12. Chapter 12 #2
I toweled off, dragged on underwear and a bra, then pulled on the clothes I had already laid out for the run.
Soft joggers. An oversized Henley worn thin at the collar.
Boots I could kick off fast at a tree line without having to wrestle laces in the dark.
Nothing precious. Nothing fitted. The kind of outfit that existed for one purpose only—to get me to the edge of the woods and then hit the ground in a little pile while my wolf took over the rest.
When I stepped back into the bathroom, the mirror had only half-cleared. My reflection looked blurred around the edges for a second, all damp hair and bare face and the kind of clothing no woman wore unless she planned on ceasing to be fully human for a while.
I leaned my hands on the counter and tried to think through what I actually knew.
Iron Valor runs back home, had their own rhythm.
Bronc always gave some version of a unity speech before a run—not long, because he wasn’t the kind of alpha who believed leadership required hearing himself talk, but enough to settle the pack into itself.
A reminder that we ran as one. That the old, the young, the wounded, the restless, the mated, the unmated, the ones who’d had a hard week and the ones living through the best season of their lives all belonged to the same body tonight.
Then somebody would let out a whoop because wolves were still wolves no matter how solemn the moment started, and the whole thing would tip into laughter and stripping off clothes and the easy chaos of people becoming what they were.
Back home, nakedness at a run had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with truth.
You shifted because bodies changed shape, because fur replaced skin, because boots and denim didn’t survive the process.
That was all. Kids yipped and chased ankles before they shifted.
Elders took their time. Families ran together.
Cousins nipped each other’s heels. Mates brushed flank to flank.
The canyon land opened under moonlight, and the whole pack poured through it like something old and holy and alive.
I missed that so much I could feel it like hunger.
Ironwood, though, was another matter.
I didn’t know their rituals. Didn’t know if they gathered first for food or formalities, if Sage spoke before they ran, if the whole pack shifted in one wild collective rush or in smaller measured groups.
I didn’t know if they treated guests like honored company or like variables under observation.
I didn’t know whether the women ran beside the men as matter-of-factly as we did back home or whether all that polished heritage nonsense Sloan had half-mocked came with rules nobody had thought to mention to the Texas stray.
The not-knowing sat in my chest with a small, steady pressure.
Beside it sat the memory of Sage Lynch.
His table. His voice. The brief warmth of his leg against mine in the VIP section while conversation moved easy around us.
His attention had not been unwelcome. That was the truth.
He was handsome enough to make a woman foolish if she wasn’t careful and polished enough to make foolishness feel like a reasonable civic activity.
He had looked at me plainly. Invited me openly.
Offered me wolf company and a place to run when my own skin had been starting to feel too tight.
That mattered.
But it was not the same.
Not even close.
I caught my own eyes in the mirror then, saw where that line of thought was trying to lead, and shut it down before it got any uglier.
“Don’t be presumptuous, Maddie,” I said out loud.
The woman in the mirror looked damp and tired and a little too serious for somebody talking to herself in an oversized Henley, but she did at least seem capable of taking instruction.
My phone lay on the dresser where I’d left it.
I picked it up.
For one second, I considered waiting until tomorrow. For one more second I considered writing something light and safe and absolutely worthless. Then I opened our message thread and typed:
The gift is beautiful.
I stared at that.
Too bare.
Too insufficient.
I added:
Thank you.
Still not enough.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, deleted nothing, and kept going.
I’d like to speak with you about something important when I get back. I may stay a couple of days depending on how the pack handles the run festivities, but I want to talk.
Then I read the whole thing over.
Once.
Twice.
A third time because apparently I had chosen suffering as a hobby.
The message looked exposed in a way I did not enjoy. Not dramatic. Not romantic. Just honest enough to feel risky. I almost rewrote important to personal, then decided that sounded worse somehow, more loaded, more likely to send both of us into some private spiral before I had even left the house.
So I hit send before I could lose my nerve.
The dots appeared almost immediately.
That alone did something undignified to my pulse. I watched the tiny typing bubble like it held state secrets. Then his reply came through.
Please be safe tonight. I look forward to seeing you when you return, and to whatever it is you wish to discuss.
Measured.
Warm.
Very him.
And yet something in the speed of it, the steadiness, the absence of hedging, made it feel more intimate than a prettier message might have.
I read it once fast.
Then again, slower.
Then I set the phone face-down on the dresser like a woman demonstrating excellent self-command.
Three seconds later I picked it back up and read it one more time.
Please be safe tonight.
The line sat under my ribs with strange, quiet weight. He looked forward to seeing me. He had said so plainly. No dance in it. No retreat. No careful little fence built out of civility and title and species difference.
I pressed my lips together, locked the screen, and finally set the phone down for real.
Keys.
I needed my keys.
I grabbed them from the dish near the door, picked up my small packed duffel, took one last look around my room as if I might somehow have forgotten a crucial part of myself on the desk beside a wrapped first edition, and headed out.
If I stayed still one minute longer, I was liable to either overthink the run or text the vampire prince back something embarrassing. Neither seemed wise.
So I shut the door behind me and went to meet the pack.
The GPS pin took me farther out than I expected, past the softer edges of Philadelphia and into a stretch of dark road where the trees grew close and expensive things preferred not to advertise themselves too loudly.
Then the headlights caught wrought iron and gold script at once, and I sat back in my seat with both hands on the wheel, because the entrance to Ironwood was the sort of thing a person built when ordinary wealth had stopped feeling expressive enough.
Massive decorative iron gates rose out of stone pillars on either side of the drive.
Above them, an arched sign read Ironwood in raised gold script, lit from below so the letters glowed warm against the dark treeline beyond.
Not subtle. Not vulgar either. Just expensive enough to stop pretending modesty had ever been part of the family creed.
“Well,” I muttered to myself, rolling to a stop. “That’s not ominous at all.”
The gates did not care for my commentary.
I rolled down my window and hit the call box button. For a few seconds, there was only static and the low idle of my SUV. Then a gruff male voice came through the speaker.
“Yes?”
“Madelyn Baucaum,” I said. “I’m here at Alpha Sage Lynch’s invitation.”
Silence followed.
Not long. Just long enough to remind me I was on somebody else’s land, asking entry under his name.
Then the speaker clicked once, and the voice said nothing further at all. The gates simply began to slide open with slow mechanical finality, iron parting from iron while my headlights reached into the darkness beyond.
No welcome.
No further questions.
That probably should have reassured me.
It didn’t.
I eased the SUV forward.
The path beyond the gates was brick rather than gravel, old enough to look established and maintained enough to tell me someone spent serious money keeping it that way. Trees closed in on both sides almost immediately—old-growth, tall and thick-trunked, the kind with age in them.
The farther I went, the more the world behind me seemed to fall away.
No neighboring lights. No street noise. No hint of city left except some faint reflected brightness overhead where clouds held it captive.
The woods took on that dense, private stillness land sometimes had when generations of people had kept others out of it on purpose.
My wolf stirred under my skin, not frightened, exactly, but alert in the way all animals got when entering another predator’s chosen ground.
The place smelled like wealth and wolf.
Then the trees broke.
“Holy shit,” I said softly.
It was a castle.