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Cassandra Jack has just started showing up at the administrative office, leaning in the doorway and saying "ready?" like me agreeing to whatever date he has planned is a foregone conclusion.I suppose it is. I do have a pretty consistent track record of saying yes so far. Still, I wonder if I’ll ever stop being surprised at his beaming smile and the excited expression he wears every time he sees me.I've been braced for him to lose interest since the very first one. I told him everything—the ugly version, no edits—and I half-expected the second invitation to not materialize. It's one thing to listen to someone's history in a private office and decide you're still interested. It's another to show up again once the reality of that history has had a few days to sink.But he keeps showing up anyway. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think he liked me, checkered past and all. I have to admit it’s a heady feeling. “Thank you.” I say when I realize he’s still standing there, waiting for
NoahPiper is in the Alpha house when I get back from my appointment with Dr. Lukas. With the mood I’m in, the jury is out on whether or not that’s a good thing. But I’m not surprised to see her there. She's made herself comfortable in the common area connected to my office—she does this sometimes, brings work of her own and keeps me company while I deal with whatever I'm dealing with. I find her curled up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea, and she looks up when I come in with the easy smile, the one she reserves just for me. And I find it does soothe me a little. "You look like you need food," she observes. "Have you eaten?"‘Six months, possibly eight.’ is playing thr0ugh my head on repeat and I have to force myself to focus on her words. "Uh, not since this morning," I stammer."Sit," she orders, doing her best to look stern. "I'll get something from the kitchen."She goes in search of sustenance and I sit at my desk and look at the operational files I'm supposed to be
Noah I expel a very un-Alpha-like groan, closer to a whine, as I slam my car door and put it in drive. My weekly check-ins with Dr. Lukas are my least favorite part of my existence. I’d rather be doing almost anything else.Sometimes it’s not so bad. She comes in, she shows me the panels, the numbers have held, we talk about symptom management, I leave. Efficient. Almost routine.But for most of them, I don’t get that lucky. It’s almost as if the woman gets off on lecturing me. I didn’t get a lecture last time. I have a feeling I’m due. Sure enough, from the moment she walks in and closes the door, she’s wearing that disapproving expression that tells me she’s preparing to hand me my ass, in a very professional manner, of course."Let's look at the panels," Her tone holds an exasperated quality, the verbal equivalent of rolling her eyes, as if she knows they’re fine and I’ll use that as an excuse not to take her seriously.As predicted, my blood work is stable. I don’t even need her
Cassandra"Are you still in love with him?"I expect Jack to bolt when I say yes. He doesn’t. He just nods, doesn’t even flinch. And if he’s rethinking his position on this whole coffee date, his face gives nothing away. He just sits there calmly, receiving whatever information I offer."I'm telling you because you deserve to know what you're dealing with before you ask me to coffee," I explain. "I'm not— I don't play games with people's feelings anymore. I’ll admit I used to and I was very good at it. But I’ve learned my lesson and I'm done with it."He's quiet again. I watch him think—doing my best to read the thoughts in his silence, understanding whether he’s convincing himself of something or still processing the facts. But his face gives nothing away."Coffee," he says finally. "Still yes?"I stare at him. "After all that?""I'm not here for a project, Cassie," he says. "I'm not trying to fix you or be the rebound or prove something. I know who you are and I'm asking if you want
CassandraJack has been hanging around for weeks now. I probably would have noticed him sooner if I hadn’t been so oblivious to any man who wasn’t Noah. But I must have noted his presence, at least subconsciously, because I wasn’t all that surprised when he asked me to dance at the pack gathering. He's a pack warrior—one of the ones who runs the eastern boundary rotations, which means I've processed his patrol logs through the administrative system more times than I can count. I said yes immediately when he asked me to dance too. Did I say yes because Noah’s been flaunting his relationship with Piper and I wanted to show him I don’t care. Yes, absolutely I did. At least in part. It definitely wasn’t because I’m feeling ready to move on. I'm still not sure I'm ready. But that doesn’t really matter now, does it?Noah has officially made his choice clear. My options are to move on or end up completely alone. I'm really running out of reasons to keep saying no to things. So when he come
Noah It’s two days later when we finally get our first break. Cole comes in mid-morning with a folder he's holding and the look of a man who has found something he didn't expect."Eastern correspondence cross-reference," he says cryptically. "Administrative flagged something."He sets it on my desk almost reverently. I pick it up and read it. Then I read it again.Cassandra—I know that’s who did this because that’s the only person it can be. I haven’t hired anyone else permanently, why would I when she can do it for free—has cross-referenced six weeks of eastern border correspondence against Ironwood's internal administrative calendar, specifically the council meeting schedule, which is the information we log in the public-facing administrative record. And the correlation is exact. The skirmishes don't happen randomly within a window. They happen in a specific sub-window: the forty-eight hours following a logged council meeting. When leadership is occupied with internal governance, R
Skye I can't breathe.The boy—this child who just called my husband daddy—is looking up at Jaxon with complete adoration. And Jaxon... Jaxon isn't denying it. Isn't pushing him away. He's just standing there with his hand on the boy's shoulder, watching me with those cold gray eyes like he's waitin
Skye Of all the futures I imagined for myself, I never dreamed one day I would have to choose between my husband and my unborn child.My hand trembles as I smooth down the front of my dress—a soft blue one that Jaxon once said he liked. I've spent an hour on my appearance, wanting to look my best
SkyeThe rumors spread faster than I anticipated.Despite Jaxon's best efforts to contain the narrative—carefully worded statements to the elders, strategic conversations with influential pack members—the truth has a way of seeping through cracks. By the end of my first week back, everyone knows th
SkyeI press forward, though I'm not even sure which direction forward is anymore.At some point, my wolf stops talking.The silence inside me is worse than the howling wind.I'm alone now. Truly alone. Just me and the storm and the cold that's seeping into places I didn't know could go numb.I can







