Callum

I heard the car before I saw it—low engine growl rolling over the moonstone pavers like a predator warning the forest it was done playing. Theo’s mind-link hit a breath later, clipped and hot: Front court. Now. I was already moving. Jax, Rory, and Seth fell in at my shoulders without a word, four shadows cutting across torchlit arches. The Ridge Storm wards—old Valorian sigils braided with wolfcraft and a faint remnant of Drakonis fire-scripts from the Accord—thrummed awake beneath our boots, silver threads inlaid through stone pulsing to our cadence as if the Packhouse itself recognized the change in the air.

Then the scent hit.

Tuberose. Roses. Sweet, sinful, threaded with the kind of wild edge that belongs to thunderstorms and first snow.

Ace lunged, claws raking the inside of my ribs, a cold, absolute verdict cracking down my spine. Ours.

My jaw locked. The burn flooded my veins, a tidal surge of dominance that made the carved lunars in the columns flicker brighter. She stepped out of the SUV—no, she was carried out, and Theo’s hands were on her.

Rage detonated—clean, devastating. Theo was my brother, my Beta, blood and bond. And still, the first image in my head was tearing his arms from their sockets for touching what was mine. Our father had once told us true claims are born like lightning—no permission asked, no witness required. This felt like the sky splitting open.

“No.” The word left me low and lethal, a bell struck inside a cathedral. “Mine.”

It echoed—Jax, Seth, Rory layering the same claim over mine, four Alpha voices locking the truth into the bones of the house. Not loud, but total. A verdict the wards took into themselves; sigils along the archways flared, then steadied as if recording it.

We closed without thinking, a shifting wall of heat and muscle, a living ring. The courtyard torches guttered in the press of our dominance; even the night air went tight as a snare.

She looked up at us.

Goddess.

The Moon favours beauty in either terror or tenderness; on her, it chose both. Silver hair, all that length lifted by the courtyard breeze so it flashed like starlight. The dress—silk hugging curves in a way that made my palms sting with the need to touch. Cheeks flushed. Mouth soft, a little parted like she’d forgotten how to breathe. And beneath the startled spike of fear—a second scent, smaller, more dangerous: answering. Bonds sing to each other long before voices do.

Ace bared his teeth, a storm inside a narrow cage. Claim. Now.

My gaze caught on her mouth and stuck. I imagined teeth there—my mark right below the curve of her jaw. I imagined her voice roughened by saying my name too many times in one night. I imagined—no. I banked it. Control is what makes a king instead of a dog. I’ve bled my life into that principle.

Her lashes fluttered once. Twice.

She folded.

Rory moved first, swift as he always is when the joke drops and the blade appears. He caught her before the marble could, arms locking in a cradle that looked far too right. Possession flashed in my chest hot enough to fracture bone. Limits are for outsiders; inside the four of us, there are only balances. Mine. Ours. The weight of that truth settled like a crown.

I stepped in close, checked the pulse at her throat—fast, steady. The wards hummed around us, adjusting to the new force pressed into their web. We’d all felt bond surges before—our parents, our friends—but this… this was resonance, the kind that spikes the ward-index to a ten and makes moonstone sing. The kind they write into Academy reports because it’s not supposed to happen. Not to four at once. Not like this.

Theo’s fingers hovered, useless now that the storm had a new eye. Lila’s voice cracked somewhere to my left, asking questions the night wasn’t going to answer. I didn’t look away from our Luna.

“Upstairs,” I said, and the command went out through stone and staff as much as it did through my brothers. Doors unlocked ahead. Torches brightened. The old house makes way for a sovereign; it always has.

As we moved, the Packhouse gave me the catalog I always track without thinking. Alcoves warded with layered sigils—wolf, fae, a few old draconic burn-lines near the hearths for long winters. Silverleaf ivy trained across beams, the leaves enchanted to glow when dominance peaks. Banners with our crest—lunar crescents and a storm-wolf—stirred though there was no draft. I have built my life keeping this machine humming—edges clean, choices absolute. And in the middle of the machine, wrapped in Rory’s arms, was the only variable that ever mattered.

