Chapter 26
Wolfe
The sun rose slow and gray over the Hollow, the sky bleached of color like even the heavens were tired of blood.
Smoke still curled from the smoldering pyres. Not enough to choke, just enough to cling to every breath.
I stood at the edge of the clearing with my arms crossed, scanning the perimeter. Some were already back on patrol, though they moved like their legs were too heavy, eyes still glassy with grief and shock.
Others wandered through their packlands in silence, shifted and healed, but the shift didn’t heal the mind of what had happened. What they had endured. Those scars, we carried with us. There was no conversation. No laughter. Just the ragged shuffle of the brokenhearted.
They didn’t understand. How could they? They didn’t know why this happened or why it kept happening.
And I couldn’t tell them.
Not yet. Not because I didn’t want to tell them it was my fault, but because I didn’t know which one of them could be trusted.
But I could tell the ones I trusted.
I need you all at the pack hall, I sent to them, wishing Diesel were already back. But he’d only just left, and it didn’t pass my notice that they struck when both he and I were gone. Why had I been so trusting?
I walked back to the office—my mate’s father’s old office—and closed the door behind me. The hall still bore the scent of last night’s battle, the musky tang of adrenaline, power, death.
When they arrived, I didn’t greet them. Just nodded at the chairs and waited until they were all seated.
Brand was disheveled but alert. Killian looked worse—tired, tense, face drawn and pale. Axel and Cody had a tightness around their eyes that wasn’t usually there. Rowen stood by the window, arms crossed, her expression unreadable, jaw tight.
I didn’t sit.
“I need you to understand what we’re up against,” I began, voice low and flat. “I don’t think this is just rogues or an unhappy faction of pack members. I think it goes deeper.”
Killian leaned forward slightly. “How deep?”
I looked at each of them in turn. “The Pack Council.”
Brand cursed under his breath. Rowen stilled.
“They summoned me, knowing we were vulnerable,” I continued. “Not to help. Not to advise. To measure me.”
“Measure you for what?” Rowen asked.
I hesitated; it sounded ludicrous in my head, and it would sound worse out loud. “Being alpha of two packs has made them nervous, I think…” I blew out a breath. “They think I have ambition and I have displayed my ambition when I became alpha of here along with Stonefang.”
“They think you’re making a play for power?” Killian’s tone was incredulous. “For what? The whole fucking continent?”
“They think my unifying two packs is a power grab. They suggested the unrest in the pack is because I have made the pack unstable.”
Cody grunted. “Idiots.”
I shook my head. “They’re not idiots. They’re scared. And scared old wolves do stupid shit. Like pit packs against each other from the shadows.”
“What did you say to them?” Rowen’s voice was quiet.
“I realized they knew what was happening here, because they’re watching.
Watching and not helping. I told them to come take Corrin, Galvin the others, question them without me, but…
” I shook my head. “They aren’t interested.
They’re only interested in me. They say they want both packs to remain intact.
” I looked over at Rowen. “But they don’t want me to be the alpha of both. ”
“They said that?” Killian asked, furious.
“No. But they didn’t deny it, so I walked out.”
She watched me as the others spoke amongst themselves, and I saw the question in her eyes.
“One of them followed me out. He warned me,” I told her, the others quieting as I spoke. “That there was a way to save both territories without further bloodshed. He said I have to give up Blueridge Hollow, and that I would still get to keep my mate.”
Her breath stilled. She looked at me, anger in her eyes. “And you told them to fuck off?”
“The fact I hold two territories unchallenged means I’m dangerous, and they said before it gets worse, I need to return to Stonefang and stay there.”
“Without me?”
I gave her a rueful smile. “No, you come with me, and you stay safe.”
Her gaze didn’t falter. “And again I’ll say, you told them to fuck off.”
I grinned. “More or less.”
Silence stretched. Then Axel spoke. “So we’re at war.”
“No.” I shook my head slowly. “Not yet. But we’re being bled.
Softened. Broken from the inside out. I think we need to review everything again.
I don’t know how much of the initial attacks were by rogues and how much of this latest attack was orchestrated by Pack Council members who oppose merged packs.
We have to consider that someone in the Council wants me to fail, someone who will let the unrest do their dirty work for them. ”
Killian exhaled sharply. “And in the meantime, we’ll keep burying our own.”
“Not if we stop it first.” I looked at Rowen. “We’re sealing the bond. No more waiting.”
