“I built a nest,” she says.
“You did.”
“Out of every soft object in the house. At six in the morning. Without questioning it.”
“Omega instinct. It’s impressive, actually. Most first nests are just a pile of laundry.”
“I had architectural principles.” She lifts her head and looks at me, and her expression is complicated, but I’m learning to read. Processing, yes. But underneath the processing, warm and open in a way that makes my chest ache. “Roan.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.” She says it simply, without preamble, the way she says everything important. Like a fact she’sobserved and confirmed, and sees no reason to qualify. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
The words hit my chest and break open something I didn’t know was closed. My wolf goes still, perfectly and completely still, and the bond between us rings like a bell struck in a silent room.
“It was clear,” I say, and my voice is rough and cracked, and I don’t care. “But I’m glad you said it.”
“Your turn.”
“I love you.” The words come out easily, easier than anything I’ve ever said, as if my mouth has been holding them for weeks and is relieved to let them go. “I love you, and I’m terrified of what that means. I don’t fucking care. I love you.”
She puts her head back on my chest. The knot releases. Our bodies separate. Neither of us moves.
The nest is warm around us, saturated with our scent; outside the cottage, the afternoon is fading into early evening, the village is settling into its quiet rhythms, and the world is exactly as complicated as it was an hour ago, and none of it matters.
I hold the woman I love in a nest she built by instinct, and my wolf lies quiet in my chest, and for the first time in my life, the word home doesn’t mean a place. It means this. It means her.
Chapter 30
Facing the Storm
Roan
The rogues come at dusk.
I’m at Phoebe’s cottage when the first howl splits the evening air, distant but unmistakable, coming from the eastern ridge. A second follows, then a third, spaced at intervals that tell me everything I need to know. Not a hunt call. Not a territorial challenge. A coordinated signal. They’re moving. Toward her. The thought sharpens every instinct I have into something lethal.
My wolf surges forward before the third howl has faded. I’m on my feet, already calculating distances and approach vectors, the tactical part of my brain switching on with a speed that used to surprise me and doesn’t anymore.
“That’s them,” Phoebe says. She’s standing at the kitchen window, very still, and her face is pale, but her voice is steady. She heard it too. She knows what it means.
“Stay inside. Lock the doors. Don’t open them for anyone except Rebecca or me.”
“Roan.”
“I’ll come back.” I cross the kitchen and take her face in my hands and kiss her once, hard. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
I’m out the door and shifting before I reach the gate, the transformation taking me mid-stride. Then I’m on four legs and the world resolves into the silver-sharp clarity of wolf vision and the night opens up around me.
The pack is already mobilising. I can hear them through the forest, the controlled chaos of wolves responding to a threat, and beneath the movement, I catch the scent threads of the patrol teams converging on the eastern boundary. Lewis and Jack from the north. Two younger wolves from the south. And from the main house, moving fast, the heavy, authoritative scent of my father.
I reach the boundary wall in minutes. The rogue scent is everywhere, thick and sour, and the count is wrong. Not four wolves. Six. Maybe seven. Shit. They’ve been hiding their numbers, rotating scouts tomask the size of the group, and the force pushing towards the village is twice what we planned for.
Lewis reaches me first, dark-furred and rangy, falling in beside me without breaking stride. Jack arrives seconds later from the opposite direction. I stop at the crest of the ridge and look down into the valley below, and in the fading light, I can see them.
Seven wolves are moving through the farmland in a loose V formation. The scarred male from the first fight is at the point, and beside him, the red-furred wolf I sent limping into the darkness weeks ago. The rest are unfamiliar, but they’re not strays. They move with discipline. Whoever’s been organising them has been doing it for longer than we thought.
My father arrives, massive and dark, the Alpha presence rolling off him in waves that make even my wolf want to lower his head. He takes a position on the ridge and looks down at the approaching formation. The pack falls into order around him with the instinctive efficiency of wolves who’ve been following this Alpha for thirty years.