We passed the threshold to our private wing. The ward-charm there stuttered—once, twice—then flared, as if the lock recognized a fifth imprint joining the pattern. Old magic is greedy like that; it loves a story with weight.

Jax’s snarl cut the hall—short, lethal. I didn’t need to look to know why. Aria. Cassandra. Ivy. They were a problem for later. He handled it now with a sentence that felt like hilt steel sliding home: “She’s our mate.” The torches dropped low, then came back up—submission from the house itself.

Lila edged forward, palms open. Theo’s hand tightened at her hip. I didn’t shift my stance. “Lila,” I said evenly, iron under velvet. “You know we love you. But this part isn’t yours to touch.” Her wolf got there before her human did; I saw the flinch, the step back. She’ll forgive me later. Love with teeth has always been our family’s dialect.

Rory adjusted his grip; she settled instinctively tighter against him. The sound of that small sigh almost scissored my composure in half. I took her hand—small, warm, electric—let my thumb notch across the knuckle once. It steadied Ace. It almost steadied me.

We climbed. Seth peeled the world off Lila with a wicked wink that didn’t hide the razor under it and fell in at our side. Jax paced our rear guard like a blade drawn in a crowded room. I set the pace, steady, sovereign-fast, the way you move when every eye in a house is counting your steps.

In my head, the quiet, practical part of me did what it always does: ran calculus. Security protocols. The ward-index spiking when she crossed the border. The way our wolves collided with hers and made the lattice flare instead of choke. The way the old stories whisper about resonance and what it means when the bond’s chord is too complex for a simple duet. Messengers have been sent tonight to the capital without me telling anyone; the Supreme Alphas will know by dawn. Tristan, Lucas, Hayden—Lycandra’s triune crown. The triplet kings don’t meddle often, but when the lattice shifts, they come to feel the tremor with their own hands. They will ask questions. They will look at the four of us and at her and try to read what the Moon has decided to make of this pack. Good. I prefer questions asked in daylight.

We reached the suite. The door’s ward lightened, gilding the arch as we crossed. Rory eased her onto the bed—silk, dark as a new moon—and stepped back half a foot because he could, because he’s better than he looks when it matters. I stood at the bedside and watched the slow rise and fall under the silk. My hand hovered at her temple without quite touching.

Ours, Ace murmured, no longer a command, just a vow.

“Now we keep her,” I answered him, and the house hummed like it had heard.

Nothing in this realm—or any other—was going to take her from us.

Jaxon’s POV

Theo said something about space. Lila’s voice thinned with panic. The house muttered to itself the way old houses do when a story kicks in—beams settling, flames leaning, ward-lines whispering. None of it got past Blaze.

Find her. Hold her. Fix it. He was done pacing. He was tearing.

I tracked her breath because everything else was static. Down the main hall, up the grand rise—wolf statues watching with moonlit eyes—and into the artery of our wing. You spend enough years inside Ridge Storm and you learn its language: the quiet note the torches take on when dominance saturates the air; the way the lunar inlays along the wainscoting brightens in permission when a command is clean. Tonight the house sounded like a blade being sharpened. Good. I felt like one.

Jealousy stung the air two turns from the suite. Aria. Cassandra. Ivy. Perfumes, too sweet, masking nothing. Warm bodies I used as gauze over a wound I pretended wasn’t there. Blaze bared his teeth at the reek of it.

Cassandra’s voice cut thin and high: “Who the hell is she?”

I turned my head, slow. Let them see the thing I keep sheathed for enemies. “She’s our mate.” I didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t need to. The bond braided through the syllables, sank claws into the old magic. The torches guttered, then steadied. They went pale. Good sense won. It usually does when death is near.

I stepped in close enough that my shadow swallowed theirs. “Disrespect her, and you’ll beg for death before I’m done.” Aria flinched. Ivy stumbled back. Cassandra forgot how to breathe. The house purred at their silence. I turned away.

Rory had her, and she looked like a miracle that didn’t know it yet. Silver hair spilling like spilled starlight. Mouth soft. Throat bare where my mark should be. I catalogued a thousand ways to make her say my name and filed them away, patient the way hunger is patient when it knows dinner can’t run far.

