Page 7

HUDSON

T he air still smells like her.

She hadn’t been gone long when I shifted back—mist curling away from my fur like it knew better than to linger. I waited until the scent of her steps faded down the ridge, until the tension in my muscles quit screaming for a fight or a kiss. Then I ran.

The mountains have always cleared my head.

But not this time. Not with the scent of her still in my lungs, the echo of her stare like fire behind my ribs.

Kate McKinley’s not just in my head—she’s wired into my reflexes.

Bold, reckless, stubborn. The kind of complication I came back to avoid, and exactly the kind I can’t seem to stop chasing.

Even with the trail cold, I can pick out her scent in the forest—bright citrus and something sweet and warm underneath.

It cuts through pine and damp earth like a beacon, subtle but sharp, stirring things I haven’t let myself feel in years.

Kate McKinley smells like a dare, and my wolf—hell, even the man—likes that scent more than he should.

It’s grounding and dangerous all at once.

Like the old porch back home after a storm—familiar, steady, but just one step from collapse if you trust it too much.

I run until my legs burn and the storm in my head eases off. Trees blur past, their shadows long and lean, the ground hard beneath my paws, but even the cold mountain air can’t wash her from me. I want it to—want the speed, the cold, the forest to strip her from my thoughts. But it doesn’t work.

The wind bites deep, chilling my skin, but it’s not enough to quiet the part of me that still feels her—Kate McKinley, burned into my senses like wildfire, branded into the part of me that’s supposed to stay cold and controlled.

She’s in my head, tangled up in every thought, regardless of whether or not I want to admit it, she’s under my damn protection now.

I push harder, trying to outrun the thrum coursing through my veins, the tension in my gut that has nothing to do with the chase and everything to do with the way she looked at me.

Like she saw past every wall I’ve spent years building, straight into the parts I keep locked down.

Like she felt it too—this pull, this fire, this damn inconvenient bond clawing its way to the surface.

And worse, like maybe she didn’t want it either.

Or maybe she did and hated that she did. Just like me.

The cold seeps into every fiber of my being, numbing what I don’t want to feel, but it doesn’t last. My wolf stirs and circles; my instincts scream for me to go back and find her.

When I shift back behind a stand of pine, breath ragged and heart pounding, the mist clings for a moment before clearing.

I’m alone. Raw. And the heat she lit in me is still burning.

Lower. Deeper. It coils in my gut, a slow, smoldering ache that refuses to settle.

Not just want—need. A bone-deep thrum that’s more than lust, more than instinct.

It's the edge of something older, something primal, clawing to the surface.

My wolf paces just beneath my skin, restless and sharp, and I know exactly who he's circling for. The bond is awakening—unwelcome, undeniable—and no matter how much I try to shove it back down, it’s there. Burning. Claiming. Her.

More dangerous.

That’s the part that scares me most. Not just how badly I want her, but how fast it’s turning into something deeper.

Wilder. Something I can’t control. The bond doesn’t just stir lust—it demands.

It roots down and rewires everything I thought I knew about instinct and discipline.

And Kate? She’s the kind of wildfire that doesn’t care what it burns through.

I get dressed fast, each movement sharp and efficient, like routine can cage what she’s set loose inside me. My fingers tremble as I pull on my boots—damn near unforgivable. I breathe deep, trying to shake the heat she left behind.

The hike back to my truck is all cold air and snapping branches, but it doesn’t calm the pulse pounding in my neck. It’s not adrenaline from the run.

It’s her. It’s always her.

It’s not just that she’s in my blood now—she fits there as if she always belonged.

Every step I take away from her only makes the pull stronger.

It doesn’t matter that it’s inconvenient.

It doesn’t matter that it’s dangerous. It doesn’t even matter that I’ve spent years convincing myself I didn’t need this—didn’t need her .

The way she looked at me. Her scent. That stubborn tilt of her chin. The way she held her silence longer than most warriors I’ve interrogated. She doesn’t flinch—she calculates.

She’s not just bothering me—she’s unraveling everything at my core.

Back at the station, the board’s half-full of tacks and string.

I wasn’t sure if it was smuggling, surveillance, or something darker.

But people were disappearing, and the McKinley name keeps showing up more often than coincidence should allow.

On shipments. Old logs. Property lines. Witnesses who suddenly don’t remember what they saw.

Nothing’s conclusive. Nothing solid. Just a pattern of half-trails and old grudges.

But something was there. A buried link between the missing goods, the erased boundaries, the silence around Luke McKinley.

What I’d seen earlier wasn't backwoods bootlegging. Someone was watching. Stalking. And Kate’s name kept surfacing like a dropped match in dry grass.

Whether she was bait or blind, I didn’t know yet.

And now someone’s carving up pack stones on their land—markers that haven’t been touched in decades, defaced like they mean nothing.

It’s not just disrespect. It’s a message.

And whoever’s sending it is smart enough to know exactly what those stones mean to us.

Sacred ground. Boundaries drawn in blood.

You don’t scratch at old walls unless you want war.

Kate says she didn’t mean to cross that line. I almost believe her.

But belief doesn’t keep people alive.

I lean over the table, palms braced. My jaw’s tight enough to crack, my wolf restless just beneath the surface. Not from anger. Not really.

From instinct.

She shouldn’t have been out there. Not alone. Not now.

Kate’s smart, capable, tough as the bones under this mountain—but this?

This is something bigger. Someone’s making moves in the dark.

Quiet, deliberate ones. Her family name keeps turning up in whispers from old pack members, scrawled in ledgers that don’t match up, and muttered in places where silence used to reign.

And now it’s showing up in places it shouldn’t—on broken stones, in old boundaries, spoken by people who should know better.

That name—McKinley—is right in the damn middle of it.

