I set the last candle on the table and stepped back to look at it all. The roasted venison sat in the center, glazed and perfect. The wild herb potatoes were still steaming. I'd even made Hudson's favorite dessert — blackberry tart with the berries I'd picked myself from the edge of our territory last week. The candles threw soft gold light across the plates.
Tomorrow was our Mate Ceremony. Seven years we'd been together, and tomorrow it would be official in front of every Alpha in the region. I wanted tonight to be special. Just us.
I pulled out my phone and checked the time. Seven-thirty. Hudson said he'd be back by six.
I sent him a quick text. *Dinner's ready. Everything's waiting.*
No response.
I sat down at the table and waited. The candles burned lower. The venison cooled. I checked my phone again. Eight o'clock. Then eight-thirty.
Nothing.
I tried the mind-link. *Hudson? Are you okay?*
Silence.
By nine, the food was cold. The candles had burned halfway down. I stared at the empty chair across from me and felt something small and hard settle in my chest.
I stood up. If he wasn't going to answer, I'd find him myself.
I followed his scent across the pack grounds. It was easy to track — cedarwood and earth, familiar as my own breath. It led me past the main hall, past the residential quarters, all the way to the training field on the far edge of the property.
The floodlights were on. I heard voices before I saw them.
I stopped at the edge of the field.
Hudson stood in the center under the lights, his hands on Adley Turner's hips. He was adjusting her stance, his fingers pressing into her waist as he shifted her weight forward. She laughed — light and breathless — and leaned back into him just slightly.
"Like this?" she asked.
"Exactly like that," Hudson said. His voice was warm. Patient. The way he used to sound when he trained with me, years ago.
I should have said something. Stepped forward. Called out.
I didn't.
I just stood there and watched as he moved her through a series of defensive forms, his body close to hers, his attention completely fixed. He corrected her footwork. Praised her progress. She smiled up at him like he'd just handed her the moon.
Then I saw the trash bin.
It sat beside the training field fence, just a few feet from where I stood. The lid was off. Inside, crumpled and half-buried under old water bottles and torn tape, were my training journals.
All of them.
I walked over slowly. My hands were shaking as I pulled the first one out. The cover was smudged with dirt. I opened it. Page after page of movement sketches, technique drafts, notes I'd written to myself over the years. This was the journal I'd started when I was nineteen. The one I'd kept through my first year with Hudson.
I pulled out the second journal. Then the third.
Every single one I'd ever kept was in that bin. Thrown away like garbage.
I looked back at the field. Hudson was still with Adley, still smiling, still touching her like I wasn't ten feet away watching it happen.
I gathered the journals in my arms. They smelled like old paper and spilled coffee and the faint floral scent of the pen I always used. I held them against my chest and walked back to the pack house in silence.
Hudson never turned around.
I sat at the cold dinner table with the journals spread in front of me. The candles had burned down to stubs. The venison had gone gray. I stared at it all for a long time.
Then I pushed the plates aside, opened a fresh notebook, and picked up my pen.
I didn't know what I was drawing at first. My hand just moved. Lines became curves. Curves became angles. A sequence started to take shape on the page — sharp, unforgiving, nothing like the soft forms I used to design for Hudson and me to practice together.
This was something else.
I drew until my wrist ached. Until the candles went out. Until the only light left was the cold glow of the moon through the window.
Somewhere deep inside me, in a place I hadn't felt in years, my wolf stirred. She didn't speak. She just watched.
And waited.
---
Hudson came back the next morning like nothing had happened.
I was in the kitchen cleaning up the untouched dinner when I heard the front door open. His footsteps were heavy on the wood floor. Confident. Unhurried.
He walked into the kitchen, grabbed a mug from the cabinet, and poured himself coffee.
"Morning," he said.
I set down the plate I was holding. "Where were you last night?"
He glanced at me over the rim of his mug. "Something came up with the pack."
"Something came up," I repeated slowly.
"Yeah." He took a sip. "Adley needed help with her training. She's still struggling with her wolf. You know how it is."
I stared at him. "I made dinner. I waited for you for three hours."
He sighed. Set the mug down. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. It was deeper. Firmer. The tone he used when he was giving an order.
"Isla, I said something came up. Let it go."
It wasn't loud. It wasn't angry. But it was an Alpha tone. The kind that made wolves drop their eyes and stop talking.
He'd never used it on me before.
I felt my wolf go very still inside me.
Hudson picked up his mug and walked out of the kitchen without looking back.
I stood there alone, staring at the space where he'd been, and realized I couldn't remember the last time he'd looked at me the way he looked at Adley under those floodlights.
Maybe he never had.
