Miss Me With Your Best Shot

The scent hit Kade like a physical blow.Pine and frost, clean and sharp—Aria. It carved through the mingled smells of roasting meat, woodsmoke, and two dozen other shifters in the gathering clearing. His wolf surged forward, a possessive growl building in his chest, rattling his ribs. He stopped walking. The Blackwood warriors flanking him halted a step behind, sensing the change in their Alpha. Then, beneath her scent, woven into it like a melody under a dominant chord, came another. Warm, wildflower sweetness. Milk and sunshine and… him. His blood. His wolf went silent, then erupted. The world narrowed to a tunnel. His golden eyes snapped across the clearing, locking onto the woman standing rigid by the elders’ central fire. His mate. And the small, chestnut-haired pup clinging to her leg, a tiny fist wrapped in the fabric of Aria’s trousers. A pup that smelled of them both.Aria felt the weight of his gaze before she identified the source. It was a pressure, a sudden static in the

Aria turned from the weight of his gaze, from the shared breath that felt like drowning in a memory. She walked toward the rear of the lodge, her boots silent on the wooden floor. Kade followed. Not as an Alpha. As a shadow. As a man pulled by a gravity he could no longer fight.She stopped at the heavy oak door, her hand resting on the iron latch. For a long moment, she just stood there, her head bowed. The line of her shoulders was a fortress wall. Then, with a soft exhale that fogged the old glass pane set into the wood, she lifted the latch and pulled the door open just a crack. A sliver of late afternoon sun cut across the floorboards, warm and alive with dancing dust.She didn’t look at him. Her storm-gray eyes were fixed on the world outside. She pointed, her finger steady. “That’s her,” she whispered. The words were thick, scraped raw from a place deep inside her. “You can watch. From here.”Kade moved to the opening, his body careful not to touch hers, not to spook this fragi

-Flashback-The nausea was a constant, bitter companion.It lived in the back of her throat, a sour, metallic presence that rose with the dawn and lingered long past dusk. Aria learned to move through her days in a careful, measured cadence, her body a traitorous map of changes she alone had to navigate. The sharp scent of pine that usually grounded her now turned her stomach. The hearty stews from the communal kitchen smelled of wet earth and decay. Her world had narrowed to the war between her will and her own biology, a silent, exhausting battle fought behind the stone wall of her expression.Weeks bled into months. The subtle curve of her abdomen, hidden beneath loose tunics, became a fact. A secret. A sentence. She would press a hand there in the dead of night, lying stiff in her bed, feeling nothing but the taut skin and a yawning, hollow dread. This was his legacy. Not a memory of warmth, but this relentless, physical claim. A prison of flesh he’d built and then abandoned her i

The knock at her door was soft. Deliberate. It wasn’t the heavy, authoritative rap of an Alpha. It was the sound of someone trying not to wake a sleeping child.Aria opened it, the morning light cutting a sharp angle across her floor. Kade stood on the other side. Not in his usual leather and authority, but in worn jeans and a simple grey t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders. A toolbox sat at his feet. The scent of cedar was muted, overlaid with fresh dew and something else—determination. He didn’t cross the threshold. He just met her sleep-toushered gaze, her storm-gray eyes still soft with the remnants of night.“You said it starts with listening,” he said, his voice a low rumble softened by the morning quiet. “I’m here to listen. And fix the loose step on the porch Lily al

The firelight danced on the stern faces of the elders. Aria stood in the center of the stone circle, the heat of the communal blaze at her back, the weight of their judgment in front. She could feel Kade’s presence at the tree line like a physical anchor, a silent, charged support that was a current in the cool night air. Silas, the eldest, cleared his throat, the sound gravelly and final. He spoke of alliances, of combined territory strength, of the undeniable advantage an Alpha’s recognized heir presented. But Aria didn’t hear politics. She heard the two years of whispers she’d endured alone in this very clearing—speculation, pity, condemnation—and her wolf bristled beneath her skin.“The child is a blessing to both packs,” Silas said, his hands resting on his walking stick. “Her bloodline ends a generation of conflict. To deny the formal alliance is to deny her a legacy of security.”Aria’s fingers found the faint scar on her palm. She traced its length. “Her legacy is the home I b