WESLEY POV“Rogues?” I asked, blinking. “We haven’t had issues with rogues in years. Haven’t even had any sightings of them in this area.”“Did they attack?” Reid asked, his body tense and his arms crossed.Dad grabbed his tablet and pulled up the map of our lands. “No, they crossed onto our territory here,” he said, pointing out a spot at the southern edge of the map.I breathed out a sigh of relief that they were in the opposite direction from the route Haven would have taken to head back to the city. “They walked along the border for less than half a mile and then they left the territory.”“Where are they now?” Sebastian asked, looking at the map over my shoulder.“Less than a mile from our border,” Dad said.“What are they doing?” I asked.“Nothing,” he said with a shrug. “They’re just camped out. I’m not sure if they’re scoping out the area, waiting to attack, or maybe just passing through? The scouts I sent out only got close enough to check their location, but I told them not to

HAVEN POV Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hello, you have reached Wesley Stone. I am currently unavailable—” I hung up before the mailbox greeting could finish. I didn’t need to hear it. I’d heard it at least one hundred times since Sunday. “Happy fucking birthday to me,” I muttered, tossing the phone on my bed and plopping down on my back. It had been five days since I’d seen Wesley. Five days since I’d spoken to him. Five days since he’d held me in his arms. I’d taken my time, thinking through every emotion and thought and concern I had about what Wesley had revealed to me after our unbelievable night together. The initial shock, the initial bombshell of him being a werewolf — a Lycan — wore off quickly. The fear of seeing that enormous, monstrous thing in place of my Wesley dissipated faster than I’d have thought possible. And left in its place was anger. Anger and irritation that he’d lied to me. That they had all lied to me. But mostly, I directed my anger at him. I could u

WESLEY POV “What the hell is taking her so long? Where the hell is she?” Alpha Pierce growled as he paced back and forth in the conference room, his hair disheveled from running his hands through it over and over. I stood off to the side, leaning against the wall with my arms and legs crossed, my gray suit jacket thrown over one of the few chairs in the room. My mom and Fiona had cleared most of the normal furniture out — the conference table and most of the chairs — and rearranged what was left for this charade of a mating ceremony. The only people in attendance were my parents, Alpha Timothy, and Reid. When asked where the other ranked and future ranked members were, since it was usually custom for all ranked members to attend a mating ceremony, Dad explained they were down at the BBQ happening on the lawn for the pack, who was told there would be a surprise announcement at the end of the evening. Which was a lie. Mostly. There would be no surprise announcement. And while Brad,

SEBASTIAN POV I twisted my tumbler back and forth on the tabletop of our VIP booth, leaning back into the darkness of the space, keeping myself hidden from view. I wasn’t drinking my Negroni. Not really, at least. There was too much on my mind to drink. So much had happened since that day Dad had called Reid and me into his office. What was meant to be just the two of us checking into some rogues turned into a whole ridiculous, drawn out charade. My brother was the most miserable I’d ever seen him. Except, perhaps for those weeks leading up to his forced shift and then the months after that, as he adjusted to his Lycan and his life without Haven. But I was having a hard time feeling even the slightest bit bad for him. He’d dug his own grave with his choice. Sure, I understood why he did it. I could respect his reasoning, and respect him finally making that choice to step out of our dad’s shadow and be his own alpha. But then he stepped right back under the umbrella when Dad told h

WESLEY POV I tried to sleep like Dr. Russo had suggested, but I couldn’t get more than a few minutes at a time. The chair was cold and uncomfortable, and my mind moved a mile a minute as I sat in the almost silent room. All the events from that evening played over and over in my mind as I tried to figure out if there was anything I could have done differently to change the outcome. And the only solution I could come up with was to have never agreed to Alpha Tim’s proposal in the first place. Which, I didn’t even know what had happened with all of that. It wasn’t my priority at that moment, and I knew my dad would handle it and fill me in. I could have joined her on the bed. It was plenty big enough. All the beds in the pack clinic were large enough to hold two people. It was so mates could stay together when one was sick or injured, since the mate bond helped werewolves heal faster. But I was too scared to jostle her and mess up her stitches. With her being human, I wasn’t sure ex