Chapter one
The Healing Center was quiet at this hour.
I signed in with Margaret at the front desk, took the familiar route down the corridor toward the recovery wing, and knocked on Stone's door. Three weeks since the council vote that let the ferals stay, and I still made this walk every morning before dawn.
The new security protocols meant keypads and cameras now, but they also meant privacy. No one hovering outside Stone's room. No one watching through reinforced glass like he was still a monster instead of a man fighting his way back to himself.
Just a door. And the man behind it.
"Come in."
Human. His voice was human—low and rough, like it had been dragged over gravel, buthuman.
That still mattered. After years lost to the feral darkness, every word Stone spoke was a victory.
I pushed through the door and the bond flared instantly. That pull in my chest, the one that had been there since the mountain, tightening like a rope drawn taut. My body knew he was near before my eyes found him.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, bare feet on the floor, wearing the grey sweats that had become his uniform. His blonde hair was tangled, falling across his forehead, and his beard had grown in thick and rough, shadowing the sharp cut of his jaw. He was too thin still—weeks of healing hadn't undone years of starvation—but even diminished, he wasbig. Broad shoulders, long limbs, the kind of frame that spoke of the alpha he'd been before everything was taken from him.
His whole body was held with the kind of rigid control that made my chest ache.
He wasn't relaxed. He wascontaininghimself.
The bond pulsed between us, and I felt the edges of what he was holding back—exhaustion, fear, something darker underneath. The wolf, always the wolf, pressing against the walls he'd built to keep it caged.
I wanted to touch him. Wanted to cross the room and put my hands on his face, his shoulders, anywhere. The bond demanded closeness, ached for it. But I'd learned that Stone needed space to breathe. Needed to know I wasn't going to crowd him when he was barely holding on.
So I stayed by the door. Let him come to me if he wanted.
"Early," he said. His gold eyes lifted to mine, and my breath caught the way it always did. Those eyes—wolf eyes in a human face, bright and burning and full of things he couldn't say.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Liar." The corner of his mouth twitched, but his eyes didn't match. "You slept. I felt it."
Of course he had. The bond ran both ways. He felt me the same way I felt him—a constant presence at the edge of awareness, impossible to ignore.
I crossed to the chair by his window—my chair now—and sat. Close enough to touch if he reached for me. Far enough to give him room.
"You didn't," I said.
Stone didn't answer. His hands rested on his knees, fingers spread, like he needed to feel the solidity of his own body.
"Bad night?" I asked.
"Not bad." He stared at his hands. "Just... loud. Everything is loud now."
I waited.
"Before," he said slowly, "when I was... gone. The wolf didn't think. Didn't remember. It was just survival. Instinct. There wasn't any—" He stopped. Swallowed. "There wasn't anyweight."
"And now?"
"Now I remember." His voice was rough. "Not everything. Pieces. But enough to know that I did things. Hurt people. And I can't—"
The door opened behind us.
A staff member—new, young, moving too fast. She was carrying a tray of breakfast, probably trying to be helpful, not realizing that helpful meantslowandannouncedandnever surprising him.