She nodded once. “Agreed.”
“When is your heat due? It only works if you’re in heat.”
Rowen didn’t care that the others were in the room as we discussed this.
The bond completely gave us a tactical advantage, and my mate was a strategist at best. “I can ask the druid to make me something to bring it on,” she murmured.
“I know they have done it for couples wanting to conceive. They can do it for me.”
“Will that work?” Axel asked, looking between us. “Forcing it?”
“It’s a natural potion,” Rowen replied. “It encourages my hormones to come out and play.” She gave them a sly grin. “It just means I may be a little difficult on the run up to the heat.”
“Oh, joy,” Killian deadpanned, and the others laughed.
“As my inner circle, I ask you,” I said. “Do we take this to the pack? Tell them everything. The truth. If they know the why, they’ll fight harder when the next attack comes.”
Brand was frowning. “They already fought hard,” he told me.
“None of them held back. I think if you tell them…” He glanced at Cody, and I saw him nod.
“If you tell them the Pack Council isn’t happy you’re alpha here, you weaken them.
This is an old pack, old ways, tradition means everything.
Nothing says tradition more than the Pack Council. ”
I stared at the floor. I knew he was right, but I didn’t like it. It wasn’t who I was. Deception wasn’t my nature. “I run my pack with honesty,” I reminded them all.
“Apart from when you first came here,” Killian reminded me. Unhelpfully, I may add. He saw my look and shrugged. “I’m just saying…”
Rowen moved closer to me. “The bond completed will help the doubters,” she murmured. “Once they feel that, once they know you and I are the true mates we’ve told them we are, it will bring the last of them over.”
“You think they doubt you’re my mate?” The very thought of it hadn’t even occurred to me.
“Killian has a point,” Rowen said, her gaze warm and steady. “We married for political purposes, they never knew you were an alpha, we never knew I was your mate… They have a right to be skeptical.”
“They know I am their alpha now.”
“And after my heat, they’ll know I am your true mate.”
Axel yawned. “Sorry, I didn’t mean… Fuck, I no longer know what I mean. I’m beat.”
I looked around the room. “We all are. We need to rest.”
“We can’t,” Brand said gruffly as he stood. “The only people I trust are in this room, Thalia and Diesel.”
“We’re spread very thinly,” Rowen murmured.
“But we still should be able to sleep. Axel, Cody, you rest. Wolfe is here now; he and I can cover your duties. Take at least eight hours, then when you’re rested, Brand and Killian will rest. Then us, and that’s how we move forward until we’re confident of who we can rely on. ”
Axel looked at me and then Rowen. “You sure?”
“Go,” I told them. “Sleep.”
Brand and Killian left not long after, both ready to take on the world, and I turned to look at Rowen.
“What about you?” I asked her. “You need to rest.”
“No, I need to go talk to the druid.” She reached for my hand. “And you’re coming with me.”
The forest deepened around us, each step muffled by moss and old pine needles, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and ancient magic.
Every step we took, every bend in the trees, felt like it too was waiting for what was coming. For what we were about to do.
Rowen walked beside me. I could feel her even when I didn’t look. Her scent had changed—stronger, sharper, threaded with something my wolf couldn’t name but craved all the same. Not heat. Not yet. But close enough that it made my spine tighten.
I wanted to ask if she was ready, let her know that this didn’t scare me—but I wasn’t sure how.
Not because I didn’t want her. I did. My body ached for her in ways I didn’t understand before the bond began to bloom.
The times we’d been together were everything they should be. But this potion? This heat?
This choice we were about to make to strip ourselves down to raw instinct? When the pack was already weak?
It felt like cheating. It felt like surrender. I just didn’t know who I was surrendering to.
To Rowen. To the bond. To the Goddess.
And maybe…to the version of myself I hadn’t been since I left here.
The trees thinned as we reached the druid’s tent. The druid waited outside. They looked exactly the same as last time—eyes hiding secrets, skin like parchment, presence like the whisper of fate.
“You came,” they said, not a question, just a truth acknowledged.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Rowen stepped past me, and I watched her—watched the way her shoulders squared, how her chin lifted like she was daring fate to test her.
“I’m ready,” she said.
She wasn’t. Not really. Neither of us were. But she meant it.
The druid studied her, and I saw the faintest shift in that weathered expression. Not approval. Not concern. Just…inevitability.
