LOGINNicolaiAlone in my office is where I do my best thinking. I should be working. But more and more, the work doesn’t hold my attention the way it used to. Today, I find myself thinking about when I first wanted Skye. Not recently. It was much further back than that.We knew each other as children—our fathers' alliance brought our families together at gatherings I mostly remember as tedious. Skye was twelve. I was fifteen. She was entirely unimpressed with me, which I found startling at the time, because most people at that age had already learned to perform deference around the Woolf heir.She hadn't gotten the memo."You're not as interesting as everyone says," she told me once, with the devastating honesty of a twelve-year-old. "You just stand there looking serious."I'd been startled. Then, within a year, I found it funny, the way she never fed my ego or sugar-coated things for me. Then, years later, she became something else entirely—the girl who saw past whatever performance I'd
NicolaiEvery time I look at Skye, I’m struck again with awe at how completely she’s changed my world. I've stared death in the face and walked away smiling. I’ve brought powerful Alphas to their knees and laughed as they begged for their life. My days were filled with decisions that ended careers, ended businesses, ended—on a small number of occasions—considerably more than that.I am not, generally, a man who struggles with other people occupying space near me. I note their presence, calculate how much of a problem they’re likely to be, and decide how to handle it. Then I move on with my day. Jaxon Vale has been in my house for nine days, and I am discovering that this requires considerably more of me than I anticipated.Take this morning for example. I'm up early, so Skye doesn’t have to be—Benji had a difficult night, the kind that wears down even her considerable resilience, and I let her sleep through the morning feeding because Rena has formula prepared and I'm capable of hol
Skye Nicolai and I make no effort to conceal our relationship from Jaxon—neither of us changes behavior because he is in the house. Nicolai doesn’t sneak in and out of my bedroom, hiding the fact that he sleeps there every night. The times when I'm in Nicolai's office and the door is closed and nobody needs to interpret what that means. It’s our life, not a dirty secret, and we live it openly. Still, I watch Jaxon watch this and feel something that isn't quite guilt. Guilt would require that I'd done something wrong. I haven't. He made choices. I made choices. Both things are true simultaneously and don't cancel each other out.But the not-quite-guilt persists anyway, because I'm human enough—wolf enough—to register when something causes pain for someone in proximity. Even if it's the right pain. Even if it's the consequence of their own decisions."Does it bother you?" I asked Nicolai directly, two nights ago. "Watching him watch us."Nicolai considered this. He always actually con
SkyeDimitri wanders in while I’m working in the office. He has something on his mind but hasn’t figured out how to open the conversation. I know this by the way he shifts his weight from foot to foot and shuffles papers around without really looking at them.“Spit it out.” I tell him without looking up from the report I’m reading. “What makes you think I have something to say?” He hedges, but the faint red tinge to his cheeks gives him away.“I’ve learned your tell. You fidget.” I wave my hand in a “get on with it” motion. He sighs, then launches into his topic, seemingly grateful for the invitation. "There's talk among some of the pack members. About the new living arrangement." He says pointedly."What kind of talk?" "The usual kind. Some say you moved on too fast. Whispers about your baby's father living under the same roof as the man you’re sleeping with." He blushes harder at that. "One woman compared you to Cassandra, suggesting you’re manipulating them just like your sister,
Jaxon I give myself exactly twenty minutes to completely lose my shit, internally. Then I get up. I wash my face in the bathroom—more luxurious than any bathroom I’ve ever been in, I notice distantly—and go back to the main house to find my son.Benji is awake, as it happens, and is vehemently and loudly protesting his current circumstances. Skye is with him, normally the exact person who can settle him but having no luck this time. She looks up when I come in, reads something in my face, and hands him to me without asking.I take him. Hold him close enough to feel his warmth, his weight, the way he settles against my chest with the ease of someone who has decided this is acceptable. I feel Skye’s gaze burning a hole in me but I don’t acknowledge it. I’m not strong enough for that yet. Instead, I focus on our son. He grabs my collar and investigates."I know," I tell him. "It's a lot."He doesn't confirm or deny. Just continues investigating. Skye is quiet across the room but I still
JaxonI know within thirty seconds of walking through the front door of the Woolf estate. I'm a wolf. I can't not know.Skye carries Nicolai's scent differently—not the layering that happens from proximity and shared space, not the ambient mixing of two people in the same house. Deeper than that. The specific intermixing that happens when people have been fully intimate, repeatedly, over time. The kind of scent signature that means something has changed categorically, not just incrementally.I know, because despite the distance I created between us, Skye and I were still intimate. Sex in the name duty, of creating an heir, because I could never let myself admit it was so much more. So I know, because she carries his scent the way she used to carry mine. And Nicolai—His behavior has always been protective. Always contained that particular quality of a man who has made a decision about what matters to him and arranged everything else around it. But something is quieter now. More settle
JaxonI can't sleep.Every time I close my eyes, I see them. The way Skye smiled at Nicolai across the dinner table. The easy conversation that flowed between them like they'd never stopped talking. The way his eyes softened when he looked at her—not with the polite respect you show a fellow Alpha's
JaxonI can't sleep.Every time I close my eyes, I see them. The way Skye smiled at Nicolai across the dinner table. The easy conversation that flowed between them like they'd never stopped talking. The way his eyes softened when he looked at her—not with the polite respect you show a fellow Alpha's
SkyeJaxon appears at my elbow, his hand settling possessively on my lower back. "Dinner is about to be served. Shall we?"I'm seated across from Nicolai at the long formal table. Jaxon is at the head, naturally, with me to his right and Noah to his left. Nicolai is positioned directly in my line of
SkyeAunt Diana calls two days before Nicolai is scheduled to arrive.I'm in my office reviewing next week's schedule when my phone rings. Her name flashes across the screen, and something in my chest tightens with anticipation."Skye." Her voice is thick with tears—the good kind. "Dalton's been rel







