All Chapters of Wild Heart ,Wolf’s Desire: Chapter 31 - Chapter 38

The old mining settlement wasn't a town. It was a ghost, clinging to the side of a remote mountain in the northern Cascades. A dozen log cabins, slumped with age, surrounded a boarded-up assay office and a rusted-out stamp mill. The air was thin, cold, and silent, broken only by the cry of hawks. It was perfect.They arrived as dusk bled into a violet, star-streaked night. Liam carried the unconscious form of Gareth, who had found them on the road, grievously wounded from holding off Red Hand scouts. The big man’s breathing was a wet, ragged sound in the stillness.The largest cabin, its roof still mostly intact, became their refuge. It was a grim, spartan place: a stone fireplace, rough-hewn bunks, a table scarred by a century of use. It smelled of dust, old smoke, and mice.No one complained. It was shelter. It was safety, however fragile.The first days were about survival. Fred and Ryder swept the perimeter for traps and set up a rudimentary alarm system of tripwires and tin cans.

The fight was over, but the hurting was just beginning.Silence rushed in to fill the space where the roaring and snarling had been. It was a bad kind of quiet. It was full of broken things splintered wood from the walls, smashed jars from the shelves, the heavy smell of blood and wet fur. But worse than any of that was the echo of Kael’s words. They hung in the cold air like poison smoke, seeping into everyone’s thoughts.Your father chose you because Ryder was broken. You were just the spare that worked.Liam stood in the middle of the wrecked cabin, looking like a mountain that had been hit by an avalanche. He had cuts on his arms and a bruise blooming dark on his cheek. But he wasn’t looking at the broken door or the snow drifting in. He was staring down at his own two hands, turning them over slowly. He had these big, capable hands a leader’s hands, a protector’s hands. Now he was seeing them as something else: the hands of the second choice. The backup son.Tess’s heart squeezed

The baby was a storm growing inside her. As her body changed, so did the currents of her emotions. They were no longer a river she could control. They were a tide, pulled by a secret, powerful moon. And that moon had four faces.With Liam, she craved solid ground. When the fear of the Council, of Kael, of the unknown, threatened to sweep her away, she found herself seeking him out. She would sit beside him as he sharpened weapons or pored over maps, not speaking, just absorbing his quiet, immovable certainty. His presence was a fortress wall. Her desire for him was a deep, aching need for safety, for the unshakeable promise in his blue eyes. She wanted to be wrapped in his strength, to have his arms be the boundary between her and the chaotic world. It was a primal, nesting instinct, and it drew her to him like a moth to a steady flame.With Ryder, it was the opposite. When the walls of the stone station felt too close, when Liam’s protectiveness became a cage, the restless energy ins

The world became a nightmare of noise and light.The searchlights were a physical weight, blinding, burning. The helicopter’s roar wasn’t just sound it was a vibration that shook Tess’s teeth and made the ground tremble. The metallic voice echoed, turning the sacred clearing into a jarring, surreal trap.Genetic tampering. Deadly force.For one second, everyone was frozen, animals caught on a highway. Tess, squinting up into the light, her heart a trapped bird. The pack, a sea of bowed heads now jerked upright in shock and rage.Liam moved first.He didn’t howl. He exploded. One second he was at the tree line, the next he was a blur of motion, shifting in mid-stride. A massive, midnight-black wolf launched himself toward the lights, toward Tess. His roar was lost in the mechanical din, but the intent was clear: get to her.“Liam, NO!” Tess screamed, but her voice was a whisper in the storm.A sharp, precise THWIP sound cut through the rotor wash. From the helicopter’s open side, a dar