“You’re not,” the druid said. “But you’re willing. That’s enough.”
They pulled a vial from their robe. The liquid inside shimmered like fire and frost at once—contradictory, confusing, beautiful. Like everything I wanted and nothing I deserved.
“This will bring on your heat before it’s due. It will call the bond to completion. Once taken, it cannot be undone.”
“I know.” Her voice didn’t shake as she spoke, though I felt the tremor in her body as she stood beside me.
The druid looked between us both, their fingers curled tighter around the vial. “You’ll lose control. You both will. And the bond, once sealed, cannot be softened later. It will burn through everything that isn’t real.”
“I know that too,” Rowen whispered. “I am ready.”
I stepped closer to Rowen without thinking. I didn’t want that vial touching her hand. Didn’t want magic we didn’t control making this choice for us.
“You don’t have to take it,” I murmured. “Not today.”
“I don’t want to wait,” she said. Her voice was steel, wrapped in something softer.
Our eyes met. Fuck, I was going to lose it if she said one more thing that made me love her harder than I already did.
The druid gave her the vial. Their fingers brushed Rowen’s skin. I didn’t like it.
“Take it somewhere private,” they said. “Let the earth witness your choice, not me.”
I guided Rowen away, hand at her back, my body humming with too much power, too much need. I wanted to shift. I wanted to carry her. I wanted to break something just to feel the ground shake like I was shaking inside.
We didn’t speak as we walked. The bond stretched between us—tight, alive, waiting. She carried the vial at her hip like it was nothing.
But I knew it wasn’t nothing, it was everything. We weren’t walking toward a decision. We were walking toward surrender. Surrender to each other.
And Goddess help me—I didn’t want to stop.
We walked in silence again, but it wasn’t the same. The weight between us had shifted. We were no longer moving toward a choice. We were already in it.
“I think we patrol today, move amongst our pack, let them see us, and I’ll…” She blushed. “I’ll take it tonight.”
I glanced at her. “You think it will work that fast?”
Rowen didn’t meet my eyes, just kept her gaze steady on the path in front of her. “I think they were waiting for us and that what’s in this vial is probably the strongest dose they could make. It’ll happen fast.”
“We’re really doing this.”
Rowen stopped. “You have doubts?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then what?” She moved closer. “Tell me.”
“Call me old-fashioned, but I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t be forcing it. I wanted it to be natural, both of us… Fuck, I don’t know.”
She tilted her head, studying me the way only she could. Like she saw all the layers I didn’t show anyone else. “You think this isn’t natural?”
“No,” I said quickly. “That’s not what I mean.” I exhaled hard, dragging a hand through my hair. “I just—I wanted it to happen because we couldn’t fight it. Not because we decided to push the bond over the edge with a bottle of fucking moon-juice brewed in a cauldron of goddess-knows-what.”
Her lips quirked, but there was no humor in it. Just something sad and soft and sharp. “You think you’re forcing us?”
“I think this is us trying to survive,” I admitted. “I think we’ve been pushed so hard for so long that we don’t know what real is anymore. And I wanted our bond to be the one thing that wasn’t strategic. That didn’t come with a war or a price.”
Silence stretched between us.
The vial at her hip glinted in the faint light that filtered through the trees.
Rowen reached for my hand, lacing our fingers together. “You think I don’t want that too?”
I looked at her. Really looked. She was tired. Determined. Radiant with something that made my chest ache.
“I know you do,” I said. “But you’re still willing to drink that. To burn your way into a heat that’ll have your body screaming for mine—and maybe your heart, and I’m not even sure it’s ready.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It is.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
“You say that now,” I said with a bitter laugh. “But if we do this, there’s no going back. The bond will seal. That thread between us becomes a chain, Rowen. One I’ll never be able to break. Even if I lose you. Even if you regret me.”
She stepped closer, her hand rising to cup my jaw. “Wolfe. I’ve never regretted you. Even when I hated you.”
My breath caught. “That’s not reassuring.”
“Then let me say it clearer.” Her eyes locked with mine, fierce and full of the fire I knew lived in her soul. “I’m not doing this because I’m being strategic. I’m doing this because I want to choose you—now. On purpose. While I still can.”
The forest held its breath again. Or maybe that was just me. “You sure?” I asked her.
She nodded once. “Are you?”
I swallowed the growl that rose in my throat and kissed her hand. “Then let’s get ready to burn down the fucking world.”