Tom has been part of the pack since before I was born. Steady, practical, with no interest in politics or power. He treats me the same whether I show up to pack meetings or not, which is probably why I genuinely enjoy his company.
“Official business can wait,” I say, picking up a bundle of replacement tiles. “How’s the ladder situation?”
“Rickety but functional.” He gives it a slap. “Held me yesterday, so it’ll hold you.”
We spend the morning working in comfortable silence, me on the roof replacing tiles while Tom sorts materials on the ground. The physical work feels good, purposeful. Meetings never feel like this. When we break for lunch, I’m sweaty and tired and more relaxed than I’ve been in days.
“Your father came by yesterday,” Tom says as we eat the sandwiches his mate Lucy has prepared. “Mentioned you might be taking on more responsibilities soon.”
I nearly choke on my tea. “Did he now?”
“Don’t look so horrified, lad. Leadership isn’t a death sentence.”
“Feels like it sometimes.”
“Felt like it at seventeen, too, I imagine. When you stood up at the solstice gathering and told your father his alliance with the Greymoor pack was built on intimidation rather than respect.” Tom takes a slow bite of his sandwich. “In front of the entire delegation. I thought Chris was going to have a stroke.”
I wince. “That wasn’t my finest moment.”
“Wasn’t it? The Greymoor alliance collapsed six months later. Exactly the way you said it would.” He brushes crumbs off his trousers. “Pack still talks about it, you know. The night the heir told the Alpha he was wrong and turned out to be right.”
Tom studies me with the patience of someone who’s raised five pups of his own. “You know, I remember when your father was about your age. Fought it just as hard as you do.”
This is news to me. “Dad fought it?”
“Wouldn’t call it fighting, exactly. More like... struggling with the weight of it all. His father, your grandfather, was a hard man. Expected perfection. Demanded absolute obedience. Chris spent years trying to prove he could be something other than a copy of the old man.”
I set down my sandwich, suddenly not hungry. “What changed?”
“He worked out that being a leader didn’t mean being his father. Started doing things his own way, making his own choices about what kind of Alpha he wanted to be.” Tom’s weathered face creases into a smile. “Best decision he ever made, in my opinion.”
The conversation stays with me through the afternoon as we finish the roof. I’ve never thought of my father as someone who struggled with expectations. He seems so comfortable in his authority, so certain of his decisions. The idea that he once felt trapped by his own destiny is both comforting and unsettling.
By the time we finish, clouds have rolled in from the west, heavy and grey, threatening rain. Tom insists on paying me for the work despite my protests, pressing a handful of notes into my palm with the stubborn determination that seems bred into his generation.
“You’re a good lad, Roan,” he says as I pack up my tools. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Even yourself.”
I’m still turning his words over as I walk home through the forest that borders the pack lands. The afternoon is cool and damp, the air thick with the promise of rain, and my wolf stirs restlessly beneath my skin, wanting to run. I glance around, confirm I’m alone, and strip off my clothes. The shift comeseasily after so many years: bones lengthening, muscles reshaping, senses sharpening until the world opens up into layers of scent and sound I can’t access on two legs.
On four legs, things are simpler. No complicated emotions, no impossible expectations. Just the forest, the trail, the clean pleasure of moving fast through open ground. I set off at an easy lope, following familiar paths deeper into pack territory.
I’m perhaps a mile from the village when I catch it.
A scent. Human. Female. The word lands with brutal, instinctive certainty. My wolf surges to the surface, sudden and absolute. It’s sweet but not cloying, warm like honey but with an underlying complexity that makes my wolf’s ears prick forward. There’s something else underneath it, something I can’t identify, and every instinct I have locks onto it at once.
I stop dead, nose lifted to the wind.
The scent is fresh. Not fading, not old. Whoever she is, she’s here. Close.
Mine, some savage part of me answers, and every muscle in my body goes tight.
My wolf whines, low and urgent, wanting to follow the trail back to its source. The rational part of my brain points out that interesting scents are hardly unusual in a forest. People hike through these hills all the time. There’s no reason to treatthis one differently.
But my wolf isn’t listening. And neither, if I’m honest, am I.
I hold still in the grey afternoon, rain beginning to spot my fur, and breathe her in.
Chapter 2
