Chapter 4

Selene POV

"You did not have to walk me up," I said.

"I wanted to," Petra said. "Also Colt would have sent someone anyway and I volunteered before anyone else could."

She moved through the mountain path like she had done it ten thousand times, which she probably had, stepping over roots and ducking under low branches without breaking her sentence. I followed and tried not to look like I was paying attention to every sound in the trees around us.

"How long have you lived on the mountain?" I asked.

"My whole life. Born right there in the packhouse actually." She pointed ahead where the trees were beginning to thin. "My mother likes to tell that story at every dinner. Twenty-two years and it has not gotten less dramatic in the telling."

I smiled. "And Colt? Was he born here too?"

She glanced at me sideways. Not suspicious, just measuring. "He was. He grew up here, left for a few years when he was in his early twenties, came back when his father got sick and took the Alpha position when his father passed."

"How did his father pass?"

"Border dispute," she said simply, and did not add anything to it.

The trees opened up and I stopped walking.

The Ashford packhouse was nothing like Blackridge. Blackridge packhouse was modern and deliberate, all clean lines and expensive materials, the kind of building that was designed to communicate power. This was different. This was a long, low stone structure with a wide covered porch running the full length of the front, surrounded by enormous trees that looked like they had agreed to grow in exactly those positions. Smoke came from two chimneys. Several smaller buildings were arranged around it, connected by covered walkways.

It looked like something that had grown out of the mountain rather than been built on it.

"It is not fancy," Petra said, watching my face.

"It is incredible," I said honestly.

She looked pleased. "Come on. Colt is in his office."

She led me up the porch steps and through a heavy front door into a wide entrance hall. The floors were dark wood, worn smooth. The walls were stone on one side and timber on the other. A staircase ran up at the far end. The whole place smelled like woodsmoke and pine and coffee and something underneath it all that was distinctly pack, that warm layered scent that came from a lot of people sharing a lot of space over a lot of years.

Several pack members looked up as we came in. Curious but not unfriendly. A woman near the staircase gave me a small nod. Two men at a table in what appeared to be a dining room looked over and then went back to their conversation.

No one stared. No one whispered.

At Blackridge, a visitor always generated a current of comment. I had never realized how exhausting that was until just now, standing in a place where it was not happening.

Petra knocked on a door at the end of the hall and opened it without waiting for an answer.

Colt was behind a desk that was covered in maps and documents. He looked up when I came in and stood, which was a courtesy that I registered without meaning to.

"Selene," he said. "Thank you for coming."

"Thank you for sending Petra."

"I heard that," Petra said from behind me. "I am going to get coffee. Do you want coffee, Selene?"

"Please," I said.

Petra disappeared and I came fully into the office and looked around. One wall was almost entirely window, looking out onto the back of the property where the mountain rose steeply beyond a clearing. The desk was large and practical. Books on shelves along another wall, actual books, worn and read-looking rather than decorative. A large territory map pinned to the remaining wall with the borders marked in different colors.

I found the cabin marked on the map. A small square, right at the edge of the Ashford territory line.

"Please sit," Colt said.

I sat across from him and he sat back down and slid a single-page document across the desk. "Temporary residency agreement. Thirty days, renewable. It gives you full access to neutral pathways and the use of the creek boundary for your morning runs."

I picked it up and read it. The whole thing. Every line.

He waited without fidgeting, which I appreciated.

"You included a non-interference clause," I said.

"Yes."

"Meaning your pack will not approach me or make demands of me."

"Correct."

I looked up. "That is unusual for an Alpha extending residency."

"You have had a difficult few days," he said. "You do not need a pack making demands of you."

I held his gaze for a moment and then looked back at the document. The bond sat between us in the room, present and quiet, like a third person who had agreed not to speak yet. I could feel him across the desk. Not just physically but in the deeper way the bond created, a low constant awareness of him, his mood, his attention.

He was being careful. I could feel that too.

I signed the document.

Petra came back with three mugs of coffee and settled herself into the chair beside mine like she was planning to stay, which apparently she was.

"So," she said, wrapping both hands around her mug. "Blackridge Pack. That is a long way from here."

"It is," I said.

"You know I have a cousin in the Westfall Pack who knows someone in Blackridge. Small world, werewolf territory." She took a sip of coffee. "She says their Alpha is an absolute nightmare."

"Petra," Colt said quietly.

"I am just saying what my cousin said." She looked at me over the rim of her mug with those sharp green eyes that missed nothing.

"He is not a nightmare," I said. "He is just someone who should not be in a relationship. Those are different things."

Petra considered this. "That is very fair of you."

"I have had approximately fourteen hours to develop fairness about it."

She smiled. "I like you."

Colt was watching me with an expression that I could not entirely read. When I looked at him he dropped his eyes to the signed document and straightened it on the desk.

"If you need anything from the pack, you can come directly to the packhouse or ask Petra. She has agreed to be your primary contact."

"I agreed enthusiastically," Petra confirmed.

"I appreciate that," I said. I finished my coffee and stood. "I should get back. I want to finish setting up the cabin before dark."

Colt stood when I did. "I will walk you to the path."

"You do not need to."

"The outer path is better than the one Petra brought you up. Wider and better lit. I will show you where it starts."

It was a reasonable offer with a reasonable explanation and I nodded and we went out through the front door together and down the porch steps and he walked beside me across the clearing toward the tree line on the south side.

The bond walked with us, warm and patient.

"I am not going to rush you," he said, when we reached the path entrance. "I want you to know that."

"I know," I said. "I can feel it."

He looked at me. "Can you."

"The bond goes both ways, Colt. I can feel your intention the same way you can feel mine."

Something shifted in his expression. Not surprise exactly, more like relief, the relief of someone who has been hoping they were understood and has just found out they were.

"Then you know I mean what I say," he said.

"Yes," I said. "I do."

I took the south path back down toward the cabin and I had almost reached the first bend when I heard my phone buzz in my jacket pocket.

I pulled it out.

A message from Maya. Four words.

*He is coming, Selene.*

I stood on the path with the trees on both sides and the mountain above me and I stared at those four words and felt the rejected bond flare up in my chest like an old wound catching a draft.

Damien was coming to the mountain.