Page 1 of Knotting the Firefighters

PROLOGUE: WHAT BURNS, REMAINS

~WENDOLYN~

The first thing that hits me is gasoline.

Sharp. Chemical. Wrong.

Not the faint whiff you catch at a pump or the residual smell from a spill. This is concentrated, deliberate—the kind of chemical sharpness that makes your lungs seize before your brain catches up to what it means.

No. Not here. Not now.

My hands freeze over the industrial mixer, flour dust suspended in the air like ash waiting to fall. The community center's kitchen suddenly feels smaller, the walls pressing in as that petroleum stench winds through the warm scents of butter and rosemary I've been working with all afternoon.

I know this smell.

God, do I know this smell.

Fifteen years of running into burning buildings, and you learn to read accelerants like tea leaves. This isn't accidental. This isn't a leak or a maintenance issue. This is intention made liquid, destruction measured out in gallons.

Back then, fire had rules—even if you broke them, there was structure, a brotherhood, something sacred about the way we risked ourselves to save the world a little piece at a time. But thesharp, oily perfume clawing its way through the kitchen wasn’t about heroics or redemption. No one here was coming to be saved. No, this was about destruction. About punishment, and message-sending, and the suffocation that came from knowing your enemies understood exactly what haunted you—because once, they’d lain beside you in the soot and the afterglow.

My jaw clenched.

My ex.

It could only be him.

The cherry-print apron I'm wearing—vintage, from a thrift shop in downtown, my armor since I fled to this nowhere town—suddenly feels like tissue paper. Like something that will burn faster than skin.

Gregory.

His name forms in my mind before I'm ready for it, bitter as bile. Six months of silence, six months of thinking maybe I'd finally slipped his notice, that the Ironwood Pack had bigger prey to hunt than one runaway Omega who wouldn't sign over her pension.

Stupid. So fucking stupid to think he'd let me go.

The casseroles I've been making—three dozen for tomorrow's charity dinner at Cactus Rose Ranch—sit in neat rows on the counter. Such normal things. Such a normal afternoon. Willa had asked if I could help, her voice still carrying that careful distance she maintains even after everything we've been through together.

"The ranch hands work so hard,"she'd said."Would be nice to give them something special."

And here I am, playing small-town volunteer, pretending the biggest danger in my life is burning the bechamel sauce.

My phone.

Where's my fucking phone?

Dead on the counter, black screen mocking me. I'd meant to charge it, had even brought the cord, but three hours of cooking and I'd forgotten. The kind of careless mistake that gets people killed.

The kind of mistake the old me never would have made.

Fire Chief Wendolyn Murphy would have had three backup plans, two exit strategies, and a charged phone at all times. But that woman trusted the wrong Alpha, believed pretty words over instinct, thought love could overcome nature.

That woman was an idiot.

Smoke now, threading under the door like fingers searching for purchase. Not wood smoke or electrical—this is accelerant and intent, the kind of fire that burns hot and fast and leaves nothing but teeth and regret.

"Gregory?"

My voice cracks on his name, the first time I've said it aloud since I ran. Even forming the syllables feels like surrender, but maybe that's what he wants. To hear me break before I burn.