MY EX-MATE IS BACK BEGGING

AUTHOR’S POV 

For several seconds, the world around her seemed to disappear.

The voices of the guards faded. The distant sound of hammering from the repair crews became nothing more than a dull echo. All she could see was the man who had once stood before her beneath the Moon and told her that she would never be his Luna.

The man she had spent years trying to forget.

The man who had let her walk away without a single warrior to escort her beyond his borders.

Her wolf stirred violently.

Mate.

Elena's stomach tightened.

"No," she whispered.

Luma's response came immediately, strained and resentful.

Our bond is broken, but he is still the one the Moon chose.

Elena pressed her fingers against the edge of the gate.

She had learned to live with the ache of their damaged bond. She had learned to ignore the occasional dreams, the faint pull that sometimes came without warning, and the strange emptiness that followed whenever she remembered what she had lost.

She had convinced herself that time would eventually turn Kaiden into nothing more than a painful memory.

Yet the moment she saw him, that old wound opened.

Not because she wanted him back.

Because she remembered what it had cost her to leave him behind.

She had survived the journey away from Blackthorn with little money, fewer supplies, and no certainty about where she would sleep. She had treated injured travelers for food and worked through winters when her fingers were too numb to hold her medical instruments properly.

She had faced hunger, fear, and loneliness.

She had built a life without him.

And now he stood outside her gates.

"What do we do?" Garrick asked quietly.

Elena did not answer.

Kaiden had lifted his head.

Even from that distance, she could see the moment he recognized her. His entire body went still, and his eyes fixed on the narrow opening in the gate.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

Then he took one step forward.

"Elena?"

Her name crossed the distance between them.

It was not shouted like an order. It was barely more than a breath, rough with exhaustion and disbelief.

She hated that she remembered the sound of his voice so clearly.

She hated that some part of her still recognized it as the voice that had once made her heart race.

Most of all, she hated the way her chest tightened when she saw the expression on his face.

He looked as though he had been searching for someone he no longer believed he deserved to find.

Elena straightened.

"Why have you come to my territory, Alpha Blackthorn?"

The title struck him.

She saw it in the brief tightening of his jaw, in the way his shoulders stiffened before he forced himself to remain still.

Once, she had called him Kaiden with the quiet affection of a woman who believed their future had already been written.

Now she addressed him as she would any other stranger standing outside Haven's gates.

Kaiden glanced at the guards behind her, then returned his attention to her face.

"My pack needs shelter."

The words were simple.

The admission seemed to cost him more than she expected.

Elena looked beyond him at the exhausted warriors and the damaged vehicles. She could see families sitting inside the rear compartments, children pressed against their mothers, and injured wolves trying to hide their pain.

She felt the familiar instinct to help.

It was the same instinct that had made her rescue Finn and Nora, the same instinct that had led her to treat Caleb without knowing whether he could be trusted.

But this was not merely a group of displaced wolves.

This was Kaiden Blackthorn.

And she knew better than anyone how easily he could turn kindness into something he believed he was entitled to receive.