All Chapters of TO LOVE A WOLF: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Clara was tired in a way that hid behind her bones. Night shift had been long and small sprains, stitches, a drunk who smelled like old beer and colder things. Her hands still smelled like antiseptic and wet cotton. Rain hit the hospital windows in hard little fists. The town outside was a dark smear.“Another one,” Mara said, sliding into the doorway with a chart. “Ambulance. Woods. Bad.”Clara didn’t look up. She pulled her hair into a bun with hands that kept moving like they belonged to someone else. “How bad?”“Bad enough the driver kept his eyes shut. Maybe animal, maybe fight. Whoever called it sounded like they were still shaking.”They ran through the routine like they’d done it a hundred times. Sheets, towels, a warm lamp. The gurney came through with a man under a tarp and a smell Clara knew with the sting of wild damp fur, earth, something iron and old. The EMTs had mud in the seams of their gloves and a look that said: don’t ask if you don’t want to know.Clara saw a shou

The door hit the floor and rain came with it, a cold stripe across the cabin. Splinters flew. Light from flashlights cut the dark like knives. Men filled the doorway big, rough shapes, jackets wet with the forest. One of them held something that looked like a baton. Another had a gun tucked at his hip and his face set like a promise.Clara's heart slammed against her ribs. Sound went very loud. The stove hissed. Ash moved in a breath that was all speed and muscle. He put himself in front of her like a shield and the world narrowed to his back, the way his shoulders rose and fell, the small tremor there that looked like pain.Stay down! a voice barked. It was different up close angry and practiced and cold. The leader stepped forward and his light found Ash's face. He had a scar that cut through his left eyebrow and a jaw that wanted to be cruel.Ash Thorne, he said. We told you to come out. You can't hide.We're not hiding, Ash said. His voice was flat. He kept his hands where they co

Clara felt like the cabin had gotten too small to hold all the air. Ronan stood on the porch like a mountain in a coat. The men behind him were quiet as stone. Ash pressed himself against the doorway as if his body could close the gap. Clara’s heart made a new rhythm fast, sharp, like someone running to catch a train.Ronan looked at her like he was reading a map he had every right to. You are not a stranger to this world, Clara, he said. His voice was calm. It had a small edge that cut. You were born into it.I wasn’t born into anything Clara said. Her voice sounded thin to her. It came out like a child saying no to a storm.You ran, Ronan said. He smiled without warmth. But blood remembers. Ash, you left her. You left the wrong thing.Ash tightened his jaw. Clara watched him breathe. He was brave in small violent ways like a person who walked into pain for someone else. I left because I thought it was safer, he said. I thought taking her away would keep her from blood and law.A cow

Morning came thin and chalky. Clara woke with damp in her hair and the smell of last night's rain still clinging to the wood. Ash was not on the chair. A folded blanket and a smear of mud told her he had moved in the dark. The cabin felt small and urgent.She boiled water and made coffee with hands that moved like old muscle memory. Dr. Wells had gone to make calls. Mara would come at noon. They had a plan, small and brittle: gather proof, hide it, get a lawyer who wouldn’t blink. The idea of tucking pieces of truth into holes in the world felt important and ridiculous at once.Ash returned with a small box and looked like he had walked through cold. He set the box on the table and opened it. Inside were a matchbook from a bar the leader used, a torn corner of a ledger with names and dates, and a scrap of paper with an address. They were dirty and honest.“Where did you get this?” Clara asked.“Old hunters' cache,” Ash said. “Places they think no one will look. I watched the leader me

Clara walked with her hands empty and her heart full of knives. Every step to the Hollow felt like a step away from the life she had chosen and toward a life other people had already written. She kept her gaze low, watching the dirt under her boots, letting the sound of leaves and their feet drown the way her chest wanted to jump.Ash stayed at her side like a shadow that could become armor. His hand found hers once and squeezed, and the squeeze said more than words. He was quiet the whole way. He had that look now—the look of a man waiting for a verdict he already feared.Ronan led them through the trees with the calm of someone carrying a plan. The Hollow opened slow and wide, trees like pillars and moonlight pooling on the ground. A fire burned in the center, a neat ring, and when Clara stepped closer she could see faces in the dark—pack members sitting in a circle, eyes reflecting the flames. They looked older than their years in ways Clara couldn’t name. They all turned when she