Page 6

R owan

I stare at the locked door standing between me and Alina for several long minutes. I can sense her on the other side of it, barely moving, waiting to see if I’m going to force my way inside.

If I was still nineteen, still ruled by childish instincts, maybe I would.

But I’m a man now. An Alpha. A prince about to become king.

I roll my neck and take a step away from the porch. The house is small and a little lopsided in the way that old structures in this part of the mountains tend to be. The damp earth tends to shift over time, giving everything a slightly crooked appearance.

Still, the house is well-kept. Two floors. Cheerful white and yellow curtains in the windows. Lush flowerbeds offering a riot of color even in the middle of February.

For some reason, what I see before me hurts more than anything.

It’s proof that Alina didn’t just run away.

She left and decided to start over completely.

She built a new life for herself here and clearly had no intention of ever coming back.

If not for today’s strange twist of fate, I would have never known that I had a son.

I tilt my head back, eyes locking on a window on the second floor on the left side of the house. The boy is in there. I can sense him. The curtains are drawn, but there is a beating heart inside the room that pumps blood made from my DNA through his veins. My heir. My child.

It takes several deep breaths for me to calm down enough.

Alina is right, unfortunately. The boy deserves to meet me on his own terms. His mother is the one who decided to hide him from me, so he shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of that.

More than that, I don’t want him to see me like this. I don’t want him to gain a first impression of his father that revolves around anger, impatience, and betrayal. I don’t want him to fear the Greenbriars.

So, even though every cell in my body is screaming for me to do otherwise, I walk back to my truck. Moving on autopilot, I throw it into reverse and back down the driveway.

I don’t go far, though. Just a quarter-mile or so down the road.

I pull onto the dirt shoulder, but there isn’t any traffic out this way.

There’s nothing out here on this side of town at all except ancient trees and dense foliage.

Alina may have come to the Whiterose pack for amnesty, but she hasn’t fully assimilated.

She lives on their fringes, almost as if she knows she’ll always belong somewhere else.

She belongs at my side. And it is the one place that she can never be.

Killing the engine, I sit in the quiet cab for a few minutes. It’s an effort to collect my thoughts. My shifter instincts are in overdrive. The primal side of my nature is urging me to turn around, go back to Alina’s house, and claim what is mine.

Despite my rejection, the Mating bond will always seek to be repaired. I had thought I’d be okay with that, okay with living the rest of my life knowing that there would always be something incomplete inside me. Whoever I chose as my partner would have to be okay with it, too.

I was foolish, though. This is nature. This isn’t something that can easily be fought.

My skin is crawling. I need to get out of it, need to give in to my instincts and sweep the area. If I can confirm that it’s clear within a mile or so of Alina’s home, maybe I can calm down a bit .

Hopping out of the cab, I shuck off my shirt and tug on my belt roughly.

In another area where shifters are less common, it might be alarming that a grown man is undressing on the side of the road, but it’s perfectly normal around these parts.

Plus, there’s nobody around to see me. The Whiterose scent hangs in the air, but it’s not strong enough to suggest any of them are lingering nearby.

With my clothes neatly folded on the passenger seat, I step back into the cover of the trees and release the hold on my inner wolf with a full-body shudder.

Warmth tingles from the crown of my head down to my toes, and a familiar pleasure-pain takes over as my bones, muscles, and ligaments reform into the deep gray wolf that I was born to be.

My senses sharpen in this form. Half a mile away, a hawk screeches as it descends on its dinner. I can smell the festering carcass even from here.

For a moment, I pad slowly across the moist loam of the forest. I keep a wide berth between me and Alina’s house, but my honed eyesight allows me to catch glimpses of the faded white siding and blue shutters through cracks in the trees.

Not only that, I can scent her. Stronger than ever before, her scent spears into my lupine heart and burrows deep, calling me to her. With a low growl, I choke back the urge to bound back to her house and snarl at the front door until she opens it.

I need her. I want her.

But I need to protect her more than I can dare to desire her.

I’m methodical and precise in my movements, not wanting to disturb the territory of a pack that has been nothing but friendly to us for decades now.

I keep low, tracing a path around the perimeter of Alina’s property.

There’s nothing but Whiterose scent and the pleasant headiness of lilacs that marks the nearby presence of my Mate.

I can smell my son, too. His scent is more watered down than a typical Greenbriar scent might be, due to his youth and his lack of contact with his rightful pack, but noticeable nonetheless. Noticeable in the way that I would recognize my own hand. He is mine. My blood. My heir.

I continue my patrol, careful not to brush too much of my scent off onto the dense flora. It’s only polite that I don’t stink up this place with a foreign aroma.

Just when I’m about to complete the loose circle around the property, a gust of wind blows in from the west.

I freeze, hackles rising on instinct. A low snarl rips out of me before I can clamp my jaws shut.

Blackburn. The smell is slick and oily, tinged with the metallic scent of blood and carnage. Smoke and fire. It’s a cruel, merciless scent.

But as soon as the wind dies down again, it fades. And, after a while during which it takes all of my strength to resist going after the scent and abandoning Alina, it occurs to me how weak it was. It’s far off, carried to me only thanks to the blustery air and my particularly potent Alpha senses.

There are no Blackburns nearby, but they are still closer than I’d like them to be if I can smell them.

