Jaxon

The night was hell.

Blaze wouldn’t stop pacing—claws along bone, breath hot in my throat, a low relentless snarl that cut the council chamber into muffled static. Toasts, oaths, thin smiles—none of it landed. The only thing my wolf wanted was a single, brutal imperative:

Find her.

The command cracked like a whip. My hands curled against the moonstone table until the crescent inlay bit my knuckles. The chamber’s vaulted ribs—older than our bloodline, carved when the Great Accord bound the realms—glimmered with faint lunar runes. Under the chandeliers, those runes pulsed in a slow, silvery heartbeat: wolf wards braided over fae counter-sigils, a ceremonial lattice meant to keep ambition civil and lies expensive. Even the air had bite—wolfsbane incense, a tradition to “purify intent,” stinging just enough to remind you the Goddess was listening.

Blaze never acted like this. Not for rogue reports. Not for court politics. Not for the pretty, perfumed distractions who mistook my bed for a throne. He tolerated those; punished me afterward with cold silence. Tonight he wasn’t sulking. He was demanding.

I checked my brothers—three mirrors, three different storms. Callum sat straight-backed, commander-poise welded over a hurricane, jaw tight enough to crack stone. Rory’s knee bounced under the table, fingers tapping the kind of rhythm you hear right before a smirk becomes a problem. Seth didn’t smile. That told me more than words.

We didn’t share weakness. Not here, under the Accords’ sigils and a dozen listening packs. Caines don’t leak in public.

My father’s voice rose, clean as a blade. “May the Alpha Quadruplets bring honour to Ridge Storm. May the Moon’s threads weave your reign into the Accord. And may She guide you to the soul carved from your same starlight.”

Some Lunas leaned closer to their mates. Some Alphas smirked, hearing poetry instead of law.

Blaze went still.

Starlight. Luna. Soulbound.

Hooks sank under my ribs and pulled—hard.

Ours is waiting.

Is she?

The meeting adjourned in a scrape of chairs and curated power. Callum stood first—storm zipped back into a suit. “Something’s off,” he said, voice low iron.

“No kidding,” Rory muttered, yanking at his collar. “Feels like I borrowed my skin from a corpse.”

Seth cracked his neck, rolling tension off his shoulders. “We can admire the problem—or pour something strong and pretend we’re not seconds from tearing out throats.”

For once, I didn’t argue.

Out in the long living hall, the air changed—same power, warmer edges. Carved beams chased wolves through phases of the moon; our house banners—storm-silver thread, Ridge sigils—caught hearthlight and threw it back. The wards here run deeper than our tenure: wolf lattice stitched over fae glyphs and dragon fire-sigils from the earliest Accord years, hum steady as a heartbeat.

Oak smoke. Aged whiskey. Pack musk. Home.

Aria spoiled it.

She leapt—vine wrap, jasmine-and-smoke press—legs cinched around my waist, mouth already at my jaw. “Missed me, Alpha?” she purred.

Blaze’s snarl blurred the edges of my vision.

Not her.

I set her down. “Things to handle.”

Surprise cracked her mask—she usually got a smirk or a bruised mouth for her trouble. Not tonight. The house was listening. The sconces’ brass wolf heads seemed to tilt, and the wards leaned in—the way stone does right before it sings.

Something was coming.

Rory’s POV

Our entertainment room is a shrine to comfort and control—velvet couches, moonstone inlays glowing like fallen constellations, an enchanted hearth that never loses its ember pulse. Silverleaf vines climb the pillars, catching light like dew. It smells like leather and smoke—the kind of familiar you wear like a second skin.

I couldn’t relax.

Seth sprawled in the recliner like chaos made king, an unmated she-wolf—pretty, forgettable—climbing him like a tree. Skirt inching north. Hands everywhere. The chair was three seconds from becoming a cautionary tale.

“Could you two not?” Jax said from his shadowed corner, thumb and forefinger pressing his temple—sound itself offending him.

“Let them… bond,” I said, lounging because I choose to. “Unless you’re mad Aria isn’t auditioning for the same role.”

Jax gave me a look that said I could keep going if I’d like a funeral.

A growl rolled through the doorframe—deep enough to make the threshold sigils flare warning-silver.

Theo.

Beta. Best friend. Now family by Lila and the Moon’s decree. He’s built like Ridge land—broad, old strength, the kind of man who makes rooms ready themselves. Tonight the smirk was gone. His eyes were wolf-black; his control was the kind you measure in broken bones on the other guy.

Callum slid in behind him, command wrapped tight, storm showing at the seams.

“What happened?” I was already upright.

“Lila,” Theo said—flat ice. “Drunk at the Silver Stag. Surrounded. And her ‘friends’ waited to call.”

The hearth dipped; even the room’s old magic remembered what Caine males do for their own.

Jax came up like a blade drawn. Seth displaced his lap decoration without a word; the grin didn’t even try to show. Callum didn’t need to move fast—weight followed him like weather.

“She’s my mate,” Theo added, shouldering our instinct before it bared teeth. “If you all storm in, it becomes a spectacle. Stand down.”

