Prologue - Skylar
Ten Years Ago
The moon is full tonight, and I’m choosing to believe that means something.
I’ve been standing at the old oak for twenty minutes, picking bark off the trunk and flicking it into the grass. Bryan asked me to meet him here, at the same spot we’ve been sneaking off to for almost two years now. But there was something off in his voice, like he was holding something back that might break loose if he said too many words.
Meet me tonight.That was all he gave me before disappearing into the crowd at the pack hall.
So, here I am. Waiting and trying not to read too much into the fact that he couldn’t even look at me when he said it.
A mosquito whines past my ear, and I swat at it. It’s a warm night for late spring, and the air is saturated with the smell of pine needles and the distant sweetness of honeysuckle growing wild along the territory border. Normally, I love meeting Bryan out here. It’s private and quiet, and the rest of the world seems to fall away until it’s just the two of us sitting under this massive oak, talking about everything and nothing.
But tonight, the quiet feels almost suffocating.
I pull at a hangnail on my thumb, a nervous habit I’ve never managed to break. My mother used to smack my hand away from my mouth when I was a kid, telling me I’d give myself an infection. She’s been gone eight years now, and I still can’t stop doing it when I’m anxious.
Three months ago, Cheslem wolves killed Bryan’s entire family.
I was with him when it happened. We’d been down at Miller’s pond, sitting on the old dock with our feet dangling over the water while the sun sank below the tree line. He was trying to teach me to skip stones, and every time mine sank immediately with a pathetic plop, he would laugh. I retaliated by splashing him until his shirt was soaked through. He grabbed my wrist and threatened to throw me in. I dared him to try. It was normal stuff. Good stuff. The kind of evening that makes you think life will always feel exactly this easy.
Then the howls started.
Not hunting calls or greetings between pack members running patrol. These were alarm calls.
Bryan went rigid beside me, and before I could ask what was happening, he was on his feet and running. I called on my wolf and chased after him. My lungs burned as I tried to keep pace with his longer stride. Branches whipped at my face. I tripped twice on roots I couldn’t see in the fading daylight. By the time we reached his family’s cabin on the eastern border, the screaming had stopped.
His father was on the living room floor. I remember the angle of his arm, thrown out like he was reaching for something he never got to touch. His mother made it to the stairwell but no farther. Her body was crumpled at the base like she was trying to get to the second story to reach…
Mira. Bryan’s little sister. At fourteen, she used to follow me around, asking questions about healing herbs, begging me to let her help at the medical center even though she was still too young to work there officially. I let her organize supply closets sometimes, and she’d act like I’d given her the keys to thekingdom. Her bedroom window was open when we found her. She never made it through it.
Bryan didn’t make a sound when he saw them. Didn’t cry, didn’t scream, didn’t fall to his knees the way I probably would have. He just stopped moving. Stopped breathing, it seemed like. Something behind his eyes went dark, and that light hasn’t come back on since.
I tried to touch him that night. I put my hand on his arm and pulled him toward me, offering whatever comfort my body could provide. He flinched away like I burned him. That was the first time.
It wasn’t the last.
I’ve tried to be patient with him in the months since. The mate bond we’ve both been dancing around for two years makes patience difficult. My wolf wants to go to him constantly, to press close and offer comfort whether he wants it or not. Every time I see him across the pack hall or pass him on the main road, my whole body pulls toward him like he’s got his own gravity.
We’ve never said the words out loud or officially acknowledged what we both know is there. We’ve been taking our time, building toward something neither of us wanted to rush. Late-night conversations under this oak, stolen glances during pack meetings, the brush of his fingers against mine when he handed me a cup of coffee. Small things. We wanted the kind of courtship that happens in inches rather than miles.
I thought we had time. All the time in the world, stretching out ahead of us like an endless road.
Now I’m terrified we’ve run out.
A branch cracks somewhere in the trees, and my head snaps toward the sound. Footsteps, quiet and careful, butdefinitely coming closer. My heart kicks against my ribs, and I straighten from my slouch against the oak.
Bryan steps out of the shadows, and my heart does that stupid thing it always does when I see him.
He’s tall. That was the first thing I noticed about him years ago, back when we were teenagers and he shot up six inches in one summer while I stayed stubbornly close to the ground. Tall and broad through the shoulders, with midnight black hair that flops across his forehead and a face that would make sculptors weep with envy. He’s got a strong nose, a full mouth, and a small scar just below his left eyebrow from a training accident he’s never fully explained. His jaw is covered in stubble that’s gone past fashionable and into neglected, and the circles under his eyes look like bruises painted on by someone with a cruel sense of humor.
He’s wearing the same clothes I saw him in earlier—dark jeans and a gray Henley with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Nothing special. Nothing different from any other day. But something about the way he’s holding himself makes my stomach clench.
He’s still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Even now, when grief has carved hollows into his cheeks and put shadows in his gray eyes that weren’t there before. Even now, when he’s looking at me like I’m a stranger, he’s trying to place.
Those eyes won’t meet mine. He stops at the edge of the clearing, a good ten feet away, and stares at a spot somewhere over my left shoulder.
I step away from the oak and head toward him. “You had me worried. You sounded strange earlier.”
