The cut on my forearm wasn't deep, but it needed cleaning. I sat at the lodge's common room table the next morning, picking gravel out of the wound with the tip of my smallest blade. Sera had gone to find breakfast. The room was empty except for an old rogue dozing near the fireplace.
I didn't hear the door open. I smelled him first.
Dark cedar. Winter smoke. So vivid it hit like a fist to the sternum.
My vision blurred. The blade slipped. I caught it before it fell, but my hand was shaking.
I turned.
Vincent Pierce stood in the doorway.
Tall. Controlled. Watching me with the kind of attention that made my skin prickle. His eyes tracked the movement of my hand as I set the blade down. Then they moved to my neck — to the high collar I'd pulled up to cover the scar.
His wolf knew. I could see it in the way his posture shifted, just slightly, like something inside him had locked into place.
Mate.
He didn't say it. But I heard it anyway, in the sudden tension that pulled taut between us.
Deep in my chest, something stirred. My wolf. The faintest flicker, like an ember touched by wind after days of cold silence.
I shut it down. Hard.
"Hadley Reed," Vincent said. His voice was low, precise, unhurried.
I stood. My chair scraped against the floor. "I'm not interested in whatever game you're running, Lycan Prince."
His expression didn't change. He crossed the room with deliberate calm, chose a seat on the opposite side — not close, not far — and gestured to the server. "Coffee. Black."
Then he pulled an intelligence report from his coat and opened it.
He didn't leave.
I stared at him. He read.
The scent wrapped around me like smoke, inescapable. My wolf stirred again. I gritted my teeth and went back to cleaning my wound.
---
Two days.
Two days of orbiting each other in that lodge like opposing forces held in check by mutual wariness.
Vincent didn't pursue me. He was simply there. In the common room at dawn. At a corner table during meals. Reading, working, existing in a space I couldn't avoid without looking like I was running.
I wasn't running.
But I also wasn't breathing properly when he was in the room.
Sera noticed. She didn't say anything, but I caught her glancing between us with the wide-eyed fascination of someone watching a standoff.
On the second evening, I'd had enough.
I walked straight to his table and dropped into the chair across from him. He looked up from his report, unhurried.
"I know who you are," I said.
He waited.
"You ran the inter-pack training rotation six years ago. You were harder on me than anyone else in that rotation. Every drill. Every sparring session. You singled me out."
Vincent set down his pen. "Yes."
"Why?"
He leaned back slightly. His gaze didn't waver. "You dropped your left shoulder every time you committed to a strike. It telegraphed your intent three seconds before impact. Any opponent worth facing would have gutted you."
I blinked.
That was the exact correction he'd barked at me during a sparring match in front of thirty wolves. Word for word.
"You remember that," I said slowly.
"I remember all of it."
My pulse kicked. "All of what?"
"Every drill correction I gave you. Every error you corrected. Every time you adjusted mid-fight because you were fast enough to learn in real time." He paused. "You were the best warrior in that rotation. You just didn't know it yet."
The words landed like a punch I hadn't braced for.
I leaned forward without meaning to. "If I was so good, why did you ride me harder than everyone else?"
"Because you could take it. And because watching you settle for adequate when you were capable of exceptional was intolerable."
Silence.
The old dynamic — exacting authority and defiant subordinate — shifted. The air between us changed. Charged. Equal.
I realized I was leaning across the table. Close enough to see the faint scar along his jaw. Close enough to feel the pull of his scent wrapping tighter.
I pulled back. Fast.
The hollow scar on my neck pulsed with warmth. Not cold. Warm.
I stood. "Stay away from me, Vincent."
He didn't move. "No."
"I'm not doing this again."
"You're not doing anything," he said quietly. "I am. And I'm not asking your permission."
I turned and walked out before I could say something I'd regret.
Behind me, I heard him pick up his pen and go back to his report.
---
Sera found me in my room an hour later. She knocked twice, then slipped inside without waiting for an answer.
"You need to hear this," she said.
I looked up from my journal. "What?"
"Two Ironveil wolves came through the lodge today. They were talking about Silverfang."
My hand stilled on the page.
"There were rogue attacks," Sera continued. "Two of them. Eastern border. Within forty-eight hours of you leaving."
I frowned. "Silverfang's eastern border hasn't had rogue trouble in years."
"I know. That's what they said. They're blaming patrol failures."
I stared at her. Then I wrote it down in my journal. Date. Location. Source.
I didn't know what it meant yet. But I would.
Sera watched me write. "What are you going to do?"
"Nothing," I said. "Yet."
She nodded slowly. Then she left.
I sat alone in the dim room, the journal open in front of me. Outside, the wind picked up. Somewhere in the lodge, a door closed.
And faint, persistent, inescapable — the scent of cedar and smoke drifted under my door.
My wolf stirred again. This time, I let her.