We hated it. Callum’s jaw ticked once; he gave a curt nod anyway. “Bring her home. Call if anyone looks wrong.”

Door clicked shut. Silver inlay shivered.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered.

“Something’s coming,” Jax said, so soft the fire almost swallowed it.

Callum didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The wards were already humming—the old Accord braid alive and leaning toward a seam in the night.

Rhea’s POV

Finn called Theo thirty minutes ago. I was the one keeping Lila upright.

She slung herself over me like an affectionate scarf, nails in my arm for leverage. “I am fiiiiine,” she informed the table we’d nearly killed. The Stag’s hospitality sigils—fae-crafted, wolf-attuned—pulsed politely in the rafters, sandpapering rough edges off temper. The whole tavern breathes magic: oak wainscoting etched with listening vines; moonlily lanterns pulsing to the band’s rhythm; a hearth spelled for glow not heat. It smells like roasted venison, hops, clove smoke, and old spells.

“Sure you are,” I said, easing her down. “The furniture writes sonnets about your grace.”

“You’re judgy when you’re drunk,” she sniffed.

“And you’re clingy,” I said. “And loud. If you over-enunciate again, I’m enrolling you in Were-Shakespeare.”

She grinned, then slumped against me, arm over my shoulders. “You love me.”

“Unfortunately.”

“If this were Theo,” she mused, wicked, “he’d throw me over his shoulder, rip something expensive, and—”

I slapped a hand over her mouth. “If you finish that sentence, I walk into traffic.”

She peeled my hand off just to whisper in my ear—graphic, feral, delighted. I groaned into the tabletop. The hospitality wards purred like they found us entertaining.

“Rhee?” she said, voice sliding soft under the noise. “You okay?”

It was supposed to be yes. It wasn’t. “Why wasn’t I enough?”

She sobered hard. Fingers tightened on my shoulders, voice knife-clear. “You are everything. If he didn’t see it, his loss.”

“It’s not just him,” I said. How do you explain the border and the blanket? The name stitched in silver thread and no hand attached? The Academy walls that whisper “charity” before they whisper “pack”? How do you say the Moon feels like a door you’ve been knocking on your whole life?

“I keep waiting for someone to choose me,” I said. “I don’t think anyone will.”

The tavern door slammed open.

Every candle stuttered. A dozen conversations died.

Theo filled the threshold—black eyes, jaw iron. Floor runes kindled under his boots: wolf wards recognizing rank and the intent curled hot under his skin. He crossed the room with that patient, lethal calm that comes before storms. His hands closed on Lila’s waist—mine, the grip said, and the wards agreed—then he lifted her like she weighed nothing. Every wolf watched. Lila trembled. Not fear. Anticipation.

His gaze found me.

Not anger. Not pity. Knowing.

Like he’d peeled me back to the border and the blanket and the first time the Moon felt like a wall. The piece of me that learned to make my own gravity.

I looked away.

“Please,” Lila said, suddenly crystal through the drunk. “She comes with us.”

Theo hesitated, then nodded once. “Fine.”

The Ridge Storm Packhouse was the last place I wanted to be. Even with adoptive parents who loved me, stone holds memory; and the pack has always remembered me as the wolf with no name behind her name.

“I’ll be fine,” I said anyway.

“If you don’t come, I’ll ruin your life,” Lila said sweetly.

“Noted.”

Finn reached for a goodbye hug. Theo’s arm snapped Lila back with a growl. “Mine.”

Finn raised his hands. “Keeping my limbs, thanks.”

The drive tasted like oak smoke and unsaid things. Lila murmured nonsense that made Theo’s jaw tic; I watched trees blur and tried not to think of Ethan looking at Nora like the sky finally spelled his name back. He never looked at me like that. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to.

The gates accepted Theo with a soft flare—interlocked moons lighting as the wards tasted him. The drive twisted through shadow-thick pines, and the Packhouse rose—a pale-stone fortress veined with silver, runes banked low, wolf statues tracking us with spell-bright eyes. The Ridge grounds hum old magic: wolf lattice woven over fae glyphs and dragon fire-sigils—Accord craft baked into the foundations so deep even the wind knows the rules.

Theo set Lila down and murmured in her ear; she flushed. I made a face. “Gross.”

He offered me a hand.

The night bent.

Not one presence. Four.

They stepped out of the dark like the house had shaped them: same shoulders, same cut of jaw, same iron-grey eyes—four flavours of the same storm.

Callum, every line precise, dominance sheathed but heavy—Jaxon, built like a blade, shirt open at the throat, danger wrapped in velvetSeth, loose-limbed sin with laughing violence under the grin. Rory, smile like a question you want to answer, charm hiding a chessboard.

Dominance rolled down the steps in a braided wave; the stone sigils under our feet flared until the porch blazed like noon.

“Mine,” they said together.

Not loud. Didn’t need to be. The old wards shouted it for them, lighting every inlaid moon and vine and vow-knot until the Packhouse sang.

My knees gave. A hand caught me—hard, warm. The world tunnelled, and a voice—rough velvet, a promise and a threat—cut through the dark.

“Finally,” Jaxon said, close enough to burn. “The Moon’s choice comes home.”

Everything went black.