She doesn’t pull away.
And I don’t let go.
I know in my heart—in the organ that the monitoring equipment can’t measure, the one that doesn’t produce data points or cardiac enzymes or clinically actionable metrics—that I am not going to lose Hazel again.
Not to a pack that doesn’t deserve her.
Not to suppressants that were designed to cage her.
Not to a countdown that a doctor delivered in a lavender-scented room.
And not to whoever is sitting in the shadows of this town, moving pieces on a board they think they control, targeting the woman in my arms because she had the audacity to look at their game and see it for what it is.
I’m not going to play around with this chance.
I’m not going to hesitate, or defer, or back down because a voice on a phone tells me to.
Unlike then, I’m not a little boy in this big field of shadows and darkness.
I’m a player on the game of chess now.
And I’m ready to play a gamble that will ensure my last move is checkmate.
CHAPTER 19
New Territory
~HAZEL~
“MOVE IN?”
The words leave my mouth at a volume that the sage-green walls of Dr. Winters’ private medical center were not designed to absorb.
I’m standing in the doorway of the small patient washroom, freshly changed out of the hospital gown and into a pair of black tights and a black crop top that Oakley had apparently produced from somewhere—my own clothes, which raises questions I haven’t gotten to yet—and staring at the three Alphas arranged across the room in a tableau that suggests this conversation was rehearsed before I exited the bathroom.
Alaric is leaning against the windowsill with his arms loosely crossed, the October morning light catching the dark waves of his hair and illuminating the particular expression he wears when he’s already decided something and is presenting it as a suggestion out of courtesy. His burnt vanilla scent is steady, composed, carrying the warm cardamom undertones that I’vestarted to associate with hisI’ve already run the analysis and the analysis agrees with memode.
Oakley is perched on the edge of the desk with one leg swinging, the auburn curls catching light, the candied blood orange of his scent carrying its usual playful effervescence but threaded with something more purposeful beneath the surface. He’s grinning. The kind of grin that tells me he was the one who proposed whatever plan is about to be presented and is enjoying the pitch.
And Roman.
Roman is in the chair beside my bed, slouched in a posture that looks almost lazy if you don’t notice the way his eyes are tracking every micro-expression on my face. He’s changed his torn jacket for a plain black long-sleeve that someone must have brought him, but his hair is still wrecked and the bruise along his jaw has darkened overnight into a deep violet that makes him look like a man who walked through an explosion and immediately got into an argument about it. His frozen pine scent is calmer than it was last night—the peppermint bark no longer volatile, the smoked oud settled—but it carries the residual heaviness of a man who didn’t sleep.
The three of them look at me.
I look at the three of them.
Move in.
They want me to move in. With them. Into their home. Where they live. Together. Like a pack.
Because you are a pack, Hazel. You literally signed documents. Roman drove to the city and registered it. It’s on government record. The word “pack” is not a metaphor here—it’s a legal classification.
But moving in is?—
Different.
Moving in is proximity. Moving in is shared space and morning routines and three Alpha scents permeating every surface of an environment that becomes yours by occupation. Moving in is the difference between “temporary arrangement for medical access” and “this is where you live now.”
