Chapter 2: The Rogue Attack

The howl that tore through dinner didn't sound like a warning. It sounded like a death.

I dropped my fork. The clatter of it against the plate seemed too loud, too small, against the sound still echoing through the packhouse walls, a long, ragged distress call that made every wolf at the table go still.

Alex was already standing. "Border patrol." His jaw tightened, and just like that, the man who'd spent the afternoon laughing with me over candied anniversary cake was gone, replaced by the Alpha who'd been hiding underneath him all along.

"Now?" My voice cracked on the word. "Alex, it's our anniversary."

"I know." He came around the table fast, crouching beside my chair, his hands finding mine. His pulse hammered against my fingers when I pressed them to his wrist, fast, too fast. "Clara, look at me. It's probably nothing. A stray rogue testing the fence line. We chase him off, I'm back before the moon's even up."

"You don't know that."

"I know I have to go either way." His thumb swept across my knuckles, the same gentle motion from this morning, except now it felt like goodbye instead of forever. "Stay here. Eat your cake. Save me a piece, even though we both know you'll eat it before I'm back."

I tried to laugh. It came out thin and didn't fool either of us.

He kissed my forehead, then my lips, lingering there a beat longer than he needed to. "I'll be back before moonrise. I promise."

"You promised vows tonight too."

"I'll keep both." He pulled back, already half turned toward the door, already shifting into the Alpha his pack needed instead of the husband I needed to keep. "I love you. Two years and counting."

"I love you too. Come back."

He didn't answer that. He just looked at me one more time, like he was trying to memorize my face the same way I'd memorized his skin that morning, and then he was gone, boots pounding down the hall, voice already barking orders before he hit the front doors.

I sat there with my heart climbing into my throat and the half-eaten cake going soft in front of me, and I told myself it was nothing. A stray rogue. A testing of the fence line. He'd done this a hundred times.

The minutes crawled.

Margaret found me still sitting at the table, my hands wrapped so tight around my water glass that my knuckles had gone white. "Clara, honey, you should eat something."

"Something's wrong." I didn't know how I knew. Maybe it was the bond, stretched thin like a wire about to snap. "Margaret, something's wrong."

"Alex can handle a border skirmish in his sleep." She squeezed my shoulder, but her eyes kept drifting toward the windows, toward the dark trees where the patrol had run.

That's when the second howl came.

Different. Wrong. A sound that scraped up the back of my neck and refused to let go.

I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved, crossing to the window, pressing my palm flat against the cold glass like I could feel through it what was happening out there in the dark.

Lights bobbed between the trees. Shouting, faint and frantic, carried on the wind.

"Clara." Margaret's voice had lost its calm. "Come away from there."

I didn't move. I couldn't. My whole body had locked itself around one screaming thought. Something happened to him.

The front doors slammed open hard enough to crack against the wall.

Ryan came through first, soaked in blood that wasn't his, shouting for Dr. Reed before he'd even fully crossed the threshold, and behind him, four warriors carried something between them, something limp and broken and dressed in the same shirt Alex had worn at dinner an hour ago.

The glass beneath my palm fogged with my own breath, too fast, too shallow.

"Alex." His name came out of me as barely more than air.

Ryan's eyes found mine across the entry hall, and whatever he saw on his face stopped my heart cold. Guilt. Horror. The kind of look you give someone right before you destroy their entire world.

"It was an ambush," he said, voice shaking. "Too organized. Too clean. They knew exactly where to hit us."

"Where's Alex." I was already moving, pushing past Margaret's hands, running toward the men carrying him.

"Clara, wait—"

I didn't wait.

I saw the blood first, dark and shining and far too much of it, soaking his shirt, dripping onto the marble in a trail back to the doors. Then his face, pale, slack, eyes closed in a way that wasn't sleep.

"No." The word tore out of me raw. "No, no, no, Alex, look at me."

He didn't.

My knees hit the floor before I even decided to fall, hands hovering over the wound at his side, terrified to touch and terrified not to. Dr. Reed's voice barked orders somewhere behind me, distant, underwater, nothing compared to the sound of my own scream finally tearing loose and echoing through every hallway of the home we'd built together.