Chapter 5 – The Scent That Shouldn’t Be

Ryker's POV

I woke up too early and immediately regretted it.

My head was still spinning from too much eggnog the night before. I pressed my palm flat against my forehead and lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what had pulled me out of a perfectly good sleep.

Duke.

He was pacing—worse than his usual restless self. It was not the lazy back-and-forth of a bored wolf. Something more agitated than that. More focused.

I dragged a hand over my face and pushed myself upright. "What now?" I groaned under my breath. "Why are you not asleep? It's not even training time."

Duke didn't answer. His attention was fixed on something I couldn't identify yet.

I scanned the room. Nothing out of place. Bed wrecked, boots by the door, half-finished glass of eggnog still sitting on the dresser from last night. Quiet. Normal.

"Go back to sleep," I told him. "There's nothing—"

Then I caught it.

Faint. I would've missed it if I weren't already awake. I frowned and pulled in a slower breath, letting it settle over my tongue properly.

Berries.

Fresh and rich—not the artificial sweetness from the kitchen. Something real. Something that had no business being right outside my door at this hour.

My body went rigid without my permission.

I breathed in again. Stronger now. Definitely coming from the door.

"Mate!" Duke exclaimed, and my chest tightened hard around the word.

"No," I said immediately, sitting up straight. "That's not how this works. We would've known before now—felt something."

But the scent didn't fade. If anything, it thickened, wrapping around my senses and refusing to let go. My mind drifted somewhere I didn't want it to go, and I yanked it back hard.

I swung my legs off the bed and stood, catching myself as I swayed. My skin felt too tight, like something underneath was pushing to get out.

"She was here," Duke said, his attention sharpening with mine.

"Shut up," I muttered—but I was already moving towards the door.

The closer I got, the worse it became. Not just sweet anymore. There was something else underneath it, something layered and warm that made my jaw clench.

I pulled the door open.

The hallway was empty.

But the scent was right there—sitting in the air like it was taunting me. It felt like a game I hadn't agreed to play.

I stepped out and looked both ways. Nothing. No one.

"She didn't come in," Duke said. Something almost wounded underneath it.

I stood there for a moment, jaw tight, trying to work through it. She came to my door. She stood right here. And then she left.

Kael's door opened before I'd finished the thought. He was already dressed—of course he was. His eyes found mine across the hallway, and the same frown I could feel on my own face was carved between his brows.

"You smell it?" I asked. It wasn't really a question.

"Right outside my door," he replied, his voice low and careful.

Soren's door opened next. He stepped out, ran a hand through his hair, took one breath—and went completely still.

We stood in the hallway and looked at each other.

Nobody said it. We didn't have to.

Kael nodded once. "Check if it's the same."

We moved together—my door first. The scent was strongest there, thick enough that it almost felt like a presence rather than a trace. Then Kael's—same scent, different undercurrent. Then Soren's—same again.

All three of us. The same she-wolf.

We stopped in the middle of the hallway. Duke had quit pacing. He was watching my brothers now with an intensity that made something uncomfortable shift in my chest.

"She came to us," I said.

"But didn't come in," Soren added quietly.

Kael's jaw tightened. "But why would she do that?"

Nobody answered. I turned it over and came up empty, which only irritated me more. We weren't the type of men who stood alone in hallways. She-wolves didn't usually walk away from us by choice.

"Find her," Duke snarled.

Kael's eyes flicked to mine—the same sharp look I could feel pulling at me. "Track it," he said. "We find her and we find out why."

The scent led us down the hallway easily.

Too easily. She hadn't tried to hide it at all, which put me on edge immediately. Were we walking straight into something? I almost froze in my tracks when I noticed where it was taking us.

I stopped dead.

No.

Ayla.

I let out a short, sharp breath. The word that came out under it wasn't fit to repeat. This wasn't disbelief anymore—disbelief had lasted about three seconds. What replaced it was messier than that. Irritation. Confusion. Something hot and tangled underneath both that I wasn't going to examine right now or possibly ever.

Soren had gone rigid beside me.

Kael hadn't moved a muscle.

Her scent was everywhere here—fresh, clinging to the walls, wrapping around all three of us whether we wanted it to or not. Which we didn't. Obviously. This was Ayla. The girl who hadn't said a word in thirteen years. The girl I'd told to find somewhere else to sleep was just hours ago.

My own mate.

The thought made something in me want to put a fist through the wall.

"She went to her room," Soren said, his brows knitting together, his voice tight in a way I didn't have the patience to unpack right now.

"Seems so," I muttered, and pushed her door open without knocking.

Empty. But warm—she'd been here minutes ago at most. Her scent was in the blankets, the air, and the floor. Her old schoolbag hung over the chair. Books stacked neatly on the desk. Nothing out of place. Just—gone.

"She bolted," Duke said, and the feeling that dropped into my chest at those two words was not something I was prepared for.

"Why come to us and then just leave?" I asked, even though the irritation in my own voice was starting to answer the question before anyone else could.

"Because you told her she'd be homeless today," Soren said. Quiet. Pointed.

I winced before I could stop it. "I never expected her to be my—"

"Our mate," Soren said. Flat. Final.

"She felt the bond," Kael said, his eyes still moving slowly around the room like he was cataloguing every trace of her. "She knows exactly what we are to her. And she ran before we had the chance to make it worse."

Duke surged hard inside me. "She's ours. I want my mate—now."

"Yeah, well, get in line," I said under my breath, though the words came out with less edge than I intended because something in me had shifted, and I didn't like how quietly it had happened.

This wasn't just the bond pulling. I could have handled that; I could have dismissed it as instinct and dealt with it later.

This was something else. The fact that she'd come to our doors. The fact that she'd stood right outside mine and felt the bond and still turned around and ran—that wasn't instinct. That was a decision. One she'd made because of things I'd said and done.

That made it personal.

"We need to find her before she crosses the boundary," Soren said. "After that, it gets complicated."

Kael's eyes cut to mine. Something sparked there—the same heat I could feel sitting low and restless in my own chest. "Let's see how far she thinks she can get," he said.

A slow smile pulled at the corner of my mouth before I could stop it.

She ran.

Fine. Let her run.

"Yeah," I muttered, already moving for the door. "Let's go find out."

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