Lila edged in, hand out, eyes wet. “Please. She’s my best friend.” Blaze didn’t like it. None of us did. The snarl tore out of me and braided with my brothers’ before thought could catch it. The sound made the ward-lines jump like wires hit with power. She froze. Theo anchored her with a palm and a look. He’s smart. He’s also a Beta, and this was not his fight to pick.

We moved. The house moved with us—doors opening on their own breath, tapestries lifting without wind. I could feel the lattice now that Blaze had his teeth sunk into it: four lines twisting into one, tight, hot, right. The professors at Silver Ridge write essays about resonance like it’s a theory. The ward-lattice under Lycandra calls it what it is—weight.

Her fingers twitched against Rory’s shirt. My control frayed another inch. I took her hand and wrapped it in mine because I had to feel skin. Sparks. Every time. “Mine,” Blaze said, quieter now, not arguing, just telling the world a thing it needed to understand.

We hit the suite. The lock yielded. The ward light softened like honeysuckle in summer. Rory laid her out on silk. Callum did his surgeon-lieutenant thing, mapping breath and pulse with eyes, decisions stacking in quiet behind them. Seth leaned against the bedpost like sin in a tux, but even his smile had razors in it.

I went to the window because I needed air that didn’t smell like fear, lust, and old mistakes. The quadrants of the city glittered beyond the pines—moonlamps strung like constellations over training rings, the academy’s spires shouldering the sky, the silver thread of the river cutting the dark. Out past all of it, the Accord markers twinkled on ridge lines: fae way-lights, draconic ward-torches, the ghost-fire humans use to pretend they understand magic. Somewhere beyond those markers, the Supreme Alphas were already angling toward us; you could feel that kind of attention like pressure on your teeth. Tristan, Lucas, Hayden—triplet kings who hold the leash on the big storms so the rest of us can pretend we are the weather. Let them come. Let them ask their questions. I’ll answer by breathing.

Under the window, the little things that matter to people who don’t wear crowns kept happening. A staffer passed in the corridor, and the charm pinned at her throat sparked bright—a low-rank ward that keeps cups from breaking when Alphas growl. The hearth ticked as a moonstone log settled. Somewhere, someone laughed and cut it off fast when my voice carried back down the hall a few minutes earlier. Ridge Storm knows how to behave when I’m not in the mood to be charming.

I turned back. She breathed deeper. Color came up under her skin. Good girl. Wake up. See us.

I dropped to a knee beside the bed and let my fingers hover half an inch from her jaw because if I touched, I’d mark, and if I marked, we’d skip to the part where the world became very small. “You ran around this realm not even knowing you belonged to someone,” I told the quiet. “That ends now.”

Seth’s mouth curved. “We’ll need rules,” he murmured, all velvet and knives. “No new ‘friends.’ No male hands. The old ones get warned, then removed.”

Callum didn’t look at him. “We’ll start with food and water and sleep. Then security. You can play warden after she eats.”

“Play?” Seth said, delighted. Rory rolled his eyes without looking away from her.

I leaned closer and let a breath of my scent fall over her throat, the way a match leans into kindling. Blaze settled for the first time all night. “She’s going to fight us,” I said, not unhappy. “She’ll try, anyway.”

Rory’s mouth ticked. “Cracks sweeter that way.”

Callum’s voice went level steel. “We don’t break. We bend until she chooses.”

I glanced up at him. I call him Callum when I want him to know I’m listening. “We give enough rope to prove it’s love and not a lock. Noted.”

Under my palm, the pulse at her throat beat steady. I watched it and let the plans build—slow, careful, inexorable. The world can have its councils and laws and old men in mooncloth arguing which sigil gets hung where. I’ll rage at all of that another night.

Tonight is simple.

We found her. The lattice sang. The house wrote her name into its bones. The triplet kings will come and smell the chord and say words like unprecedented and historic. The Academy will send professors with charts. The Accord will murmur because when four Alphas pull the same line, the fabric puckers.

She’ll open those eyes. She’ll see me first if I can help it.

And then the rest of Lycandra can learn a new headline:

She is ours.

And we do not share.