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The worst thing about her speech is… she’s not wrong. Avery has spent months looking for a pack only to be told that if he doesn’t start one of his own, it’ll never happen. And yet no self-respecting werecreature would submit to an alpha who looks like an underfed teenager, much less enough of them to form a pack.

Avery chews the inside of his lip, thoughts racing. The idea of better food is tempting. He’ll be monitored by shifters regardless of what he chooses, and the farm isexhausting. Somany rules, tasks he can fuck up. Would it be the same with Celeste?

In the end, there are too many questions running through his mind. Unwilling to dig through them, Avery makes his decision: “No, thank you.”

Beryl snorts quietly. Celeste doesn’t make a noise, but her gold eyes narrow. “My hearing is flawless,” she says coolly, “but I’ll allow you to repeat yourself, just in case I made a rare mistake.”

Avery groans and rubs his eyes. “I’m so tired, dude. I appreciate the, uh, offer, but… seriously, no thanks. I’m gonna stay at the farm.”

“You don’t need me to tell you how much you’ll regret this. Beryl, if you would.”

Perfectly obedient, Beryl steps forward. “Our Alpha’s generosity should not be overlooked,” they inform him.

Avery shakes his head. “I have a curfew to meet.” In the gutsiest move he’s ever made, Avery turns away from Celeste and begins trudging through the field at a sluggish pace. It’s probably an insult to turn his back on a ‘rival’ alpha, but Avery is simply too exhausted to care.

Five steps in, no one moves to attack him. At five more steps, he begins to wonder if Celeste prefers to make the kill herself, or if she lets her pets play with their food before eating it.

But Avery keeps walking, and walking, and walking, and eventually, the night stills except for the sound of nocturnal critters rustling through the tall grasses.

The wolves allowed Avery to retreat. He doesn’t know why, but he’s not foolish enough for relief. Instead, a feeling of dread settles heavily on his shoulders, whispering that Celeste knows where to find him. Just because she didn’t kill him this time doesn’t mean the target Atwood pinned to him earlier hasn’t been joined by a second, much more deadly one.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Sascha

Time moves at a crawl. Sascha spends every hour pining, lying awake at night thinking about Avery’s warmth on his chest, sorely missing the weight, the whisper of breath against his neck.

Why can’t he let this guy go?

It’s not the fact that Avery left before they could fuck. Sascha would have liked to see more of him, wondering if he was wearing a binder or had top surgery, or if he has freckles anywhere other than the bridge of his nose. He wonders if Avery would have grown more tense, or if he would have clung like a limpet, desperate for all Sascha had to give him. Their waking interaction was brief, but supporting Avery as he slept was transcendent. Sascha had barely slept beyond a comfortable haze, too busy burying his nose into the waterfall of loosely coiled dark hair.

With the entire line of that lithe body pressed from his neck past his hips, Sascha felt the beginning of a tether forming between them, only to be tugged apart when Avery hurried out far too early in the morning.

That tether remains bound to Sascha’s core, but the other end is limp and lost.

A rhythmic thumping against the room’s right wall distracts Sascha from, once again, wondering if he could hunt Avery down. He’s had this thought hundreds of times in the last two days, debating whether it would count as stalking if he just happened to scour every inch of Bliss until he caught a whiff of Avery’s scent. He already tried messaging him on PROWLR, but Avery deactivated his account the same day he ran off.

The banging continues, dragging a long groan from Sascha’s chest. Garrett must be ‘on’ with his ex-girlfriend again. They can’t stay away from each other, which Sascha sympathizes with—especially in his current situation—but he doesn’t appreciate Garrett putting his bed against the wall they share. At least Jakob, on the left, hasn’t shown any interest in dating. No beds abusing the wall from that side.

The twins are the closest family Sascha has from his mother’s line, but their relationship has been soured by how they supersede Sascha within pack politics. His dad favors them as enforcers, but Sascha knows they’re being groomed in the ways of a pack leader. Denise Madison, Sascha’s mother, wouldn’t have liked it, but she’s busy being dead. No time to defend her son from his father’s disappointment.

The twins’ father, Denise’s only sibling, was an asshole drunk. Sascha doesn’t remember much of him because he abandoned the boys when they were still toddling. Ever since, Samuel has treated Jakob and Garrett like his own sons. Treated them better than hisactualson.

Taking on the responsibility of leading the Madison cougar pack is something Sascha has wanted all his life. His mother insisted Sascha would be a wonderful alpha, but there were reasons his dad rarely echoed the sentiment. While the position is, by family hierarchy, rightfully Sascha’s, he suspects Samuelplans to keep the role for as long as possible, using the twins as his right and left hands. This would leave Sascha to wither uselessly until his father takes his final breath, at which point…

Sascha doesn’t know, but he suspects the pack would mutiny to keep him from taking over as the pack alpha. There are young alphas who would be grown enough to lead by that time. Keeping Jakob and Garrett as supervisors of the fresh-faced leader would be a much more appealing option than letting an inexperienced, chronically ill alpha put the pack’s survival at risk.

Denise had been the ideal mate for an alpha leader before she contracted the spinning sickness. What started as migraines progressed to fits of vertigo and fainting spells. She did her best to keep up with the pack despite it, and it wasn’t her fault when the infant boy she delivered was a carrier of both strong alpha magic and the same spinning sickness that plagued her every day.

Denial of the position he was born to fill became Sascha’s inevitable fate from the moment of his birth, and nothing he’s attempted to prove himself with has made any difference.

It’s not that they don’t love him. Sascha knows that, despite everything, his cousins try to bond with him, and his dad works hard to keep him safe, and his mom… Well, she wanted him to have everything he was owed.

It’s good the walls here are hard plaster. A woman’s escalating cries join the noise, slightly off beat from each impact, and that’s what ends up busting the meter of Sascha’s tolerance.

Sascha storms out of his room to glare at Garrett’s door, then tests the knob, becoming incredulous when he finds Garrett didn’t even lock it. He pounds on the doorjamb, then flings the door open. “Hey, Gare! Your last hookup just posted a pic of her baby bump on Insta. You should probably deal with that before planting another one.” He stalks down the hallway, smiling to himself at Garrett’s enraged squawk.