“I shouldn't,” she agreed. “But we're stuck. I wasn't going to trouble you.” She looked up. Defiance in the set of her mouth made something in me twist toward respect. “I can pay. I have cash.”
There were a hundred better answers. A hundred reasons to close the door, call it a night, and pretend I didn't hear a wolf answer a call.
But the child looked at me with trust, not fear. That image anchored me. My pack was small. We were not mean. We were careful. We were a family I would do anything to keep.
“You can sleep in the guest room,” I said, businesslike. Laying the line. “You work mornings—feed and change, school drop if you can. No weekend obligations unless it's inthe contract. Pay is cash. We'll run background checks and references.”
She exhaled like she'd been holding the breath for miles. “I have references.”
“Bring them tomorrow.” Rules. I always came back to rules. They're fences that keep the wolves and the world at odds.
She nodded and vectored the child toward the threshold. The small body leaned into her, trusting. I closed the door behind them. For a fragment of a second the house hummed with normal life—tea kettle, the stove's low baffle, small domestic noises—and then something at the edge of my awareness jumped.
A soft sound from the hallway. A long, low exhale like someone else had been forced into the open.
I wasn't alone in the decision. The pack heard the scent, too. I could feel them move like wind through the rafters—a low ripple of awareness. There are always risks when you throw new threads into old fabric. I knew what suspicion looked like in the eyes of my lieutenants. I knew what change smelled like to men who'd lost kin to outsiders. I am the man who said never again.
I watched her as she took the child to the kitchen, knelt at the table, and started peeling off the wet jacket. Her hands were steady. She hummed under her breath as she warmed something—instinctive caregiver. My wolf snarled; my alpha was wary; my chest ached with a tension I had no right to carry.
Then she looked up. Her gaze skimmed over me and something flickered across her face—startled, then something like recognition. Her fingers froze on the kettle's rim. For a split second she inhaled as if she smelled me differently than the rest of the room.
The second pulse hit me. She wasn't just a practical woman seeking a paycheck. Her body answered me back. Her scenttightened in the air like a borrowed promise. My jaw clenched until it hurt.
This was the worst possible thing. The best possible thing. A wound I promised never to pick at was suddenly oozing bright and familiar.
“I—” she said, and the word fractured. “You smell…different.”
I should have laughed. I should have stepped back, put her in the truck, and sent her down the lane. I should have preserved the cold, efficient life I built out of grief.
Instead I crossed the kitchen and stood behind her. My hand hovered, not touching, feeling heat across the small distance between us. The wolf pressed for a contact that meant claiming. My body betrayed me with a small, involuntary shift forward.
She straightened, sensed my move, and her eyes widened with a worry that wasn't just about the storm. It was a calculation the world had taught her to make long ago. Independence had been her armor. The child on her hip was her world. The idea of a mate—of anything tethered tight to her—would risk that world.
“I'm not looking to be claimed,” she said quietly, and I heard the forced calm under the words.
It made my ribs ache.
I should have the distance to be clinical. Instead I told her, “We do things different here. If you're working for pay, you'll do the job and leave on Friday if it doesn't work. No surprises.”
She nodded, lips thinning. “Understood.”
The kettle whistled. The child laughed—a small sound at something Nora did—and my chest clamped down around it like an animal stealing food for its young. For a second I almost reached out to smooth the child's hair.
I didn't. I'm an alpha who keeps promises, even to himself. I owe that to the dead and to the living.
Lightning forked far off and painted the yard white. Rain hammered harder. I moved to the door to lock it—another kind of fence: physical, necessary. My fingers closed on the knob and then I saw headlights.
Two white beams paused on the lane, halos in the storm. A truck idled there as if someone had decided to wait and watch.
I froze. The wolf in my chest went still and dangerous. My grip on the knob tightened until my knuckles flashed white. The child made a small noise. Nora froze too, a quick sideways look that pulled panic under her calm.
Someone was watching the ranch from the dark.
2
NORA
The den howls before I even hear the footsteps on the porch—one long, ragged note that pierces the wood and goes under my skin. I freeze with my palm on the kettle; steam fogs my glasses. The boy in my arms presses his blanket to his face. Somewhere in the house the old clock clicks three slow beats. Outside, the world is all wind and wet leaves.
