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CHAPTER 20 — What My Bones Know
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2026-04-23 09:00:31I did not sleep so much as surrender in pieces. At some point after the wolf left, I curled up on the couch with a folklore book face down on my chest and the porch light still burning outside like a promise I hadn’t meant to make. I woke at dawn with a crick in my neck, my mouth dry, and one impossible truth pressing at me from every direction.
He had been here. It was not a dream. Not grief. Not exhaustion making stories out of shadows. There was mud on the kit
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When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 21 — Truth in the Garage Light
Silence hit the garage like a held breath. The kestrel shifted once in her recovery box, a restless scrape of claw against towel. The fox slept in the laundry nook. The rabbit twitched his nose as if this entire moment was deeply inconvenient to him. Outside, evening leaned against the trees and darkened them from the roots up. Inside, Colton stood very still. Too still. He wasn't confused or offended. It also was not the stillness of a man searching for a lie. My pulse roared in my ears. “Tell me I’m wrong,” I whispered again, because apparently I needed to be hurt twice before I believed it. Colton’s blue eyes held mine with unbearable steadiness. Then he said, quietly, “You’re not.” The world did not explode. My body reacted before my mind could form anything useful. One step back, then another, my hand finding the edge of the counter as if I needed proof the floor still existed. Air scraped into my lungs
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 20 — What My Bones Know
I did not sleep so much as surrender in pieces. At some point after the wolf left, I curled up on the couch with a folklore book face down on my chest and the porch light still burning outside like a promise I hadn’t meant to make. I woke at dawn with a crick in my neck, my mouth dry, and one impossible truth pressing at me from every direction. He had been here. It was not a dream. Not grief. Not exhaustion making stories out of shadows. There was mud on the kitchen floor in the shape of a massive paw print half smudged by my own sock. A black hair clung to the hem of my cardigan. And on the floor near the laundry nook, where the wolf had lain while I cleaned his side, there was the faint scent of pine and wild fur and that same dark, rain smoke smell that clung to Colton whenever he stepped into my space. I stood in the kitchen barefoot and stared at the paw print until my heartbeat turned loud and strange. “No,” I whispe
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 19 — A Wolf at the Door
The wolf sat on my porch steps with an unnatural patience. I stood on the other side of the door with my forehead resting against the wood, one hand still wrapped around the knob, and tried to make my breathing sound less like fear.Outside, the porch light cast him in soft gold and shadow. Black fur. Broad chest. Massive shoulders. The old silver scarred place along his ribs visible when he shifted, pale against darkness. And those eyes. Blue, impossible and watching me with a stillness that felt more like listening than waiting.He did not scratch at the door. Did not whine. Did not do anything except remain exactly where he was, as though he understood that the choice had to be mine.That, more than anything, undid me a little. Kyle had never understood closed doors. A closed door to him had been a challenge, an insult, something to rattle until it gave way.I could still hear it if I let myself. The hard metallic shake of the handle. His voice
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 18 — Folklore and Fear
By the time Colton’s truck disappeared down the road, the lemon cake in my hand had gone warm. I stood on my porch far longer than necessary, staring at the place where he had been as if the gravel might offer commentary. The motion lights sat quiet under the eaves, harmless in daylight, but I felt them anyway. Like small eyes, patient and awake.Inside, the house smelled like tea, clean bandages, and the faint bitter ghost of coffee. I set the cake box on the counter and looked at my phone.Bailey’s number sat in my contacts now, absurdly labelled in my own hand as Bailey (maybe still annoying).My thumb hovered over it. I could leave it. Keep the number like an emergency flare and never touch it. I could block it again.I could pretend I wasn’t lonely enough to miss someone who had barged into my life like a brass band and then turned out to have been sent there for reasons she should have confessed.Instead, because apparently I enjoye
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 17 — Black Coffee and Daylight
The first night with the motion lights felt like sleeping beside a nervous god.Every shift in the yard became illumination. White bursts through the curtains, brief and sharp, followed by my heart trying to escape through my throat. At 11:14, a raccoon tripped the back sensor and sent me upright in bed with my hand wrapped around the trauma shears I’d set on the nightstand like that was a sane thing to do. At 1:02, a deer lingered too close to the road facing camera and turned the porch beam into daylight for ten long seconds.At 3:27, I checked the monitor and saw a dark figure moving along the back line. Broad shoulders. Quiet stride. Colton. He didn’t look at the house. Didn’t knock. He simply walked the perimeter once beneath the silver wash of moonlight, then vanished into the trees again like he’d been cut from them.I should have felt unsettled. I did. I also slept after that. The realisation tasted complicated.Morning came with the soft
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 16 — Bitter Things
The coffee sat on my counter all night like an insult. Dark blue thermos. Loosened lid. Steam long gone by the time morning dragged itself over my little house and poured grey light across the kitchen. Everything looked tired in that hour, my lilac wall, my half finished shelves, me. I stood in my socks with my tea mug warming my hands and stared at the thermos like it had personally offended my bloodline. I hated coffee. Hated the smell of it, the bitterness, the way Kyle had always drunk it black and acted like that made him complicated instead of just unpleasant. There had been mornings in that apartment where the scent of coffee had come braided with tension, with the scrape of his voice, with the wrong kind of silence. Still. The thermos remained. Proof of a man who had stood outside my house in the dark and left me something warm with a note that said, in his own strange language, I was here, and I didn’t ask anyth
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 13 — The Snareline
Colton held the second snare up in the porch light to show proof.The wire glinted pale, moonlight’s cruel twin, looped and ready to cinch around anything warm blooded and unlucky. My stomach rolled as if I could already feel it tightening.I opened the door only after I’d checked the lock twice, b
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 12 — Silver in the Grass
The fox slept like something that didn’t trust the world enough to truly let go. Even under the light sedation his body stayed tense. Muscles jumped beneath fur. His ears twitched at every creak of the house, every sigh of wind against the garage wall, every distant call from the forest like the
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 11 — Closed Doors Don’t Keep Out the Dark
Blocking someone is supposed to feel clean. A boundary. A line in ink. A door shut with a firm click.But the next morning, I woke with the taste of it in my mouth anyway. Metallic and sour, like I’d swallowed a coin and it had lodged in my throat.The house was quiet in that pa
When the Alpha Howls CHAPTER 10 — The Friend Who Knew Too Much
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