Chapter 4

POV: Kade

“Alpha, you’re not listening.”

I was. That was the problem. I was listening to Bree’s father lay out grazing rights and border patrol schedules like they were the terms of a treaty instead of a wedding, and somewhere underneath all of it, I was also listening to something else entirely, a thread of scent that had no business being in this room and that I couldn’t stop chasing anyway.

“I’m listening,” I said. “Continue.”

Sinclair gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me, which was fair, and kept talking anyway, because whatever else he was, he wasn’t a man who let a lie slow him down when there was territory to negotiate.

Bree sat across from me with a folder of her own, color-coded, tabbed, the kind of preparation that told me she’d been planning this meeting for longer than the ink on the engagement announcement had been dry. She caught me not listening twice more before she finally set her pen down.

“You keep doing that,” she said.

“Doing what.”

“That.” She gestured, vaguely, at my face, at whatever I hadn’t managed to keep off it. “Breathing in like you’re trying to catch a scent across the room. You’ve done it four times since we sat down.”

I hadn’t realized I was doing it at all, which was worse than if I had. “Long morning.”

“Right.” She didn’t push it further, but she didn’t quite let it go either, and something flickered behind her eyes that wasn’t triumph and wasn’t hurt, something more careful than either, like she was recalculating a number she’d already written down twice.

Her father kept talking. I made myself focus on the actual words this time, the shared hunting grounds along the eastern boundary, the timeline for merging patrol rosters, the list of Sinclair warriors who’d be folding into Ashfall ranks once the marriage was formalized. It was good sense, all of it. Smart, careful, exactly the kind of alliance that would make the pack harder to shake.

It still felt like sitting through my own funeral with everyone very pleased about the arrangements.

“We’ll want the joint patrol schedule finalized by the end of the month,” Sinclair said, sliding a paper across the table. “Gives us time to smooth out any friction before the wedding.”

“Fine.” I scanned it without really reading it and signed where he pointed.

Bree watched me do it with an expression I couldn’t quite place, and for one strange second I almost said something honest to her. Not cruel. Just honest. This isn’t about you. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just spent three days imagining a life that isn’t going to happen, and I haven’t figured out how to stop yet.

I didn’t say any of it. No version of that sentence would have cost us both more than it was worth.

“That’s everything for today,” Sinclair said, gathering his papers, already halfway to standing. “I’ll have the finalized draft sent to your office by tomorrow, Alpha.”

“Appreciated.”

Bree lingered a beat longer than her father, just long enough to say, quiet, not unkind, “You don’t have to pretend with me every second. I know what this is.”

I didn’t have an answer for that either. She left before I could find one, and I sat there a moment longer than I needed to, staring at a treaty full of grazing rights and patrol shifts that was somehow also the entire shape of the rest of my life.

I told myself the walk back to the main hall was about checking the eastern fence line. Alpha duty, nothing more, the kind of patrol I’d have run whether or not anything had happened at the fire circle three nights ago.

I told myself that right up until the wind shifted and I caught it.

Faint. Half-buried under pine and wet earth and the dozen other scents that moved through that stretch of border every day. But unmistakable, the same way a voice in a crowded room is unmistakable the second it belongs to someone you’ve spent your whole life listening for without knowing it.

Her.

I stopped walking. Every instinct I’d built over the last three days telling myself this was handled, this was closed, this was the right call for the pack, went quiet at once, drowned out by something older and considerably less interested in what the council thought was smart.

I could have turned around. I had every reason to turn around. I’d stood in front of three hundred wolves and said the words myself, and turning around now would undo nothing except my own ability to look Reeve in the eye tomorrow.

I followed the scent anyway.

It led off the main patrol path, down through a break in the tree line I hadn’t taken since I was a pup, toward the stretch of border that ran along the old creek bed, and with every step the pull got sharper instead of fainter, until my heart was doing something entirely inappropriate for a man on a routine fence check.

I told myself I’d just confirm she was safe. That was all. A perimeter check, nothing more, the same as I’d have done for any wolf on pack land.

I didn’t believe myself even a little, and I kept walking anyway.