The gathering hall smells like cedar and too many wolves. I stand near the back with Ashton on my left and River on my right, her small hand fidgeting inside mine, doing what I've done at every assembly since we arrived—making myself furniture.
Leon takes the platform with Kailani beside him, her hand on his arm with the casual possession—a person who's never had to fight for what she holds. "Eastern perimeter will require double shifts through the quarter," he says, and his voice carries steady—but something snags in my chest.
His fingers are spread too wide on the podium, pressing instead of resting. A sheen of sweat sits at his temple that doesn't match the cool evening air.
"Mama, you're squeezing." River tugs my hand and I loosen my grip so fast my fingers ache. A fantastic addition to the evening—terrorizing my six-year-old with my bare hand.
"Sorry, baby. Hold Ashton's hand for me, okay?" She obeys, and my freed fingers curl into my own palm, nails biting skin while I watch that bead of sweat track down Leon's temple.
The wolf from training—Jace, body seizing—Leon's voice flat and certain afterward: chemical. The word surfaces cold and I can't push it back down.
"Patrols will rotate on a weekly—" Leon stops mid-word, like someone yanked a cord from his throat. "On a—" His hand presses to his temple, and for one second he looks like a man trying to remember where he is.
Then his eyes open and they're amber—solid gold, blazing, utterly animal. Not the flickers I've caught over the past months. The man is gone, replaced by something that has never whispered anyone's name in the dark.
Wolves near the platform stumble backward. Three rows of bodies ripple, and the sound from Leon's chest vibrates through the stone floor into the soles of my feet.
"Stay behind me," I tell the twins, and my voice sounds like it belongs to somebody calmer, somebody whose lungs aren't turning to concrete. "Both of you. Don't move."
"Mom, what's happening?" Ashton's hand finds the back of my dress, gripping fabric. "What's wrong with him?"
"I don't know." The truth is a luxury I can't afford to dress up right now. "Just stay close."
His gaze sweeps the crowd—two hundred wolves with lowered eyes. Except me, still stupidly searching for Leon inside that face when his eyes lock onto mine and every rational thought goes white.
He steps off the platform. The crowd parts around him, and no one—not a single wolf in this room full of warriors—steps forward.
"Get back," someone hisses near the front, shoving a younger wolf behind them. "Don't look at him—don't—"
"Leon!" Dylan's voice tears through from my left, raw and desperate. "Leon, stop—somebody hold him—" A scuffle erupts, bodies colliding as Dylan fights through the packed rows.
"Skyler, get the kids out!" Dylan again, closer but not close enough, his voice cracking on my name. "Move—go through the side door!"
But the hall is a wall of wolves between Dylan and me, and Leon is already halfway across, covering distance with a speed that doesn't belong to a man walking. Every step is predatory.
Ashton shoves River behind him and plants himself in front of me, fists balled, chin up. Six years old and his body says come through me first.
I grip his shoulder and push him behind me, teeth aching from how hard I'm clenching. "Ashton. Behind me."
"Mom, I can—"
"Behind me. Now." He goes, shaking, hating every syllable of his own obedience, and then Leon is here.
The space between us is nothing. The sound coming from his throat is low and continuous—a growl that doesn't recognize language or the children trembling behind me.
His face is inches from mine, teeth bared, tendons standing in his neck, pupils so wide the amber is a ring of fire around black. Nothing I love is in that face—everything erased by something feral that doesn't know my name.
Come back, I think. Useless and desperate, my spine against stone, my children behind me, and the thought goes nowhere because whoever is wearing Leon's face isn't taking requests.
Something detonates inside me. Every strange sensation of the past weeks ignites at once: the prickling skin, the aching canines, the warmth in my palms, the dream of running on four legs through dark trees.
It rips through my body and I can't stop it, don't have instructions for stopping it. My knees buckle and the world tilts.
The pain cracks through every bone I own, blinding and total and endless. And then it isn't pain—it's power.
The world drops lower, wider, deafening. Scent explodes—cedar and sweat and fear, two hundred heartbeats thundering. I'm looking up at Leon from a body I don't recognize, and the growl that leaves my new throat is mine but not mine.
So much for wolfless. Twenty-five years of being the pack's favorite punchline, and apparently my wolf was just waiting for the most dramatic possible entrance.
Leon's wolf staggers back—a full-body recoil. The sound he makes vibrates through a frequency I've never had access to before, something ancient that my human mind can't hold.
He drops. Not a lunge—his knees hit stone, human again, hands pressed to his skull. The sound tearing from him isn't a word or a growl but something between that says the wall inside his head is breaking apart.
I shift back. One second wolf, the next I'm on the floor of the gathering hall, shaking so hard my teeth chatter, palms on stone to keep myself upright. The hall is dead silent.
"Mama?" River's voice, small and wrecked, from somewhere behind Ashton's planted stance. "Mama, was that you?"
"Yeah, baby." My voice comes out scraped raw, barely recognizable. "Yeah. I'm right here."
"Don't move, River." Ashton, steady as stone, one hand gripping his sister's arm. "Mom, are you hurt?"
"No." The lie tastes like copper but my son doesn't need truth right now. He needs his mother upright and whole, so that's what I give him.
Kailani stands on the platform, frozen mid-gesture. Dylan somewhere in the crowd, face drained of every color it ever held.
Leon lifts his head. His eyes meet mine, and they're brown—not amber, not gold. Brown and wet and clear and so completely, devastatingly present that the air punches out of my lungs.
"Skyler." Not the polite version. Not the pleasant stranger who said a pleasure at the wedding. This is the voice from the kitchen at Crescent Ridge, from the stone wall seven years ago—the one that said my name like it was the only word he'd ever needed.
My hand flies to my mouth. Everything I've held for seven months pours through—every swallowed scream, every night three doors down from a man who didn't know me, every time I walked away instead of breaking down.
He's on his knees on the stone floor, looking at me the way he looked at me when he slid a wire ring onto my finger, and he remembers, and I can't breathe, and two hundred wolves are watching, and Kailani is watching, and my children are watching.
"Skyler," he says again, and my name in his mouth sounds like someone coming home after a war, and I have no idea what happens next.
To be continued…
P.S. Author’s Note
Dear readers, my biggest thanks to you for following me on this journey. The work on continuation is in progress, I just can’t leave my favorite characters hanging like this, without resolution. Hope you liked it, and stay tuned for what comes next, because I promise you, it’s going to be a wild ride!
See you in the next chapters!