LOGINZADENI carried her all the way to the house.She didn't argue after the first thirty seconds.I think she understood that arguing was not going to work tonight. Not after what I had just seen. Not after those three lines of blood on her arm that were doing something to my chest that I was managing very carefully one breath at a time.She was injured.On my territory.Under my watch.I was not putting her down.Clara met us at the door.One look at Reina's arm and she was already moving to get the first aid kit from the hall cabinet and warm water"East sitting room," she said. "Light's better."I carried Reina to the east sitting room.Set her down on the couch.Clara put the kit on the table and opened it and started laying things out."I can do it," I said.Clara looked at me.Then she put the kit down, picked up her cloth and her warm water, handed them to me, and walked out quietlyReina watched me pull the kit toward me."You don't have to" she started."I know," I said."Zaden"
REINAI had never seen him shift before.That sounds strange given that I had been living in a pack of werewolves for months. But shifting was something they did away from the house. Away from me. Like they had collectively decided I didn't need to see that part of it yet.Tonight was different.Tonight Zaden asked me to come on the pack run.Not in a warm way. Not an invitation exactly. More like he appeared in the kitchen doorway while I was making tea and said "There's a run tonight. You should come."I stared at him. "A pack run.""Yes."I looked at my tea."Okay," I said.He looked faintly surprised that I agreed that easily.Honestly so was I.The forest at the edge of Cole territory was different at night.Darker. Bigger. The kind of dark that had layers to it, the darkness between the trees and then the deeper darkness further in where the light didn't reach at all.The pack assembled at the tree line. Thirty wolves. Some I knew by name now. Some I was still learning. All of t
LENALet me tell you what I see.Because somebody needs to say it out loud and it might as well be me.I see everything in this pack house. Not because I'm nosy… well, not only because I'm nosy. But because I have been here for years and I know how this place breathes and I know when something has changed.Something has changed.It started the morning after the kidnapping.I came down to breakfast and found Zaden in the kitchen.Not passing through the kitchen. Not picking something up on his way somewhere else. Actually in the kitchen. Standing at the counter with a mug of coffee. Looking out the window.I stopped in the doorway.I had never once seen that man stand in a kitchen like he had nowhere else to be.I looked at the window he was looking out of.The garden.She wasn't even out there yet. It was early. She wasn't there.He was looking at an empty garden.I turned around and walked back to my room and stood there for a moment.Then I said out loud, to nobody "Oh. Oh wow."The
REINAI didn't plan to stay long.I was going to say thank you, make sure he was okay, and go back to bed. That was the plan. Simple. Fifteen minutes maximum.It was past two in the morning and I was still in his office.I don't know how we got to my mother.One minute we were sitting in silence and the next he was asking quietly, like he wasn't sure he had the right "What was she like?"I looked at him."My mother?""Yes."Nobody asked me about her anymore. Not since she died. People said sorry and moved on and that was fine, that was normal, but nobody actually asked what she was like.I sat with the question for a moment."Practical," I said. "Warm but practical. She didn't waste words. If she said something she meant it." I paused. "She made bread every Sunday. The whole house smelled like it." I smiled without meaning to. "She used to say bread was the only honest thing in the world. You put in the work and it gives you exactly what you deserve."Zaden was quiet."She sounds like
ZADENI sat in my office for a long time after everyone left.The debrief was done. The team dismissed. Security updated. Everything handled.That was what I did. I handled things.Tonight handling things felt very far away from what was actually going on inside me.I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling.And replayed it.Forty-five minutes.That was how long she was gone.Forty-five minutes that felt like nothing I had ever experienced in thirty-four years of living. Not when my father died. Not during the worst crisis of my first year as Alpha. Not anything.Just forty-five minutes of the most specific, most consuming fear I had ever felt.And I needed to be honest with myself about why.I knew why.I had known for a while.I just kept finding reasons not to look at it directly.I kept replaying the moment I walked through that door.Her sitting there. Back straight. Chin up. Teacup in her hand. Like she had decided the situation was not going to break her and she was r
REINAHe held my hand all the way to the car.Not loosely. Not like an afterthought. Like he had made a decision and the decision was this and he was not changing it.I didn't pull away.I probably should have said something. Made a joke. Broken the tension somehow. That was usually what I did when things got too heavy, found the edge of it and made it smaller with words.I had no words.I had nothing.Just his hand around mine and the Blackthorn grounds around us and the cold night air and the strange floating feeling of someone who has been through something and hasn't fully landed yet.The team was at the boundary when we came through.I felt them before I saw them. That collective exhale. Relief moving through a group of people who had been holding something tight and were now releasing it.Cade saw us first.He looked at me. Then at our hands. Then very deliberately looked somewhere else.Damian appeared at Zaden's shoulder."Unharmed?" he said."Unharmed," Zaden said.Damian loo
REINANobody tells you what it actually feels like.The movies give you nerves and flowers and a father crying at the end of the aisle and a groom who looks at you like you just answered a question he's been asking his whole life. The reality…my reality is a borrowed dress and eleven minutes and a
ZADENThe wedding is on the fourteenth.It's in my calendar between a board meeting and a call with the Amsterdam team. It sits there looking exactly like what it is…an appointment. Something that needs to happen so something else can stop being a problem. I look at it the same way I look at everyt
REINAMy father has a tell.Most people who know him wouldn't catch it. But I've been watching him my whole life and I know the tell. It's in his hands. When things are bad, really bad, he sets them flat on the table in front of him like he's trying to hold something down.Both hands. Flat on the t
ZADENI don't make mistakes.Not because I think I'm perfect. But because I learned a long time ago that mistakes in my world have consequences that go way beyond personal embarrassment. An Alpha who slips up doesn't just embarrass himself. He puts two hundred and sixteen people at risk. So I don't







