Page 7

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 his actual son.

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 Samuel plans 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 .

After that, Sascha gets it in his head to grab some food and go to the exercise grounds.

In between vertigo spells, he’s actually quite skilled, and keeping in shape is one way Sascha can exert control over his body.

The major problem is that he can neither predict nor prevent the spells, so if one takes him out, he’s fucked.

It’s kept him back from many pack runs over the years—something Sascha initially resented, but as of late, has been more relieved by.

The exercise ground is behind the main pack house. Sascha lives there with his immediate family, but the building also includes a huge kitchen, a meeting space, and a den for the cubs to play in.

Sascha swings by the kitchen to grab some of the pre-prepared food.

Shifter metabolisms need supplements throughout the day, so outside of regular mealtimes, the cooks throw together sandwiches, salads, and other health-conscious dishes that can be grabbed while on the go.

Armed with sustenance, Sascha weaves through the hallways toward the back of the house, taking the narrow corridors built to allow the cooks and cleaners quick passage around the house’s active main halls.

He comes to the door leading out of the last corridor, preparing to make a break for it because this is where his father’s greeting office is located.

Guests are brought through a special entrance separating this hall from the domestic part of the house. Right now, Sascha can smell people standing in that hallway, and if he holds his breath to listen very carefully, he can make out the cadence of his father’s voice from inside the office.

Sascha easily identifies their guest: Celeste Fuller, alpha of the Wilderness wolf pack. Celeste and Sascha’s father are on good terms. Both are equally ready to defend the other’s territory, and together, their packs are dominant over Bliss Township and much of its surrounding areas.

In the hall stands three of Celeste’s enforcers—two wolf shifters, and Beryl, a tiger were-felid who’s more often than not a silent presence at Celeste’s side.

Samuel hates having a werecreature on Madison territory, but Celeste has reassured him that Beryl is entirely under her control.

Regardless, Sascha’s father has strict rules against pack members—Sascha included—being nearby when any of Celeste’s werecreature pets are around.

In fact, the only ones not affected by the order are, unsurprisingly, the twins.

Another sniff tells Sascha that Jakob is in the office with his dad while Garrett is (ideally) stuck with blue-balls upstairs.

That’s not as funny as it was a handful of minutes ago.

Grumpier than usual about being left out, Sascha makes the impulsive decision to do something that’s not necessarily smart, but will work well enough.

Shifter magic is fluid. Changing bodies isn’t so much a transformation as it is a flicker through the aether. An individual’s biped form passes through whorls of pure magic, and they return as their animal, whole and painless.

Unlike most shifters, Sascha has to be careful when interacting with the aether.

The spinning sickness keeps him vulnerable to magic’s natural current, leaving him at risk of the same flare-ups that contributed to his mother’s death.

Episodes are unpredictable and can range in severity, which means Sascha has to be choosy about when and where he decides to shift.

Right now seems a fine time, since he’s on his way to the exercise grounds anyway, so Sascha eases himself into the aether, communing with the part of him that is cougar . Bringing that self forth.

When Sascha exits the aether, his clothes are in a heap below his paws. His round ears swivel, adjusting to the vibrations of the world around him. In this form, Sascha can eavesdrop on his father’s conversation with greater accuracy.

Celeste’s voice is, as always, loud and brassy. While Samuel tends to be soft-spoken, making it harder to decipher his speech from a distance, Sascha doesn’t have to strain to hear what Celeste is saying.

“—don’t think he’s a threat. I would have killed him if I did.”

“You shouldn’t have risked it,” Samuel says. “Another alpha in our territory? And a werecreature, at that? Celeste, I’m appalled.”

If Sascha had been in biped form, he’d have rolled his eyes.

His dad would never say something as crass as ‘pissed as hell , ’ but if he thinks Celeste cares a single burning blue fuck if someone is appalled by her decisions, he’s got to work on his judgement of character.

He should work on that anyway because Sascha doesn’t like Celeste and never has.

Jakob speaks without subtlety. “Where is he? It won’t be hard to take out a lone werecreature. Give us his location.”