Chapter 4 – The Scent of Them

Ayla's POV

The closer I got to the packhouse, the louder the world became.

Voices carried through the trees—laughter, music, too bright against the dark and the quiet I'd just left behind. Every sound landed wrong: too sharp, too close, too much all at once. My senses had no idea how to filter any of it. Even the snow beneath my paws sounded too loud.

Everything suddenly did.

My body didn't feel like my own anymore. My muscles felt restless and coiled under my skin, too full of energy, like I could break into a sprint without meaning to and not be able to stop. Every step felt like it could tip into something uncontrollable.

Tala lingered at the edge of my thoughts, watching. Quietly amused by all of it.

The packhouse glowed ahead, warmth spilling out across the snow. It should have felt safer than the dark forest behind me.

It didn't.

"We should shift back," Tala said. "Unless you want to walk in like that and traumatise half the pack. I'd enjoy it, personally—but apparently we're supposed to behave."

I guess she'd already picked up that we weren't exactly welcome here.

I slipped behind the nearest tree line.

The second shift came faster than the first. Not easier—never easier. Pain tore through me, sharp and sudden, bones grinding and skin stretching in ways that made my eyes water. I bit down hard enough to taste blood and forced the sound back. By the time I was standing on two legs again, I was shaking and completely wrung out.

I grabbed my clothes and dressed quickly, fingers clumsy and slow.

"Already falling apart?" Tala muttered. "We've barely started. I've never seen a wolf this clumsy before."

I ignored her, pulled my hoodie over my head, and headed for the packhouse door.

I pushed it open.

Three scents hit me simultaneously, and the effect was immediate and total.

It slammed into me like a physical blow—my lungs seized, my vision blurred at the edges, and my knees nearly buckled. I grabbed the doorframe hard, fingers digging into the wood, heart stuttering once before it slammed back into rhythm.

"What is that smell—" I gasped, nostrils flaring helplessly.

"Oh," Tala said, her voice going sharp. "Well. That's… not good."

I tried to push the scents back. It didn't work. They didn't sit on the surface—they hooked into something deeper, dragging at me from the inside out. My fingers went numb. My chest tightened painfully as they wrapped around me, pulling in three different directions at once, clashing and tangling.

"Why do I feel like this?" I asked, breathing too shallow, too fast.

Tala went quiet. Too quiet, and for too long.

"…You're not going to like the answer," she said finally.

Before I could respond, my feet were already moving.

The first scent pulled me down the hallway like a current I hadn't agreed to follow. Each step felt heavy and wrong, like being drawn somewhere I already knew I shouldn't go. I stopped in front of a door, and my pulse spiked so hard it hurt.

Kael's room.

The name landed like a stone dropped into still water, and I could barely breathe.

"Of course it's an Alpha," Tala muttered. "Because fate has a sense of humor and clearly hates you."

I stumbled back—and the second scent snapped tight around me, redirecting me, pulling me further down the corridor before I could think straight. My hand closed around another door handle before my mind caught up.

I let go immediately.

Ryker's room.

My stomach dropped. A cold shiver ran the full length of my spine.

"Goddess," I thought. "Are you punishing me?"

Tala said nothing. Which was somehow worse.

Dread moved through my veins, slow and cold. This couldn't be real. It had to be the shift messing with my senses—some strange side effect, something that would settle by morning.

"It's one sick dream you're having," Tala said flatly.

Then the third scent found me.

Quieter than the other two. Less insistent. It didn't pull me with force—it simply waited, patient and steady, as if it already knew I would come to it eventually.

My feet turned before I decided to move.

The third door.

I stood in front of it, and everything inside me went completely still—the kind of still that only happened right before something changed for good.

Soren.

"No," I whispered. "This… this can't be true."

"You know what it means," Tala said. Softer now. No edge to it at all.

I stepped back and shook my head in the empty hallway like that would somehow help.

And then it hit—not as a thought, not as a word, but as a force that moved straight through me before I had any chance to brace for it.

"Mate," Tala said.

The word went through me like something physical. My breath ripped out of my lungs. My knees buckled, and I grabbed the wall, heat flooding my chest—sharp, overwhelming—the sensation of something locking into place that had absolutely no interest in being unlocked again.

"What did you just say?" The words barely came out.

"All three of them," Tala said. No humor. No sarcasm. Just steady, certain, and completely devastating. "Apparently the universe doesn't believe in doing things halfway."

My chest tightened until I couldn't breathe properly.

Not them. Anyone on earth but them.

"Don't look at me like that," Tala said quickly. "I didn't choose this. If I had, we would have aimed for significantly less drama and emotional catastrophe."

I ran.

Their scents followed me down the hallway—clinging, curling around my lungs, and refusing to fall away no matter how much distance I put between myself and those three doors. I reached my room and slammed the door shut, pressing my back hard against it.

It didn't help.

They were under my skin now, all three of them, like the bond had already decided something my mind hadn't agreed to yet and wasn't planning to ask permission for.

"They're your mates," Tala said quietly. No teasing in it this time.

I shook my head hard.

"No," I said firmly. "They are not."

"Okay," she replied easily. "We can pretend. I support denial—it's a very popular coping mechanism… for now."

I slid down the door and pulled my knees to my chest.

Three mates. Not strangers. Them.

Kael. Ryker. Soren.

The same three who had made thirteen years of silence feel heavier than it already were.

"I won't accept them," I muttered, wiping the tears from my eyes.

Tala hummed softly. "Bold strategy," she said. "Historically unsuccessful—but I admire the confidence."

I almost snapped back. Almost.

But the bond pulsed—warm and certain and completely indifferent to how I felt about any of this.

I wouldn't accept them.

But somewhere deep beneath everything I was telling myself—

My wolf already had.

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