* Present *
Dawn came gray through the single window that morning seven years ago.
And when I reached across the sheets before I was fully awake, I only found an empty space instead of solid warmth.
I lied still and listened to the silence where his breathing was.
There were noises outside. Raised voices, quick footsteps, the specific sharp energy of something having gone wrong in the night. But I didn’t care at that moment. Back then I didn’t know it was a declaration of war between our pack and Shadowcrest.
I just kept my hand closed around the ring, telling myself it was one night, and I almost believed it.
And six weeks later, I found out I was wrong.
Now Silas is dead. Actually, he never existed.
A name was made of air, a rank invented for one night, a pack that never claimed him. And the man wearing his face is now walking toward my sister with his hand extended and a smile I used to believe was mine.
The formal welcome is brief. Alpha Thomas and Leon trade pleasantries while Kailani beams at his side, her hand on his arm like it was born there. I count heartbeats behind a wall of taller wolves until the crowd scatters.
The moment it does, I take the children and vanish.
The plan is elegant in its simplicity: avoid him entirely, forever, until the heat death of the universe. I'm already invisible. Twenty three years of practice since my father died.
But four hours later the assignment drops like a live grenade. "Alpha Leon's guest quarters. Refreshments."
My mouth opens to suggest anyone else but I don’t have time to say anything.
The corridor to the guest wing stretches like a fever dream, the tray growing heavier with every step. I knock at his door and when I get no answer, ease the door open.
The second I’m in, every muscle in my body turns to stone.
He's mid-change, shirtless, his broad back to me. The afternoon sun through these windows is less kind and more honest. Carving shadows along his shoulders that I have no business examining with this level of cartographic devotion.
I set the tray on the nearest surface silently, because survival depends on not being noticed. Except it’s even more important now that he’s shirtless.
The glasses clink anyway and he turns to the sound.
For several agonizingly slow seconds he just looks at me, head tilted. "Have we met before? You look… familiar."
A crease deepens between his brows, and the casualness of the question is its own kind of violence.
I’m not the same nineteen year old girl I was seven years ago, anyway, the likelihood of him recognizing me is much lower. I’ve changed, I’ve grown older, I’ve carried twins in me and spent years doing hard work. There’s wrinkles, scars and bruises on my skin, and my eyes are not as bright as they used to be.
"No, Alpha Leon." Too fast, too sharp. I drop my gaze to the floorboards. "I'm just the help. Here’s your refreshments."
He takes a step closer, unhurried. "What's your name?"
"It doesn't matter. If you need anything else, the kitchen staff can help you."
I'm already backing toward the door, pulse hammering against the thin skin of my throat.
"You're shaking." Another step closer, and his voice drops into a lower register that makes my spine go rigid. "I can feel fear in your scent. Why are you afraid of me?"
Because the last time you looked at me like that, you disassembled my entire world in a single night. And I'm still on my hands and knees collecting what's left.
"I'm not afraid, Alpha Leon. I’m the bride’s sister, I have no reason to be afraid of you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
I know I’ve made a mistake before I even finished talking.
The words were involuntary, stupid, the kind of mistake exhaustion breeds. His expression shifts, curiosity hardening into something focused and much harder to dodge.
"Kailani's sister…" He repeats it slowly, testing the shape of it. "Then why are you serving trays in my room?"
"Because I am the help." The laugh I produce should be recalled for quality defects. "My father was killed by Alpha Thomas, I'm just his leftover. Wolfless, rankless. Someone has to do the dirty work."
Something rearranges behind his eyes—pieces falling into a picture that tightens his mouth. When he speaks, the word is barely more than a breath.
"Skyler?"
My name. That’s all that takes to make my heart squeezing painfully from his voice.
The one I whispered to a stranger on a stone wall while sparks drifted above us seven years ago. The one he whispered against my skin, my bare virgin body, my lips, like it was a prayer to the Moon Goddess herself.
My hand shoots to the edge of the wall because the floor has decided to tilt.
I tug on my sleeves, smooth my shirt down nervously. "I need to go. Excuse me."
He steps into the doorway. Not aggressive—but the frame narrows to nothing with him filling it. I can feel the air between us hum the way it hummed that night. Vibrating, impossible, and making my teeth ache with the closeness.
"I wanted to find you." Low and rough, like the words have been sitting in his throat for years. "After that night, I…"
The sound that comes out of me is closer to a bark than a laugh.
"Wanted to find me." I look at him directly for the first time, which is a mistake.
His eyes are the same amber they always were and so are Ashton's and I cannot stand here and do this math in front of him.
"I searched for Silas for weeks. I even went to Pine Creek and begged strangers about a man who didn't exist. You gave me a fake name, a fake rank, a fake everything."
"Skyler, please, listen to me…" He reaches for my arm, but I jerk back like his fingers are lit.
If it really was, they’d match the fury that's been sitting quiet in my chest for years and now finally finds its legs.
"You're here for my sister. Whatever you think you remember doesn't matter—none of it was real." I angle my shoulder to slip past him. "I spent months chasing a ghost, and I’ve already made peace with it."
I almost get away, but then his hand catches mine. Alpha Leon goes still unnaturally and I watch his gaze travel down to where his fingers have closed around my hand, then move up my body back to my face.
Cracked knuckles, skin on the lip split open, dried blood traced into every crease. Old bruises and scars all over my arms and neck. Years of predawn hard work, of abuse and humiliation, of everything just to keep my children fed and safe.
All of it written across my skin like a confession.
Don't you dare pity me.
Don't you dare stand there with your bare chest and your clean conscience and look at what I've become and feel sorry for it.
You don't get that. You lost that right on a cold morning when you left me with nothing.
His jaw works, a muscle feathering along the bone. When he speaks, his voice has changed into something stripped of everything casual, low and flat and edged.
"Who did this to you?"
For one unguarded second I almost considered telling him. The words are right there, sitting in my throat. And the humiliation of that, of saying it out loud to him specifically, is so complete and so total that it closes my throat entirely.
Because how do I explain it? How do I say ‘this is what happened to me’ without also saying ‘this is what I let happen, this is what I endured, this is how low I stayed because leaving meant letting down my children?’
"It's nothing." My voice comes out flat and practiced. "I clean. Things get rough and…"
The sentence dies because he lifts my hand, slowly and deliberately. His mouth closes over my wounded finger and my throat forgets how to make sound.
Werewolf saliva heals.
I know the biology, the chemistry, the boring practical explanation for why his mouth on my skin is a medical act and nothing more. I know all of that and none of it matters.
Because there is nothing clinical about the warmth of his lips closing carefully over broken skin while his eyes hold mine. The skin begins to close and he doesn't pull away.
Heat from his bare chest reaches me in slow waves, and I'm close enough to see the scars scattered along his collarbone, and I can't breathe, and my body is leaning in by millimeters I never authorized.
Something behind my ribs whispers ‘home.’ That word, the most dangerous one in any language, the one that got me pregnant and alone.
Suddenly I hear footsteps behind the door and every drop of blood in my body rushes to my feet.
I'm alone in his room, in Alpha Leon’s room. With my hand is at his lips and he’s half-dressed, and if that door opens, the story writes itself—the wolfless servant seducing her sister's Alpha… Kailani won't just come for me this time.
She will come for the children.