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Jaxon Rena knocks on my door, announcing I have a visitor waiting for me downstairs. As I don’t know anyone here, I can;t imagine who it might be. But I’m even more surprised to find Noah standing at the bottom of the stairs. He’s the last person I’d expect to show up here without calling first. The fact that he did tells me everything I need to know before he says a word. Noah calls ahead. Noah is a man who believes in advance notice, who thinks showing up unannounced is a form of aggression that can usually be avoided with basic courtesy.When Noah doesn't call ahead, something has happened.I meet him in the main hallway—Mikhail having let him through—and read his face."Council inquiry," I guess."Elder Castillo filed it two days ago. Formal inquiry into leadership stability and the Alpha's extended absence." He says it straight. No softening. "I didn't want to tell you over the phone.""How bad is it?""Not insurmountable. If you come back."I nod silently for him to follow me
NicolaiThat night, alone in my office while Skye sleeps—I sat with her until she drifted off, just watching her sleep calming something in me that desperately needs to be calmed right now—I do the thing I do with problems that don't have solutions.I sit and drink my best whiskey until the solution becomes clear.I wanted to give Skye a certain kind of life. The life I built here. The estate, the pack, running it together as equal partners, Benji, the mating bond. A life where she was safe and valued and finally, conclusively chosen.I still want that life. The question is whether that life can contain what it apparently contains now. Another Alpha. I think about Benji. I keep thinking about Benji—this is becoming a pattern. Using my son as the model, which is either wisdom or avoidance and probably some of both.Benji has two fathers. Not in the conventional sense. In the sense that two men who love him have figured out, through considerable friction and adjustment, how to coexist
NicolaiThe report I’m reading is twelve pages long. I've read it four times. I couldn't tell you what's in it.This is new. I retain everything—it's not a boast, just a fact, something I developed early because the Woolf family's business requires holding more information than most people can organize. I read things once. Sometimes twice to confirm. I do not read things four times and come away with nothing.I set the report down and stare at my desk, trying to wrestle my mind into obedience. Something is very wrong with my usual capacity.The kitchen yesterday morning. That’s the problem. The thing that occupies my mind so completely I can’t focus on anything elseI went back to my office afterward and sat for twenty minutes not doing anything—which is also not like me—and made myself be honest about what happened.My wife and the father of her child doing something they’ve been doing in front of me for months. Nothing different about it and yet, everything’s different. The particul
SkyeI can’t avoid it any longer, no matter how much I wish I could. So I go in search of my husband and find him in his office. Nicolai looks up when I come in. Reads my face in the way he reads everything important—before I speak, completely—and I know I have his full attention."I need you to stop treating me like I'm going to break," I blurt out before I lose my nerve.He's quiet, knowing I have more to say and patiently waiting for me to get it all out."I'm not going to break," I continue. "I'm also not going anywhere. But if you keep being carefully polite with me—if you keep choosing responses instead of just responding—I'm going to lose my mind." I look at him. "I need you to be real with me. Even when real is complicated, or even painful. You told me that once. It goes both ways."He looks at me for a long moment. Something shifts in his expression."That's fair," he says."I know the kitchen this morning was—""Difficult," he admits. "Yes." He meets my eyes. "I'm working on
Skye It's been several days since the mating ceremony and I'm making breakfast in a house that contains both my mate and the man I'm apparently also bonded to, and I have absolutely no idea what the etiquette is for this.There is no etiquette for this.I may be the first wolf in living memory who has to develop it from scratch, which is either fascinating or horrifying depending on the hour. Right now, at 7 AM with the coffee still brewing, it's mostly the second one.Before, there were things everyone was feeling but not acknowledging. The knowing looks. The careful distances. The way the three of us navigated rooms without saying what we were all aware of.Now everything is acknowledged. Named. Agreed to, in the loose, provisional, we're-all-trying way we agreed to it on the terrace. It should be better. Somehow it's both better and more complicated.Nicolai is careful with me. Not the cold type of careful—not the distance I used to read as rejection. This is different. This is th
Jaxon As soon as I hang up with Noah, I go in search of Skye and find her in the garden. Of course I find her in the garden. We have apparently established the garden as the location for every conversation that matters. I don't know when this became the rule. I just know it's true.She's on the bench near the roses, which is also where she always is. She looks up when she hears me coming. The expression she has—before she manages it into something more neutral—tells me she's been obsessing over something since the text exchange.I sit across from her on the bench opposite. "Hi," I greet awkwardly, because there is no guidebook for this situation. ."Hi." She blushes and it;s fucking adorable. But also tells me she’s just as unsure how to act as I am, which is oddly comforting.We're quiet for a moment in the way we've learned to be quiet with each other and I find myself hoping that’s one of the things we can get past soon."I keep trying to figure out what I'm supposed to say," she
Skye"Oh," Cassandra says, her voice soft and surprised. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realize we had company. I thought I heard voices and—" She stops at the bottom of the stairs, taking in the formal table, the candles, Diana in her evening dress. "Is this a dinner party?"The calculation in her timing
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
Skye Cassandra turns, and if I didn't know better, I'd think the guilt on her face was genuine. "Skye. I'm so sorry, this must look—""What is this?" I repeat, louder now.Jaxon moves past me, his expression hard. "It's temporary. Cassandra and Liam need a place to stay until we can arrange somethi







