MasukMadison
The black sports car slows to a halt at the red light, the engine humming quietly beneath us. Adrian reaches into the backseat and hands me a sleek black folder, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips like he’s been waiting all night to do this.
“Open it,” he says, his v
Madison Nash doesn’t laugh. He just watches me, then the hallway, then me again. Suspicion casting a glaze over his eyes.Cole leans back in his chair, watching Nash stare blankly toward the hallway.“Buddy, you watch Mercer harder than your last girlfriend. You wanna talk about it?”Ryan laughs. “Seriously. He went to the bathroom, not war.”Nash ignores both of them and keeps watching the hallway. His expression is flat, but his eyes are sharp enough to cut. Something in him coils tight, like his wolf is listening for something he doesn’t quite understand yet.I take a slow sip of my drink, trying to ignore the way my wolf is pacing under my sk
Madison The black sports car slows to a halt at the red light, the engine humming quietly beneath us. Adrian reaches into the backseat and hands me a sleek black folder, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips like he’s been waiting all night to do this.“Open it,” he says, his voice just above a whisper.My fingers flip open the front cover and I freeze, my mouth going dry.Inside are architectural drawings — floor plans, renderings, a beautiful glass and stone house with huge windows, a long back patio and a kitchen big enough to host half the city. I turn the pages slowly, realizing this isn’t a random house. Someone spent a long time designing this. Every room, every angle, every window carefully
Jay I glance over to the table in the back and recognize half the team sitting there. Some new faces, some that I already met. I fetch a beer from the bartender and walk over to the table filled with my new teammates because running is what got me into this mess in the first place.“Miss me?” I ask.“Like a bad injury,” one of them says.“Yeah,” another adds. “We were just saying the locker room felt too peaceful lately.”Ryan kicks an empty chair out from the table toward me. “You can take my chair since you already took my spot on the power play.”A couple guys laugh. I drop into the chair and set my beer on the table. “I don’t remember asking for either.”Ryan points at me. “Oh, you don’t ask. You just show up and suddenly coach
Jay I rake a hand through my damp hair as I stare up at the packhouse, memories begin to flood me. Heaving a sigh, I try to figure out when coming home started feeling like reopening a wound that never healed.The packhouse stands tall in front of me, exactly the way I remember it. That’s the problem with coming home. Everything looks the same, but nothing ever is.I came because pack rules don’t change just because you leave. In shifter territory, you report to the Alpha before you do anything else.But Alpha Walker isn’t just my Alpha or, just Nash’s father. He’s the man who took me in after rogues killed my parents. The man who gave me a room in this house, put food on my plate, and taught me how to fight, lead, and survive in a world that doesn’t forgive weakness.So yeah, I came here first.Because no
Madison My mind drifts back to the last time I saw him. How he trailed his lips down the column of my neck or the way his hands held me in place as he stared down at me with those crystal blue eyes.Eventually, my father steers it where he usually does when emotions run too hot—pack business. It helps drag me out of my thoughts.“Rogue activity has been heavier near the north line,” he says to Adrian. “Have you seen movement on your side?”Adrian nods once, dabbing the corner of his lips with a napkin. “Twice in the last month. Smaller groups. Testing boundaries more than attacking.”Nash’s expression sharpens with something familiar and easier for him than family tension. Strategy, Violence and Solutions. Exactly in that order.“They’re getting bolder,” he says. “Too comfortable.”“They always do this time of year,” my
Madison Gravel crunches under my tires as I pull in front of the packhouse, and for a moment I just sit there with my hands still on the steering wheel, staring up at the house I grew up in. Nothing about it has changed.The packhouse stands at the end of the long circular driveway, a timber-and-stone ranch house with a wide wraparound porch and iron lanterns casting gold light across the wood and stone. Massive oak trees frame the property, older than most of the pack itself.The land behind it stretches for miles—trees, trails, protected forest, patrol routes, and old pack boundaries that have outlived generations of arguments and bloodshed.I realize it’s legacy built in stone.This wasn’t just where we lived. It was where the pack was run, where alliances were formed and where every major decision in our territory had been made for







