All Chapters of When the Alpha Howls: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

“I came because you left the porch light on.” For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. The kitchen was too warm. Too small and ordinary for what had just been laid bare between us. The kettle sat cooling on the stove. My mug of tea steamed weakly between my hands, untouched, the sugar I’d stirred into it sitting heavy and sweet on my tongue even though I hadn’t taken more than one sip. Across from me, Colton stood with a glass of water he hadn’t drunk from. He looked too human. That was the part my mind kept getting caught on. Black hair falling slightly over his forehead. Broad shoulders tense beneath his dark shirt. Bruising along his jaw, half shadowed by the yellow kitchen light. My throat tightened. “You came because of the light,” I repeated. His eyes held mine. Deep blue. Too familiar. The wolf’s eyes. The man’s eyes. “Yes.” “Because that was a signal

Colton crossed the threshold like it cost him something. Not physically. His steps were steady, quiet despite the rainwater dripping from him onto my worn kitchen floor. But I saw the restraint in every line of him. The way his shoulders locked. The way his hands stayed open at his sides. The way his eyes moved over me once, checking for blood, fear, bruises, without letting himself touch. Behind him, the stranger remained on the porch. Waiting. The detail struck me hard enough that my throat tightened. Werewolves at my door. And still, somehow, waiting to be invited. Bailey lowered the baseball bat by an inch. “James, get in here before you start brooding competitively with him. I can only handle one emotionally constipated wolf per crisis.” The stranger’s grey eyes flicked to her. “Good to see you too, Bailey.” His voice was calm. Low. Not as deep as Colton’s, but edged with

“If we’re going to have wolves bleeding in my granddaughter’s kitchen,” Grace said, “I suppose it’s time to stop pretending.”No one moved. Not Bailey, still damp and clutching her baseball bat like she had been born with it. Not James, who stood near the window with the kind of stillness that made the room feel guarded from the inside out. Not Emily, rain dripping from the end of her auburn braid onto my floor, her sharp eyes flicking between Grace and Colton as if she had just walked into a conversation that could turn into a knife fight.Not Colton. He sat at my kitchen table, too large for the chair, one arm burned red and ugly from silver, blood drying along his neck. His gaze stayed fixed on my grandmother.And Grace, infuriatingly, took another sip from his glass of water. I stared at her. “Pretending.”She set the glass down. “Yes.”The word was simple. The ache it caused was not. The kitchen blurred around the edges for half a se

For a moment, no one spoke. The mist moved between the trees like a living thing, pale and thin, slipping around trunks and porch steps and the line of Colton’s shoulders. Somewhere deeper in Grimfang land, a bird called once and went silent. They know where we are. The words did not feel real at first. They landed somewhere outside my body, hanging there with the smell of wet pine and woodsmoke. My hand stayed curled around the doorframe, fingers aching from how tightly I held on. Colton changed before my eyes. Everything human and soft that had stood on my porch a few seconds ago vanished beneath something older. His expression emptied. His spine went still. The air around him seemed to pull tight, as though the entire forest had leaned closer to hear what he would do. “Who has seen it?” he asked. Ben’s face was grim. “Me. Emily. Mara. No one else.” “Go

For one suspended second, all I could see was purple. Not the blood. Not the silver flashing near the young man’s shoulder. Not the way Colton’s face had gone empty with rage or how Mara was already moving with her medical bag banging against her hip. Purple.A torn strip of my cardigan, clenched in a shaking hand. I had worn it two mornings ago while drinking tea on my porch, barefoot despite the cold, pretending my world had not begun to fill with teeth and secrets. I had hung it over the back of the chair when the kettle whistled.And someone had taken it. Someone had stood close enough to my door to steal something that smelled like me.The clearing tipped sideways. Grace’s hand found my elbow. “Breathe, Nora Jane.” “I am.” “No, you’re not.”A sound left the injured young man, low and broken, and whatever panic had been dragging me under snapped clean in two.He was bleeding. Mara reached him as Ben and E