty years ago while her father signed a birth certificate with shaking hands. Back then she had been small, quiet, and impossibly fragile. A girl who should have felt like family to me someone I should protect out of loyalty, nothing more. Instead, the second she stepped through my door, something inside me pushed up hard enough to rattle every wall I’d built over the last ten years.

My wolf.

The creature I’ve spent a decade locking down, numbing, silencing. When I left Crescent Pack, I didn’t just walk away from territory I walked away from everything that made me who I was. I learned to control every shift. Every instinct. Every flare of dominance.It had been years since I reacted to anyone’s scent. I trained myself out of it. Forced my instincts to shut down after I left Crescent Pack. The fewer things my wolf reacted to, the easier it was to live this life. That was the plan.

But the moment she crossed the threshold yesterday, something shifted. A faint stir. It wasn’t strong enough to catch me off guard, but I felt it. Then Elena looked at me for the first time, and something low and fierce snapped awake.

I pushed the thought aside, but it stayed like a stubborn thorn.

I stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the tenth floor, and leaned back. The metal doors closed slowly. My shoulders still carried the tension I’d forced down that morning. Seeing her at breakfast had unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. She had no idea what her scent did to me. That faint pulse of something dormant. Not fully awakened. Not fully silent. Something old. Something dangerous.

The elevator chimed. I walked out and headed for the surgical wing.

Nurses greeted me, but I barely nodded back. My mind replayed the way I looked at her. I felt her eyes long before I saw her.

I scrubbed a hand over my face as I stepped into my office. I didn’t even turn on the light. I just dropped into the chair and tried to steady myself.

Her scent wasn’t like the wolves I’ve met. It wasn’t strong or assertive. It wasn’t even fully formed. It felt like a whisper of something hidden something stirring. Dormant, but present. The kind of scent that sits beneath the surface until it finds what it responds to. The kind that’s easy to miss unless your senses are sharp enough to pick up the faintest shift.

Or unless you’re an Alpha who has spent years starving your instincts until they notice everything.

Then a knock sounded.

“Come in,” I said.

“Dr. Hale? The morning brief is ready,” a nurse said.

“I’ll be there,” I replied.

She walked off. I glanced at the clock barely eight and pushed myself up.

Work helped. Usually.

But even during the brief, while we reviewed surgical schedules and patient notes, I caught myself drifting. I kept replaying the moment I stepped outside after my run and saw her watching me from the upstairs window. She froze when she realized I noticed her, like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

She wasn’t the problem.

My reaction was.

I finished the brief, handled a call from administration, and saw three patients before I finally got a moment alone again. I pulled out my phone to check in with Miguel, but another call popped up on the screen.

Vivian.

My wife.

I hesitated before answering.

“Alex,” she said, her tone soft, practiced. “I know I was supposed to be home last night. I’m sorry.”

“You said that two days ago,” I replied.

“I know. I’m trying. I have meetings all morning. Two clients are flying in. I’ll be back before the weekend, I promise.”

Promises. Always the same. Always fragile.

I walked to the window and stared down at the parking lot. “I’m not asking you to rush home. I just want honesty, Viv.”

“I am being honest,” she insisted. “Work is insane. You know how it is.”

I didn’t answer immediately.

Ten years ago, she fought to keep our marriage together during the aftermath of the incident. She defended me when the council turned on me. She stayed when most wolves would have run. I owed her loyalty for that.

But somewhere along the way, everything between us thinned out. Became formal. Became distant. We didn’t fight. We barely touched. We lived in the same house like two people who shared a contract, not a life.

“I’ll see you when you get home,” I said.

“Before the weekend,” she repeated. “I swear.”

The call ended.

I slipped the phone into my pocket and leaned against the wall. My reflection in the window looked exactly the same as always hair still damp from my morning run, jaw tight, expression blank. I looked like a man who’d learned how to turn off every unnecessary emotion.

Except today, something kept pushing through the cracks.

“Elena,” I muttered under my breath.

I shouldn’t have said her name. I shouldn’t be thinking about her.

She was too young. Too new to the world outside her pack. Too unaware of what lived inside her. Too trusting. Too unguarded.

Miguel trusted me. He always had. Even after everything that happened with the Council. Even after I left the pack, left the Alpha life behind, left the version of myself that was capable of losing control. He never doubted me. And last night he placed his daughter in my care. That meant something. It carried weight. The kind that doesn’t allow mistakes.

He gave her to me because he believed I could protect her.

I tightened my hands until the tendons strained.

Her presence stirred things I buried years ago. The worst part? I knew exactly what that reaction meant. And I would never allow it.