The threat is real. It’s imminent.

I run back to the truck and shift back into my human form, yanking on my clothes quickly. I haul myself back into the driver’s seat, breathing hard from barely contained fury triggered by the mere memory of the Blackburn stench.

Swallowing hard, I yank my phone out of my back pocket and call Cal.

My Beta answers on the second ring.

“How’s it going?” he asks in lieu of hello.

I open my mouth, then quickly close it. My first impulse had been to tell Cal everything, to relay every detail of what I’ve discovered from the moment I set foot in West Pond.

But, even though Cal is loyal to me, I’m not Alpha yet. He still answers to my father. Whatever I tell him, he has to relay to the Alpha of the pack.

For some reason, I don’t want my parents—or anyone else, for that matter—to know that I found Alina, let alone that I have a son. This feels like a battle that I need to fight on my own, a trial that I need to navigate without guidance.

Also, if my father is made aware of the fact that my Mate and the second heir to the bloodline is in Whiterose territory, he won’t hesitate to turn this into a political situation.

In any other situation, Alina might be left alone, but because my son exists…

there’s just no way that my father and the elders would agree to do anything other than bring the boy back to Greenbriar territory as soon as possible.

I don’t want to uproot his life that suddenly and drastically.

And, anyway, I don’t even know his name. There is so much I want to learn and understand before I introduce him to his pack. Because, no matter what Alina says, he will be a Greenbriar Alpha one day. None of that bullshit about starting his own pack.

“Rowan?” Cal asks on the other end of the line. “You good?”

“Sorry,” I blurt, trying to force my voice to remain as casual as possible. “There’s a bad signal out here.”

It’s not technically a lie, but I still feel guilty for avoiding the truth. I’ve never lied to my Beta before.

“How’d it go with the Whiterose Alpha?”

“Fine.” I pause. “Well, actually, not that fine. From what he told me, it sounds like the Blackburns are stirring up trouble again.”

Cal curses, his tone dripping with rage at the mere mention of the Blackburn pack. I don’t blame him. His father was left permanently disabled from an injury caused by the same fight that killed Alina’s parents. Uncle Dan can barely walk now and his shifts are always painful.

“They’re biting away at Whiterose territory again?” Cal guesses.

“Sounds like it. Samson’s been quiet for a few years, probably to lure them into a false sense of security.”

“So, what do they need? A Greenbriar patrol to support them?”

“Henry Whiterose has insisted that they can handle it on their own for now.”

Cal scoffs. “Seriously? Is he aware that the majority of his pack is geriatric?”

“My hands are tied. If he doesn’t want our help, then I can’t force it on him. For now, he wants to monitor the situation.”

“You heading back soon, then?”

I pause again, trying to formulate the best way to tell this next lie.

“I’m actually going to stick around in West Pond for a couple of days, I think,” I inform Cal. “I’m a welcome guest, so I’d like to take the opportunity to check out their borders for myself. I want to get eyes on the Blackburns if I can.”

“Rowan…” Cal sighs. He knows he can’t tell me what to do. He wouldn’t dare try. But I already know what he’s going to say when he begins his next sentence with, “At least—”

“Be careful. I know. I’m well aware of what Samson is capable of. I’ll cover my scent. I just want to make sure the Blackburns haven’t gotten too far into Whiterose territory without their knowledge.”

“I’ll meet you out there and help.”

“No,” I protest a little too harshly. “Stay with my father for now. I’ll let you know if I need help, but two Greenbriar scents will be too strong.”

He sighs again, and I know he wants to argue. Cal is too loyal, though. Too trusting. It’s what makes him such a good Beta. That, and the fact that he’s my cousin. We grew up together. He knew Alina as well as I did, and despite the prophecy, he’d probably be thrilled to learn that I have a son.

“Fine,” Cal says at last. “But keep me updated.”

“Of course. I’ll call tomorrow.”

“All right, man. Bye.”

I hang up, tossing my phone onto the passenger seat.

Really, I only told partial lies. I do want to stick around for another couple of days, and I do want to spend some time trying to sniff out how prevalent the Blackburn scent is on the borderlands. But it’s not just for the sake of my pack. It’s for Alina and my son’s protection, too.

If I find out that the Blackburns have slipped under the radar, I’m not taking no for an answer. I will not let my Mate and my heir fall into danger like that.

For now, I’m sticking around, whether Alina likes it or not.

With a long, heavy exhale, I twist the key in the ignition once again. But even as the engine rumbles to life, I keep it in park. Staring out of the windshield, taking in the rich greenery all around, I can’t help letting my thoughts drift back to Alina.

That night we shared…even though it soured in the end, there’s no part of me that regrets it.

I don’t regret that I slept with Alina, and I de finitely don’t regret that our actions resulted in the creation of a child.

If anything, that knowledge makes that evening on the forest floor even more worth it.

I haven’t touched another woman since then.

Ten years of celibacy, even while Kseniya and the other elders insisted that I try to find a respectable replacement for my lost, rejected Mate.

I thought about it, of course. There are women in the Greenbriar pack who are beautiful and intelligent and nurturing, women who would make decent partners.

None of them is Alina, though. I want what I can’t have. Yet, it will ruin me if I do. It’ll ruin everything.

Like a child on the verge of a tantrum, I can’t stop myself from thinking…it isn’t fair.