LOGINLena’s POVThe operation had a name.Cole called it a recovery mission. Petra called it an infiltration. Damien called it finding our child and everything else was just logistics.I called it the only thing that mattered.We had been in the war room for three hours. Maps spread across the table. Photographs of properties. Financial records that Petra had pulled through channels I didn’t ask about. Three possible locations in Hale’s territory where something or someone could be kept without drawing attention.A remote estate in the north. A medical facility that had changed ownership twice in two years. A residential property registered to a shell company with ties to Hale’s personal finances.I kept coming back to the medical facility.“A child with wolf blood,” I said. “They would need medical support. Especially in the early years. Especially if the child shifted early.” I looked at Petra. “How early can half-Alpha children shift.”Petra glanced at Damien.“Look at me,” I said again
Lena’s POVIt came back at 2pm while I was reading.Not the full memory. Not even close. Just a fragment. A splinter of something that pushed through without warning while I was sitting in the library with a book I wasn’t really reading and the afternoon light coming in flat and gold through the tall windows.A smell first. Something warm and specific that the room wasn’t producing but my brain suddenly insisted was there. Cedar and something darker underneath. Then a sound. Low voice, my name, not said in warning or in anger. Said the way you say something you’ve been saving.Selene.And then a flash. Not visual. Just feeling. Hands at my waist, certain and warm, and the feeling of being pulled in and the specific sensation of relaxing into something after a long time of holding yourself tight.It lasted maybe three seconds.Then it was gone and I was back in the library with a book on my lap and my heart going absolutely haywire.I sat very still.My wolf was insufferably smug about
Damien’s POVShe called at noon.I saw the name on my screen and stepped out of the war room and into the hallway and answered it because not answering was information I wasn’t ready to give her yet.“Damien.” Her voice was warm the way it always was. Practiced warm. I had spent eight months not seeing the difference.“Nadia.”“I heard you left the city.” A pause loaded with things she was pretending not to know. “Everything okay.”“Fine,” I said. “Pack business.”“Of course.” Another pause. “I’ve been thinking about you. About us. I know things ended badly and I just wanted to reach out and.”“Nadia.” I kept my voice completely even. “Why are you calling.”Silence. The warm performance of it dropping slightly.“I heard a rumor,” she said. Lighter now. Testing. “That you found her.”I said nothing.“Damien. If you found Selene you need to be careful. She left. She chose to leave and whatever story she’s telling you now.”“She has amnesia,” I said flatly. “She didn’t choose anything. S
Lena’s POVThe grounds were empty at 6am.I found that out because I couldn’t sleep again and at some point lying in the dark stopped being restful and started being just lying in the dark so I got up, pulled on clothes and went outside.The air hit me first. Cold and pine-thick and so clean it almost hurt after two years of city breathing. I stood on the back steps and just breathed for a moment. In through the nose, out slow. My wolf stirred at the smell of it. Lazy and satisfied like a cat in a patch of sun.I was still getting used to that. The wolf. The awareness of her. She had been there all along apparently, sleeping in the dark basement of me, and now she was stretching and blinking and had very strong opinions about everything. Smells especially. The world had a whole extra layer of information in it that I was only just learning to read.Right now it was telling me Damien had been on these steps recently. An hour ago maybe. His scent was there on the cold stone railing. Som
Lena’s POVRia picked up on the first ring.“You missed four check-ins,” she said. No hello. No preamble. Just that. “Four. I was twenty minutes from calling the police and then I thought about how you’d never forgive me and I talked myself down but I want you to know it was very close.”“I’m okay,” I said.“You don’t sound okay. You sound like someone who’s okay but in the way where okay is doing a lot of heavy lifting.”I was sitting on the window seat in my room. Morning light was coming in flat and grey and the grounds below were empty except for two men I didn’t know walking the tree line with the specific alert posture of people who were paid to notice things.Guards.I had guards now apparently.“I need to tell you some things,” I said. “And I need you to let me get through all of it before you react.”Silence.“That’s never a good opening,” she said. “But okay. Go.”I told her everything.Not the werewolf part. Not yet. I didn’t have the language for that yet and I wasn’t sure
Lena’s POVI didn’t sleep.Not really. I drifted in and out of something shallow and restless, chased by sounds I couldn’t identify and the feeling of running, always running, through dark that had no end. I woke at 5am and lay on my back staring at the ceiling and listened to the house breathe around me.It was alive this house. In the way that buildings get when they’re full of people who belong to each other. Creaks and low voices and somewhere below the smell of coffee starting. I lay there and let it wash over me and tried to figure out why it felt less foreign than it should.I gave up on sleep at six and showered and went downstairs.The kitchen was enormous. Stone floors, heavy wooden table, a window above the sink that looked out on grounds going silver and green in the early light. Three women were already there. They stopped talking when I appeared in the doorway.The oldest one recovered first.“Lena,” she said warmly. Then corrected herself. “Sorry. Do you prefer Lena or







