Page 9 of A Gathering Storm (Tides of Fate)

DECLAN

Dawn bleeds grey across Stormhaven's sky, the kind of morning that clings to skin and seeps into bones like a fever.

The air tastes of copper and ozone, thick with the aftermath of lightning that split the world open just hours ago.

I stand at the clifftop's edge, watching my newly-sworn brothers disperse like ghosts into the mist that rolls off the Atlantic in endless, hungry waves.

Jax heads north along the coastal path, his shoulders hunched against more than just the wind that cuts across the moor.

His rage still simmers just beneath the surface—I can smell it on him, acrid and dangerous as burnt gunpowder.

The violence did nothing to ease whatever darkness rides him.

If anything, it's made him hungrier for blood.

Grayson trudges toward his boat moored in the sheltered cove below, each step deliberate as a funeral march.

The big bear-shifter moves like a man carrying the weight of sacred oaths, and maybe he is.

The deep places call to him in ways the rest of us can't understand.

Kian simply vanishes over the cliff's edge—probably rappelling down to whatever hidey-hole he's claimed among the jagged rocks where smugglers once ran French brandy and Spanish gold.

The tiger-shifter trusts vertical stone more than horizontal ground, more comfortable dangling over certain death than standing on solid earth.

Finn melts back into the waves with barely a ripple, his dragon form cutting through water black as spilled oil.

The sea welcomes him home with the whisper of ancient currents and deeper mysteries.

And Rafe... Rafe dissolves into shadow between one blink and the next, heading toward his dockside kingdom where information flows like currency and loyalty can be bought with the right combination of fear and gold.

Six men bound now by necessity and violence, by shared enemies and the grim knowledge that alone, we're all dead men walking.

The blood pact we swore in the stone circle still burns along my forearms, the cuts sealed but not forgotten.

Old magic doesn't heal clean—it leaves marks that go deeper than skin, binding us in ways that make pack loyalty look like a casual friendship.

The storm passed hours ago but its echo lingers in my bones, a resonance that makes my teeth ache and my wolf pace beneath my skin like a caged thing.

Lightning still tastes copper on my tongue, sharp and electric as fresh blood.

The air hangs thick with salt and something else—the electric aftermath of power unleashed, of oaths sworn in blood and fury while thunder rolled overhead like the drums of war.

Together, we might be something else. Something worse than the sum of our individual darkness. Something better than the scattered, suspicious alphas we were before the mercenaries came hunting with silver bullets and military precision.

My wolf paces beneath my skin, restless in ways that have nothing to do with last night's violence.

There's change on the wind—not the weather kind that brings storms rolling in from the Atlantic like ancient titans, but the bone-deep change that comes before everything you know burns to ash and forces you to rebuild from the ashes.

The mercenaries' bodies are already gone, dragged out to sea by Finn's tides or buried in Grayson's deep places where the ocean floor swallows secrets whole.

Their weapons lie scattered among the rocks like fallen stars—silver bullets and military-grade hardware that confirms what I've suspected for months.

Someone knows what we are. Someone with resources and reach enough to hire professional killers. Someone who wants us extinct.

But that's tomorrow's problem, another threat to catalog and counter when the sun burns off this mist and the world comes hunting again.

This morning, I need to check Rafe's territory, ensure last night's incursion didn't leave traces that daylight might reveal to curious eyes.

The path down from the cliffs winds treacherous in the half-light, slick with rain and littered with loose stones that would send a human tumbling to their death on the rocks below.

My wolf's sure footing keeps me upright where human balance would fail, each step placed with predator precision.

The harbor spreads below like a painting done in shades of grey—weathered boats bobbing at their moorings like sleeping seabirds, the old pier stretching into water that mirrors the leaden sky.

Early gulls wheel overhead, their cries harsh against the morning silence that follows every storm.

The fishing fleet already headed out before dawn, following currents and instincts older than memory, leaving only pleasure craft and the ferry that connects us to the mainland twice daily.

