RUNE
The overlook on Pine Ridge Road had become Rune’s sanctuary—the one hour each day where the weight of leadership couldn’t find him. His black patrol cruiser sat parked beneath the sprawling branches of an ancient oak, its engine ticking as it cooled in the late afternoon mountain air. Through the windshield, the forest stretched endlessly below, a sea of green that had remained unchanged since his childhood.
Rune unwrapped his turkey sandwich with methodical precision, the same routine he’d followed for years. Control in all things, even lunch. The patrol reports lay spread across his passenger seat—minor infractions, noise complaints, and a few boundary disputes between the pack territories. Nothing that required his immediate attention.
His steel-gray eyes drifted to the photograph clipped to his sun visor. His mother’s face smiled back at him, frozen in time at thirty-seven, her dark hair catching sunlight in their old backyard. Twenty years. Two decades since that phone call had shattered his world and forged him into the man he’d become.
Today marks twenty years.
The sandwich turned bitter in his mouth as memories surfaced unbidden. Eighteen years old and barely two yearsinto his role as Alpha, still learning to balance the crushing responsibility of leading a pack while navigating his final year of high school. His uncle Marcus had been there that terrible day, solid and unwavering as Rune fell apart. Forrest too, already his Beta despite being the same age, had anchored him when grief threatened to drown him completely.
She should have lived to see grandchildren.
The thought struck him with familiar pain. At thirty-eight, he felt the pack’s expectations like a physical weight. They needed continuity, needed to see their Alpha settled with a mate and producing the next generation. But every time someone brought up the subject—usually the pack elders with their not-so-subtle hints—his chest tightened with the same fear that had gripped him that day twenty years ago.
Love makes you vulnerable.
His mother’s death hadn’t been his fault—he’d been at school when the rogue wolf attacked near the town’s edge—but guilt didn’t care about logic. If he’d been there...
“Enough.” The word cut through the silence of his cruiser, sharp and final.
Rune had channeled that guilt into purpose, joining the sheriff’s department as a deputy. Three years of proving himself to humans and shifters alike before taking over as sheriff when old Sheriff McKenzie retired. The badge gave him legal authority to match his pack leadership, creating a unified front that had kept Blackpine stable for seventeen years.
Discipline. Caution. Control.
These had become his armor against a world that could steal everything in a heartbeat. He observed, assessed, protected—but never let anyone close enough to matter. Not romantically, anyway. The pack was different; they were his responsibility, not his weakness.
He raised the sandwich for another bite when movement caught his peripheral vision. A blue sedan rounded the curve ahead, its engine note too urgent for the winding mountain road. Not reckless, but definitely over the speed limit.
Forty-five in a thirty-five zone.
Professional instinct kicked in immediately. Rune set his sandwich aside and reached for the radio.
“Dispatch, this is Sheriff Hale. Traffic stop on Pine Ridge, mile marker seven.”
“Copy, Sheriff. Need backup?”
“Negative. Routine stop.”
He flipped on his emergency lights, the red and blue strobes painting the forest in alternating colors as he went to pursue the vehicle. Within a minute, he caught up to the unfamiliar sedan. The sedan’s brake lights flared as it pulled over, gravel crunching under tires as it came to a stop on the narrow shoulder.
Rune stopped behind the vehicle and stepped out of his cruiser with the measured confidence of twenty years in law enforcement. His boots hit the asphalt with authority, his six-foot-three frame cutting an imposing silhouette against the darkening sky. The utility belt around his waist held the familiar weight of his service weapon, radio, and handcuffs—tools of order in a chaotic world.
But as he approached the sedan, something shifted inside his chest.
What the hell?
His heartbeat quickened without warning, a sudden acceleration that had nothing to do with adrenaline or professional alertness. His wolf stirred—not with aggression or territorial instinct, but with something else entirely. Something that made his skin flush with heat and his senses sharpen to painful clarity.
The scent hit him first. Even through the closed windows of the sedan, he caught it—something floral and warm, with an underlying sweetness that made his mouth water. His wolf pushed against his consciousness, demanding action.
What is happening?
Rune forced his breathing to remain steady as he covered the remaining distance to the driver’s side window. His reflection stared back from the tinted glass—black hair slightly too long despite his best efforts, and steel-gray eyes that revealed nothing of the chaos suddenly raging inside him.
Control. Always control.
But his wolf had other ideas, pacing restlessly beneath his skin as if scenting something it had been waiting for.
