Confirmed who was driving.
Merric Rourke.
My first thought, clear and sharp:What the hell does he want?
My second thought, uglier:If he’s using my son for politics, I’ll kill him myself.
I haven’t seen Merric Rourke in nearly two decades. Haven’t wanted to. When a man tells you to your face that you’re not worth the fight—that his council, his reputation, his precious pack standing matter more than the woman carrying his scent on her skin—you don’t pine. You don’t check in. You burn it out of yourself, and you keep moving.
I kept moving. Raised my son. Built a life out of the scraps the wolf world left us. And when that life got torn apart, I built something else. Something with teeth.
So no. I’m not here for Merric Rourke. I’m here for Cameron.
But Merric is a problem I have to solve.
I’ve spent two days trying to read his intentions from three hundred yards. He drove past Frostbourne territory—his own stronghold—and came straight to Ravenclaw. My territory. That’s either genuine commitment or a calculated political play, and from this distance I can’t tell which. He’s put his wolves to work; real work, not token gestures. The collapsed barn is half-rebuilt. The generators are running. His scout is monitoring security.
He’s also spending time with Cameron. Walking the property together. Talking. Being patient in that deliberate way he always had, where he’d let silence do the heavy lifting rather than filling it with noise.
Cameron is opening up to him. I can see it in my boy’s body language, the way he angles toward Merric when they walk, the way his shoulders drop a fraction when the alpha is nearby.
That should make me glad.
It makes me want to put my fist through the limestone.
Because Merric Rourke doesn’t get to walk in and be the calm, patient presence my son needs. Not after what it cost us. Watching him earn Cameron’s trust in three days when I spent seventeen years building it from nothing. That burns in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
And it would be easier if that were all I felt.
He’s in the yard most of the day. Working. Not directing, working. Hauling timber for the barn frame alongside the big blond wolf, stripping fence posts with a drawknife, digging postholes in the south pasture with a rhythm that says he’s done this a thousand times. He stripped his shirt off by midmorning on the second day and hasn’t put it back on since, and I hate that I noticed. I hate that I keep noticing.
The years have done things to him. The lean boy I knew has been replaced by something broader across the shoulders and thicker through the chest, built by physical work and fightingand the demands of holding an alpha’s body together through winters that would break lesser wolves. The platinum hair is longer, tied back when he works, falling loose when he forgets.
He moves the way I remember, and nothing like I remember. The same efficiency, the same absence of wasted motion. But there’s weight behind it now. Gravity. A man who’s settled into his body fully, who knows what it can do and what it costs, and uses it without hesitation.
He reaches for a fence post and his back flexes—the long muscle that runs from shoulder to hip, working under skin that’s darker than it used to be, scarred in places I can’t read from this distance. His arms are corded with strength that doesn’t come from vanity but from use. The waistband of his jeans sits low on his hips when he bends, and I can see the line there—the cut of muscle below his navel, disappearing into denim.
My hands remember that line.
It hits me without permission. Not a thought. A sensation. My palms carrying the memory of tracing that exact groove of muscle and bone, the texture of his skin under my fingertips, warm from the sun. Behind the north creek. Summer. We were young, and the grass was tall enough to hide in, and he’d pulled me down into it, laughing. I’d pushed his shirt up and traced that line from his hip to his ribs while he went still beneath me. The sound he made when my fingers dipped below his waistband. Not a groan, not a word. A held breath. As if letting it out would break whatever spell kept my hands on his body.
The heat arrives low and sudden. I shut my eyes against it.
No.
I open my eyes. Refocus the binoculars. Force myself to see the alpha, not the man. Position, capability, threat level. He’s strong, he’s competent, he’s brought four wolves into my territory without invitation. That’s what matters. Not the width of hisback or the way his hands grip a post or the ghost of a twenty-year-old afternoon that my body refuses to let go of.
I lower the binoculars and press my forehead against the cool limestone until my pulse settles.
Three hundred yards. That’s all that separates us. And it’s not enough.
When I raise the binoculars again, I make myself look past him.
There’s an auburn-haired woman in his pack. She’s clearly close to Merric, operates at his shoulder, knows his rhythms. But it’s not the closeness that catches me. It’s the way she interacts with Cameron. Easy. Natural. Like she’s already claimed a place in my son’s world, already established a rapport that took me months to build with strangers.
She fits. That’s the word for it. She fits with them—with Merric and Cameron both—in a way that looks effortless. And I know what effortless means. It means time. It means showing up, day after day, being present for the small things until your presence becomes part of the architecture.
I watch her touch Merric’s arm while making a point about something. Watch him listen. Watch the comfortable distance between their bodies—close enough to be intimate, far enough to be habitual.
