POV: Adeline
I heard them before I saw them.
The crack of wood against wood. Grunts of effort. The shuffle of feet on packed earth. The training grounds sat at the eastern edge of the clearing, partially shielded by a line of pines that muffled the sounds of sparring from the rest of the pack. I had been walking without destination—restless after a morning spent sorting supplies in the storeroom, my mind circling back to the night before no matter how many times I tried to redirect it.
His arms around me. The tremor in his breath. The way he had held on like I was the only thing keeping him from drowning.
I should have turned back when I heard the fighting. Should have recognized the danger in seeking him out when my thoughts were already too full of him.
But my feet carried me forward anyway, drawn by something I didn't want to name.
The trees thinned. The training grounds opened before me.
And I stopped breathing.
Aiden stood at the center of the sparring ring, a wooden staff gripped in both hands. Luca circled him from the left, his own weapon raised and ready. They moved with the fluid precision of wolves who had fought beside each other for years—reading each other's shifts before they happened, anticipating strikes that hadn't yet begun.
But I barely registered Luca.
Because Aiden was shirtless.
The morning sun fell across his skin in slants of gold and shadow, illuminating the terrain of his body with merciless clarity. His shoulders were broader than his shirts suggested, thick with muscle that moved beneath the surface like something alive. His chest rose and fell with controlled breath, each exhale tightening the planes of his stomach.
He pivoted, deflecting a strike from Luca, and his back came into view.
The scar.
I had traced the visible edge of it a hundred times with my eyes—the pale line that ran from his temple to his jaw, the smaller one bisecting his eyebrow. I had assumed those were the extent of it. The full measure of what his father had carved into him.
I was wrong.
The scar continued down his neck, curved over the ridge of his shoulder, and spread across his back in a pattern that made my stomach clench. Not a single wound. A series of them. Layered over years, some older and more faded, others still holding the pink of more recent healing. They mapped a history of violence I had not fully understood until this moment—the geography of a childhood measured in pain.
And yet.
His body had not been broken by it.
The muscles of his back rippled as he swung the staff, absorbing Luca's counterstrike with a force that made the wood shudder. He moved like something built for this—for fighting, for protecting, for standing between his pack and whatever threatened them. The scars were part of him, woven into the architecture of his strength rather than diminishing it.
Something shifted low in my belly.
Heat pooled there—sudden, urgent, spreading outward through my limbs like flame through dry kindling. My mouth went dry. My fingers curled at my sides, nails pressing crescents into my palms as if I could hold myself in place through pain alone.
Not the gentle warmth I had felt before—that slow-building pull that I could dismiss as the bond, as instinct, as something separate from my own choosing. This was different.
This hit like a fist to the stomach.
Desire. Raw and immediate. Hungry in a way that had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with want.
I watched a bead of sweat trail down the curve of his spine, catching light before it disappeared into the waistband of his trousers. I watched the flex of his forearms as he adjusted his grip. I watched the way his hair had come loose from its tie, dark strands clinging to his neck, and I thought about what it would feel like to push them aside. To press my mouth to the pulse point beneath his jaw. To feel the heat of his skin against mine with nothing between us.
My wolf surged forward with a force that nearly buckled my knees.
Yes. Him. Now. Ours.
Her voice was not a whisper this time. It was a demand—ancient and absolute, the instinct of a creature who did not understand hesitation or shame. She wanted to cross that distance. Wanted to put her hands on him. Wanted to feel the weight of his body pinning hers to the earth.
And the worst part—the part that made heat flood my face and my pulse pound in my throat—was that I wanted it too.
Not just the bond. Not just her.
Me.
I wanted him with a clarity that terrified me.
Aiden shifted his stance, preparing for another exchange with Luca. In a moment he would turn. In a moment those dark eyes would sweep the treeline and find me standing here like some desperate, wanting thing. He would see it on my face—the hunger I couldn't hide, the need I hadn't given myself permission to feel.
I couldn't let him see.
I stepped back. One pace, then another. My heel caught on a root and I barely kept my balance, but I didn't stop. I turned and walked—not running, not quite, but close enough that the distinction felt like a lie I was telling myself.
The pines swallowed me. The sounds of sparring faded behind me, replaced by the hammer of my own heartbeat in my ears.
My skin felt too tight. My breath came in shallow pulls that didn't bring enough air. Between my ribs, my wolf paced with agitation, her frustration bleeding into mine until I couldn't tell where her anger ended and my shame began.
Coward.
The word rose from somewhere deep, half her voice and half my own.
You ran. He's right there—yours, ours, everything we've been denied—and you ran.
I pressed my back against a pine trunk and closed my eyes. The bark bit into my shoulder blades through my shirt. I focused on that small pain, using it to anchor myself against the tide of want still crashing through my body.
I had no right to want him like this.
I was here as a guest. A refugee. Someone who had brought danger to his borders simply by existing. He had offered me shelter, protection, kindness—and I repaid him by hiding in the trees, shaking with a desire I couldn't control, imagining things I had no business imagining.
He wants you too, my wolf insisted. You felt it. Last night. The way he held on. The way he—
"Stop," I whispered.
But she didn't stop. She prowled beneath my skin, restless and furious, and her voice carried the weight of accusation.
He's ours. You know it. I know it. The bond knows it. The only one still pretending otherwise is you.
I opened my eyes and stared up at the canopy, where morning light filtered through in broken shards.
She was right.
I was a coward.
But I had learned long ago that wanting something didn't mean I was allowed to have it. Five packs had taught me that lesson. Five rejections had carved it into my bones as surely as Aiden's father had carved those scars into his back. Every time I had let myself hope—every time I had let myself reach—the world had slapped my hand away and reminded me of my place.
Wanting was dangerous. Wanting led to expecting. And expecting led to the kind of pain that didn't heal clean.
And so I stayed against the tree, and I waited for my heartbeat to slow, and I pretended that I hadn't just discovered a new way to want something I was too afraid to reach for.