Chapter 2

Selene POV

"Who is there?" I called out.

My voice came out steadier than I felt. The two sets of eyes did not move. They were low to the ground, maybe thirty meters into the tree line, and they reflected the moonlight in that particular way that animal eyes do, catching and holding the light like small mirrors.

I had grown up in a werewolf pack. I knew what wolf eyes looked like.

These were wolf eyes.

"I am not on pack territory," I said, louder this time. "This is neutral ground. I have documentation if you need it."

Nothing moved.

Then one set of eyes blinked and disappeared, and I heard the soft sound of something large moving through undergrowth, retreating. The second set stayed a moment longer, and I had the distinct and unsettling feeling that whatever was behind those eyes was making a decision about me.

Then they were gone too.

I let out a slow breath and turned back to the porch step and found the key exactly where my grandmother had always kept it. My hands were steady. I was proud of that.

Inside, the cabin smelled like cedar and old books and something faintly floral that I could not identify. My grandmother had been gone for two years but somehow the place still felt like her. I found the light switch and the lamp in the corner came on and filled the room with warm yellow light.

One main room. A small kitchen along the back wall. A wood stove in the corner. A door leading to the single bedroom and the bathroom beyond it.

Simple and solid and mine.

I dropped my bag on the worn sofa and went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water and drank it standing at the sink looking out the small window above it. The tree line was dark and still now. Nothing moved out there.

I told myself the wolves were just passing through. Neutral territory attracted all kinds of travelers. Rogue wolves, lone wolves, small nomadic packs moving between regions. It was not unusual.

I told myself that and mostly believed it.

I made up the bed with sheets from the cedar chest and I lay down still in my clothes and I stared at the ceiling and I let myself feel it for exactly five minutes. The rejection. The humiliation. Three years of memories that I would have to sort through and discard one by one.

Damien at the beginning, when everything was electric and new and the mate bond felt like the greatest gift the moon had ever given anyone.

Damien six months in, when the criticism started. Small things. The way I laughed too loudly. The way my wolf was slower than the pack standard. The way I did not carry myself like an Alpha's mate was supposed to.

Damien at two years, when I stopped arguing back because it was easier.

I gave myself five minutes and then I stopped.

I was done looking backward.

I fell asleep faster than I expected and I dreamed about silver water and two moons in a dark sky, which was not a dream I had ever had before.

---

I woke up to sunlight and birds and the smell of pine coming through the window I had apparently left cracked open. For one disoriented moment I did not know where I was, and then I remembered everything in a single clean rush.

Rejected. Gone. Here.

I sat up and stretched and felt the bond ache like a healing bruise, present but no longer sharp.

I was going to be fine. I knew how to be alone. I had been alone inside that relationship for the last year anyway.

I changed into fresh clothes and went to the kitchen and found that my grandmother, or possibly some version of my own past self with better planning instincts, had left the cabin stocked with enough dry goods to last several weeks. Coffee. Rice. Canned goods. A box of oatmeal.

I made coffee and took it out to the porch and sat on the top step and looked at the mountain morning.

The trees were massive evergreens with sunlight cutting between them at low angles. The air was sharp and tasted faintly of snow even though it was early October. A creek ran somewhere nearby. I could hear it.

I was halfway through my coffee when I heard boots on gravel.

Someone was coming up the path from the old logging road.

I stood.

He was tall. That was the first thing I registered. Tall and broad across the shoulders with dark hair that was slightly too long and a jaw that looked like it had been carved out of something unforgiving. He was wearing a dark jacket and worn boots and he moved through the morning light with the particular ease of someone who spent a great deal of time outdoors.

He stopped at the foot of the porch steps and looked up at me.

His eyes were grey. Not blue-grey or green-grey but a true, deep, storm grey that caught the morning light the same way those eyes in the tree line had caught the moonlight.

My entire body went very still.

"You are on Ashford territory," he said. His voice was low and even.

"I am not," I said. "This is neutral ground. Has been for sixty years."

"The boundary shifted eight months ago. There was a formal agreement between the neutral council and the Ashford Pack." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded document and held it out.

I came down two steps and took it and unfolded it. It looked official. Stamped and dated and signed.

"I was not notified," I said.

"You own this property?"

"My grandmother left it to me."

He studied me in a way that was not rude but was very thorough. "Then someone failed to reach you. That is our error and I apologize for it." He paused. "You still cannot stay here without pack permission."

"And who gives that permission?"

He looked at me steadily. "I do."

I looked up from the document. "You are the Ashford Alpha?"

"Colt Ashford," he said.

And then it hit me, low and sudden and completely without warning, the mate bond flaring to life in my chest like something that had been waiting a long time to be found.

I took a step back and grabbed the porch railing.

His eyes changed. I watched it happen. Something moved through that storm grey and he went very still the way predators go still before they decide what to do next.

"That is not possible," I said. My voice came out barely above a whisper.

"No," he agreed quietly. But he did not look away from me.

The morning held us both there, suspended, and the creek kept running somewhere in the trees like it had no idea what had just happened.