[Leon’s POV]
Twelve wolves at a dinner table, and my wife just detonated a landmine between the salad course and dessert. The timing, I have to admit, is impeccable.
Every head turns. Skyler's knife stops mid-motion as her face drains to a shade I've seen on soldiers before they break formation. Across from me, Dylan's tea cup freezes halfway to his mouth.
I set my own cup down. "The migraine from last week hasn't fully cleared—I was walking the corridors at two in the morning." A few wolves exhale small laughs, and I let the warmth settle. "I checked on several members of the household, including your sister. You said you’re carrying a lot for her, so…"
I turn to Kailani with the expression I reserve for diplomats who've overplayed their hand—fond, faintly amused, utterly unbothered.
"I appreciate the concern, though. Good to know my midnight wandering is being monitored—really keeps the mystery alive in a marriage."
"Of course, darling." Kailani's smile holds beautifully, every tooth accounted for. "I just worry."
The table breathes again. Someone asks about the border patrol schedule, and the grenade becomes a footnote. Skyler's shoulders drop a fraction—barely visible unless you're watching, which apparently I am.
Because apparently my eyes found her before my brain gave permission every damn time.
Under the table, my hand is wrapped around my kneecap hard enough to grind bone. Every word I just said was true except for the part that mattered. I didn't check on several members of the household before I came up to my wife’s sister's door late at night.
And the not-knowing the reasons is starting to feel less like confusion and more like something with teeth.
The next day I'm walking with no destination or agenda. Just movement, because sitting still makes the pressure behind my skull worse and my office walls have started auditioning for a role in a coffin.
My feet, operating on intelligence I haven't been briefed on, delivered me to the clinic. I mention Skyler is inside one of the rooms, sorting instruments with the precise efficiency of someone who learned medicine from necessity rather than privilege.
Her hands are steady, deliberate—completely unlike the trembling fingers I've seen every time she's within five feet of me.
She hasn't noticed me yet, and I know I should announce myself. Still, I don't.
I lean against the doorframe like a man with nothing better to do, and I watch her work. She moves through this space unhurried and certain—as if the clinic is the one room in this compound where she knows exactly who she is.
The migraine quiets almost immediately and strangely so. The pressure that's been my constant companion for a week just… stops. Her scent reaches me underneath the antiseptic, something clean and soft, and I know that scent the way I know my own heartbeat. Except I can't place where or when or why.
"You're staring." She's looking up now, blue eyes wide, gauze suspended mid-air. "Is something wrong, Alpha?"
"Only my pride—I've been standing here thirty seconds trying to think of a reason I came to the clinic and I genuinely don't have one." I push off the frame and step inside. "How's the work?"
"Good. Busy." She turns back to the cart with renewed intensity. "The pack doctor lets me observe during examinations now."
The professional tone is a wall, and a well-constructed one. I circle toward the examination table, maintaining distance that should feel respectful and instead feels like standing on the wrong side of glass.
"And your children, twins, right? Settling in?"
Her shoulders shift—not quite relaxing, but the mortar between the bricks loosens. "My daughter River thinks Ms. Walker is a goddess among mortals. And my son, Ashton, has reserved judgment, which is basically his version of a glowing endorsement."
"Dylan tells me Ashton's been watching the training gym from the windows every morning." My mouth twitches. "There every session, start to finish."
Something opens in her face. "He won't ask, too proud even for a little boy, but… He's been practicing forms in our room. I think he broke a lamp."
"I can teach him—proper basics, footwork, stance, control." The offer is out before strategy can weigh in. "If you'll allow it, of course."
The air between us pulls tight. Her eyes search my face, hunting for something I can't identify, and whatever she finds makes her press her lips together before answering.
"He'd love that." A pause, deliberate. "I can only ask you to be patient with him, Alpha. He doesn't trust easily."
"That makes two of us," I said with a smile at the corner of my mouth.
I'm closer than I planned—when did that happen? The examination room is small but not this small, and yet here we are. Separated by a distance my arm could close without fully extending.
A strand of silver-blonde hair slips from behind her ear, falling across her cheekbone. My hand moves without filing the request—fingers brushing the strand back, tucking it into place, lingering against the curve of her ear.
The gesture is automatic, unhurried. As if my hand has done this a thousand times and is merely following protocol.
I catch myself one full beat too late. My fingers hover where they've already committed the crime, and her face is tilted up toward mine, close enough that I can see the pulse jumping at the base of her throat.
She doesn't pull away. Neither do I, and the silence between us becomes something with its own weather—warm, pressing against my skin from every direction.
Her breath catches once, a small sound she tries to swallow, and something behind my ribs shifts that I wasn't aware could move.
"The gauze." She blinks, stepping back, and her voice comes out slightly breathless. "It needs to go on the second shelf."
"Right." I clear my throat and take a full step backward, which is the first intelligent thing I've done in the last five minutes. "Gauze. Critical business."
I leave before my feet decide to stay. The corridor is cool and bright and completely inadequate for what happens next. My wolf, who has been a sulking, silent presence since the wedding, roars.
Not a grumble, not a stirring.
A full-throated sound that rattles my teeth and reverberates through my skull like something ancient waking up furious.
I stop walking, pressing my palm against my sternum where the pressure threatens to crack bone. My wolf surges against my ribs, clawing at something I can't see, howling at a wall inside my own mind that I didn't build and can't find.
Then—gone. He settles like a storm passing, leaving behind one image so vivid it steals my breath: a stone wall, warm with firelight, the scent of woodsmoke and underneath it something clean and soft… hers.
My hand closes around smaller fingers. A peace so complete my body aches with the loss of it when the image dissolves.
I stand in a corridor with my palm pressed over my heart and my head full of a memory that doesn't exist. My wolf whimpers now, soft and desperate, pressing against my ribs like he's trying to reach through bone toward something just beyond my grasp.
The headache roars back the instant the image fades, worse than before.
I grit my teeth and walk toward my office, because Alpha Leon Warren does not stand in corridors looking like a man who's misplaced something vital and can't remember what shape it was.
But my hand, the one that touched her hair, is still warm. And the peace, for one impossible second, was the closest thing to home I've had since the wedding.