I need to find out who’s behind it and how deep it goes. First step—track the names tied to those old sites. Second—figure out who benefits if the McKinleys take the fall. And third? Keep Kate out of the crossfire, even if it means dragging her out myself.

I don’t know if she’s tangled up in it by accident or if someone’s using her family’s name to stir old ghosts. Either way, the risk is rising.

So is my blood pressure.

“Morning, Sheriff.”

I look up. Deputy Morris stands in the doorway, coffee in one hand, folders in the other. The kid is earnest. Good instincts, green enough to still believe in rules.

He nods at the board. “You figure out anything new?”

“Depends. You find anything in those reports?”

He hands them over. “Couple of complaints from the hills. Someone poking around abandoned sites. Weird tire treads, too. Didn’t match the usual ATVs.”

I scan the notes. The locations match old McKinley territory.

“Locals talking?”

“Some. But most clammed up the second I mentioned anything serious. Lot of old loyalty still wrapped around that name—fear, too. Like they’re not just protecting a neighbor, but guarding something no one wants dragged into the light. Especially when the name McKinley comes up.”

I snort. "That figures. I guess I should take some small measure of comfort that some things never change."

The front door creaks.

“Sheriff.”

Elena Clark. Bookstore owner. Human. All-seeing oracle of small-town gossip, complete with her long dark hair pulled up in a messy bun, held in place with a pencil.

“Elena.”

She raises an eyebrow at the board. “That’s a whole lot of string and not a lot of answers.”

“Welcome to my mornings.”

She tilts her head. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks, Elena. You look lovely.”

She ignores me and continues on. “The whole town is whispering about you and Kate. I take it you look like that because of her.”

I don’t ask who. She knows.

Elena steps closer. “She’s her mother’s daughter. Heart of fire and mouth full of knives. Don’t think for a second she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

I look away.

“She’s not the one I’m worried about,” I mutter.

“Then who is?”

That’s the question. One I don’t want to answer yet.

After Elena leaves, I drop the reports, grab my jacket, and hit the road.

The tires crunch gravel as I head up the ridge.

I haven’t seen Grant McKinley since my father’s funeral.

Even then, we didn’t speak. He sat in the back like he was watching something die twice—once when he saw my father’s casket lowered into the ground, and then later when he spotted the badge on my chest that used to be on his brother’s.

Grant’s land sits nestled in the folds of the mountain.

Not quite off the grid, but damn close. As I hike the last hundred yards, the trees get thicker, the silence deeper—so deep it presses on my ears.

The scent of wood smoke curls faintly in the air, mixed with something sharp and metallic, like old iron or blood.

Somewhere in the distance, a crow calls once and then falls quiet, like even the birds are holding their breath.

Every step forward crunches dry leaves beneath my boots, loud in the hush.

The air grows colder, tighter, like it’s wrapping around me.

It’s the kind of quiet that warns you to tread carefully, like the woods themselves are watching.

When I reach the cabin, he’s already on the porch, rifle across his knees.

“Sheriff.”

“Grant.”

“You come looking for trouble or truth?”

“Depends which one you’ve got more of.”

He chuckles low. “Still got that Rawlings bite.”

“And you’ve still got that McKinley smirk.”

I hand him the map and a photo—one of the stone markers, slashed deep with gouges. The gouges aren’t random; they’re deliberate, angry, a message written in damage. His face doesn’t change, but his fingers curl tighter around the paper, like he wants to crush it—or the bastard who did it.

The silence stretches between us, thick and expectant.

He doesn’t ask where it was taken. Doesn’t need to. He knows those stones. Hell, he probably helped lay them when he was still walking with the old alpha. His grip says everything his mouth doesn’t.

Then he folds the photo once, precisely, and sets it on the armrest beside him like it’s too loaded to hold.

His thumb taps against the rifle barrel, slow and deliberate, like he’s keeping time with a clock only he can hear.

The only sound between us is the faint creak of the rocking chair as he leans forward, just enough to show he’s not taking this lightly.

“You think someone’s using our land?”

“Maybe, but at the least, I think someone’s using your name.”

His eyes meet mine. Hard. “You think it’s Kate.”

“I think she’s too close to whatever’s coming.”

Grant leans back. “You ever think she’s the only thing standing between you and a bigger storm?”

I let that sit. He’s not wrong, but he’s not right, either. “She’s fire, yeah. But fire makes light, and some of us forgot how to see in the dark.” I let that sink in and continue. “I need your eyes on this, Grant. I need to know what you see that I don’t.”

He doesn’t answer. He just pours two fingers of moonshine in a clean mason jar and pushes it my way.

He lifts his own jar. “To ghosts,” he says.

I raise mine. “To the ones who stay.”

The moonshine bites, but it’s familiar. Like the mountain’s answer to the ache I can’t drink away.

As the sun begins to set behind the ridge, I keep imagining her standing by that stone, wind in her hair, eyes sharp as cut glass.

She didn’t flinch when I stepped out of the trees.

Didn’t cower when I shifted. She just stood there—defiant, unshaken, and more wolf than most who wear the skin full-time.

That kind of strength? It’s rare. Dangerous.

And the part of me that should see it as a threat only sees something worth protecting.

Worth claiming. Which makes her the biggest threat of all.

Because claiming her wouldn’t just change my life—it could cost me everything I’ve built trying to outrun my past. And maybe the worst part is, I’m not sure I’d stop it even if I could.

I can’t ignore the truth scratching at my bones: someone’s waking up the past. And I can't shake the feeling they’re not just using her—they’re counting on her. As bait. As leverage. Or worse, as a fuse.

A cold wind snakes through the trees, threading under my collar, and the hair on the back of my neck lifts. Somewhere in the distance, a branch snaps—too sharp, too clean. The forest holds its breath, and so do I.