جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 180

NicolaiLife as head of the Woolf family, Alpha of all its territories, CEO of the family business, has forced me to prove what I’m made of on a daily basis. I've walked into rooms where the outcome was uncertain and the stakes were permanent. I've made decisions that couldn't be unmade, in the presence of people who would have loved to watch me fail or even be the orchestrator of it, and I held to those decisions without flinching because flinching wasn't an option.I have never been tested the way I'm being tested now.By a woman I love. A bond I chose. And the honest confrontation of whether love means what I've been saying it means.The abstract is easy. I told Jaxon: I would rather share her than lose her. And I meant it when I said it. It felt like the true thing—the generous, certain, chosen-freely thing that real love is supposed to be.The concrete is different.The concrete is: Skye held Jaxon's hand and didn't want to let go. And told me about it, which I asked her to do, a

Jaxon Sleep has been elusive lately, for obvious reasons. So when my phone buzzes on the nightstand next to me, startling me out of a hard-earned nap, my first instinct is to throw the damn thing. But what if it’s Skye, my wolf supplies. I sit up with a groan and fumble for the offending device, knowing I won’t sleep now without knowing for sure. When I finally manage to squint at the screen through my droopy lids, the text waiting from Skye makes everything else fade into the background. Skye: Nicolai and I talked. We're going to figure this out together. All three of us. If you want that.I read it three times. Then I put my phone face-down on the nightstand and stare at the wall for a while. Is it possible I’m still dreaming?But if I were dreaming, surely I’d be enjoying the news instead of spiraling over the problem that text presents—the specific, complicated problem which is that I don't know what that means. And I don't know, more urgently, whether what I want and what she's

Skye It's been several days since the mating ceremony and I'm making breakfast in a house that contains both my mate and the man I'm apparently also bonded to, and I have absolutely no idea what the etiquette is for this.There is no etiquette for this.I may be the first wolf in living memory who has to develop it from scratch, which is either fascinating or horrifying depending on the hour. Right now, at 7 AM with the coffee still brewing, it's mostly the second one.Before, there were things everyone was feeling but not acknowledging. The knowing looks. The careful distances. The way the three of us navigated rooms without saying what we were all aware of.Now everything is acknowledged. Named. Agreed to, in the loose, provisional, we're-all-trying way we agreed to it on the terrace. It should be better. Somehow it's both better and more complicated.Nicolai is careful with me. Not the cold type of careful—not the distance I used to read as rejection. This is different. This is the

NicolaiThe report I’m reading is twelve pages long. I've read it four times. I couldn't tell you what's in it.This is new. I retain everything—it's not a boast, just a fact, something I developed early because the Woolf family's business requires holding more information than most people can organize. I read things once. Sometimes twice to confirm. I do not read things four times and come away with nothing.I set the report down and stare at my desk, trying to wrestle my mind into obedience. Something is very wrong with my usual capacity.The kitchen yesterday morning. That’s the problem. The thing that occupies my mind so completely I can’t focus on anything elseI went back to my office afterward and sat for twenty minutes not doing anything—which is also not like me—and made myself be honest about what happened.My wife and the father of her child doing something they’ve been doing in front of me for months. Nothing different about it and yet, everything’s different. The particula

Jaxon Rena knocks on my door, announcing I have a visitor waiting for me downstairs. As I don’t know anyone here, I can;t imagine who it might be. But I’m even more surprised to find Noah standing at the bottom of the stairs. He’s the last person I’d expect to show up here without calling first. The fact that he did tells me everything I need to know before he says a word. Noah calls ahead. Noah is a man who believes in advance notice, who thinks showing up unannounced is a form of aggression that can usually be avoided with basic courtesy.When Noah doesn't call ahead, something has happened.I meet him in the main hallway—Mikhail having let him through—and read his face."Council inquiry," I guess."Elder Castillo filed it two days ago. Formal inquiry into leadership stability and the Alpha's extended absence." He says it straight. No softening. "I didn't want to tell you over the phone.""How bad is it?""Not insurmountable. If you come back."I nod silently for him to follow me t