Chapter 8

“Alpha Ajax,” the man calls out, plastering on a too-wide smile. He extends his hand, the gesture exaggerated and over-eager. My eyes drop to it, cold and unmoved, then climb back to his face. I don’t move. He falters, the smile twitching, then retreats his hand with a nervous laugh.

“Well… welcome to Shtylla e Forcës, Alpha Ajax. It’s an honor to have you accept my invitation.” His hand slides over his mate’s shoulder, possessive. I suppress a flicker of revulsion. Mates, again. Always mates. It’s enough to make my stomach churn.

“This is my mate, Rebecca,” he continues. “My son Elijah, the future alpha. My first daughter, Eloise. And the twins—Edna and Emma.”

All blonde. All brown-eyed. All idiotic-looking.

I say nothing, my silence louder than any greeting.

I glance at Cooper, but his expression says everything before he can open his mouth. Hope flickers in his eyes like a candle struggling against a gust. I sigh and turn back to the alpha, forcing calm into my voice.

“Are these all the members of your pack?”

“Yes. Everyone. Male and female.” His eyes dart from me to Cooper, uncertain, the weight of scrutiny already pressing into his skin.

I nod once, my jaw tightening. So the mission was a failure.

“Are you… y-you sure this is all of them?” Cooper asks, voice quaking with barely bridled desperation. “Everyone? Even the guys? I don’t mind if it’s a boy…”

Here we go again.

Everett places a firm hand on Cooper’s shoulder, pulling him subtly back like reining in a wild horse before it bolts. I nod, signaling Everett to get him away from the crowd before he unravels entirely.

Then Cooper tries again.

“I know! What about the omegas? You have omegas, don’t you?”

The Luna gestures toward a smaller group, standing slightly apart from the others. My eyes catch the eldest daughter’s reaction—a slight tremble of her bottom lip, sucked inward as if to trap a secret inside. She flicks her gaze between Cooper and me. There’s something she isn’t saying.

“She knows something,” Alaric growls from the depths of my mind.

I take a breath and speak, my tone shifting from authoritative to pleading—an alpha appealing to another.

“You see, my Beta has been searching for his mate for years,” I say, gesturing toward Cooper, whose posture is caving in with anxiety. “He’s nearing the edge of hope. If there’s even one person missing from this gathering—just one—I promise your pack my absolute protection, Alpha Swindells. But only if she or he is found among your people.”

“I told you,” Swindells begins again, eyes twitching with discomfort, “there is no—”

“Sandy! Sandy’s not here!” Eloise blurts, instantly slapping a hand over her mouth. Her mother’s glare burns holes into her, but the damage is done.

Cooper gasps—a tiny squeal that escapes without his permission. That fragile, flickering hope sparks again. I wonder, bitterly, if it would be kinder to extinguish it now, rather than let him burn.

“Oh, but it can’t be Sabbath,” the alpha’s son adds quickly. “She doesn’t have a wolf and—”

“Shut up,” Cooper snaps, his voice flat and final. The brat shrinks.

Eloise raises her hand like a child in class, bouncing on her heels. “I’ll show you where she is! Follow me!”

She whirls around, taking off at a sprint. Cooper and Everett follow instantly, and I stay frozen in place, the dread of what comes next coiling in my chest like smoke.

“Hendrix,” Everett calls through our link. His mental voice is dry but urgent.

“Do I have to?” I groan inwardly.

“One word. Brie.”

Damn him.

I break into a run, dodging through the parting crowd, feet pounding the earth, lungs filling with sharp, pine-laced air. We’re far from the pack houses now, nearing the edge of their lands. Eloise halts at a weather-beaten cottage tucked beneath crooked trees, almost camouflaged in shadows and ivy. The wood is warped and silvering with age.

Cooper shakes his head. He can’t smell anything yet. The girl, though—determined as ever—shoves the door open. A gust of wind rushes out like breath exhaled from long-held lungs, carrying a scent so distinct it halts me in my tracks.

Coconut milk and ripe fig.

Alaric purrs—a low, rolling growl of contentment—as he rolls at the edge of my mind like a wolf basking in sun. It makes no sense.

“No, it’s not her. All I smell is coconut milk,” Cooper says, sniffing again, agitated.

“That’s her natural scent,” Eloise offers.

“I’m supposed to smell more! Something deeper! Something just for me! And what the hell is that hawthorn and violet smell? It’s everywhere! It’s distracting!” Cooper growls, pacing now, eyes wild.

But I… I feel myself drawn—pulled by a tether I never knew existed.

If no one else can smell the fig, but I can…

Then it’s her.

Alaric scratches violently at the edge of my consciousness, desperate to be let out, to find her. I was told I’d never have a mate. Told our line was cursed, that such a bond didn’t run in our blood.

But the scent… it’s real. She’s real?

“Hendrix, where are you going?” Everett’s voice cuts through the trees behind me.

“I need help with Cooper!” he shouts. “His wolf’s going feral!”

“Leave me!” Cooper screams back. “I swear, it’s hers! I need to follow that scent!”

“But no one here smells like hawthorn and violet!” Everett protests.

“That means she’s mine!”

Their shouting fades behind me. My focus narrows. My legs move faster.

Then—voices. Two girls. One laughing, the other hesitating.

“Stop being such a chicken, Sapphire, and get into the water. After that run, you need a dip to cool off your panicking. It’s over now, isn’t it?”

The words ripple through the trees. A sharp inhale from Cooper behind me confirms it—he knows that voice.

“Sapphire, the water is so—wait. Did you hear that?”

Silence. Then pebbles scatter under hurried feet.

“Crap! Someone’s coming! Sorry, Sapphire, gotta go!”

“No, no, no!”

Three seconds later, Cooper shifts. Fur bursts from skin with a snap of bone and sinew. Cole, his wolf, bolts past me like a cannonball, snarling with urgency. I slow, heart pounding, breath hitching.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my mind is just desperate, maybe my bloodline hasn’t changed at all.

Then—a scream.

“What the—! Aaaah!”

A thud.

“Get the fuck off me, you heavy meat!”

I crash into the clearing, breath stuttering.

There’s a small pond, sunlight flickering across the surface like golden flame. In the middle of it all, Cooper’s wolf has a girl pinned beneath his weight, his tail wagging like an idiot in love.

Guess he won’t be disappointed after all.

“Don’t worry about her. Find our mate!” Alaric urges.

I turn—no, I snap—toward the scent.

And there she is.

Pressed against a tree, breathing like she just outran the world. Her golden copper-brown hair is tangled, clinging to her face in damp, curling strands. Her skin is dusted with dew and her eyes—

Stars.

They aren’t just blue. They’re sapphire—pure, impossibly bright, luminous gems that suck the air from my lungs. How is that even possible? I have no idea, but that’s what they are. Her irises are almost literally star sapphires.

Her lips—pale red and slightly parted—tremble as she stares past me. At Cooper. At the chaos.

Not at me. Not yet.

But my soul has already made its choice.

Because this girl—the one the world forgot, the one hidden in a lonely cottage at the edge of the wild—is what I thought I’d die without.

My mate.