The ferry. I pause between weathered pilings crusted with barnacles and dried kelp, the salt-sweet smell of low tide sharp in my nostrils.

Its engine throbs dull against the quiet as it noses into the dock, disgorging the handful of passengers brave or foolish enough to visit Stormhaven in late October when the tourist season dies and the island shows its true face.

A few locals returning from mainland business—old Mrs. Campbell clutching a pharmacy bag, young Jimmy Lennox shouldering a duffel bag that suggests another failed attempt at leaving the island for good.

A couple of tourists who'll find most things closed for the season, their disappointment already visible in the way they huddle together against the wind that cuts across the water like a blade.

And her.

The scent hits like a physical blow, driving straight through my defenses and into the primal core of what I am.

My wolf surges to full attention with a certainty that rocks me back on my heels, every instinct firing at once until the world narrows to a single, impossible truth.

The word roars through my blood, through bone and sinew, through every cell of my being until I can't breathe past it.

Mate.

Every muscle locks rigid as ancient instinct floods my system with recognition so intense it nearly drives me to my knees.

The morning air suddenly tastes different—sweeter, sharper, alive with possibility and terror in equal measure.

This isn't attraction or desire or simple lust—this is the universe realigning, destiny crashing into me like a rogue wave that strips away everything I thought I knew about myself.

My wolf howls inside my skull, demanding I move, claim, possess, protect.

Eliza Warren steps off the gangplank with unconscious grace.

I know her name though we've never met, the way I know the tides and the phases of the moon.

Know she inherited Clifftop House out on the north shore from an aunt she barely knew, a woman who kept to herself and asked no questions about the strange sounds that carried on the wind during full moons.

Know she's a journalist from London, here to settle the estate and probably poke around for some quaint island color story.

The kind of outsider we usually discourage with cold shoulders and careful misdirection until they grow bored and seek easier prey.

But knowing facts and seeing her are two violently different things, like the difference between reading about fire and having it burn through your veins.

Auburn hair catches the pale morning light like copper flame, pulled back in a messy knot that exposes the elegant line of her neck—pale skin that would bruise so easily under teeth and claiming bites.

She's smaller than I expected—barely would reach my shoulder if we were standing close enough to touch—but she moves with unconscious grace across the wet dock planks, sure-footed despite the treacherous surface.

City clothes mark her as foreign as clearly as a neon sign: tailored wool coat that's never known salt spray, leather boots meant for pavement not pier wood, the kind of soft cashmere scarf that won't last a week in Stormhaven's salt-rough winds.

She pauses to adjust her grip on a worn leather suitcase, and I catch her profile in the grey morning light.

Sharp features softened by tiredness from the overnight crossing, a mouth that looks like it smiles easily when not pressed into a line of concentration.

Dark circles shadow her eyes, but they can't dim the intelligence that burns there like green fire.

When she turns to scan the harbor, taking in the weathered buildings and fog-shrouded cliffs with the kind of focus that makes my wolf bare its teeth in approval, I see exactly why she chose investigative journalism.

She sees everything. Processes it, files it away, builds connections faster than most people can follow.

The way her gaze lingers on the too-new repairs to the old warehouse, the careful way she steps around the dark stains on the dock that could be rust or oil or blood—she's already hunting for stories in a place most visitors see as picturesque decay.

She's beautiful, but that's not what has me frozen in place like prey caught in headlights.

It's the recognition singing through every nerve ending, the way my wolf strains against my control, desperate to go to her.

It's the mate-bond already forming, gossamer threads of connection I can feel spinning between us though she has no idea I exist, no knowledge of the supernatural world that just claimed her as its own.

My hands clench into fists hard enough that bones creak in protest. Every instinct screams at me to move—to stride across the dock and introduce myself, to guide her away from the exposed pier to somewhere private, somewhere safe.

To explain what she is to me, what we could be to each other if she can accept the impossible.

To claim her before another male catches her scent and—