Epilogue #2
Ivy Bennett spent years being taught to doubt the very gift that made her powerful. Maddox Reed was the Pack Guard wolf who believed her from the moment she opened her door—and whose wolf recognized something even more important before either of them was ready for it.
Their story may be complete.
But the Pack Guard Agency still has one final mission.
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The Pack Guard Agency Series Concludes...
Coming Next:
PROTECTED BY THE PACK
A Wolf Shifter Protector Fated Mates Romance
Pack Guard Agency — Book 5
The FINAL Book in the Pack Guard Agency Series
The enemy I failed to destroy is hunting the one woman I never forgot.
I’m a Black Wolf alpha who built the Pack Guard Agency to protect the gifted and hunted. I never lose control or let anyone close enough to matter.
Then Tessa Wynn walks back into my life.
The life-weaver I left four years ago.
The woman my wolf never stopped wanting to claim.
Every second near her is torture. Every touch burns hotter. And when she looks at me like she still remembers the man beneath the monster, my control starts slipping fast.
Then I discover someone inside my agency is betraying us.
And Tessa is their target.
Now keeping her alive means keeping her close.
Close enough to touch. Close enough to taste. Close enough for my wolf to demand I finally claim her.
But the closer she gets, the more our enemy can use her against me.
Anyone coming for my mate will have to go through me.
And the entire pack.
Coming to October 24, 2026
CLICK HERE FOR A PRE-ORDER COPY
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Protected By The Pack
Pack Guard Agency — Book 5
Chapter 1: The Bond Awakes
TESSA
The bond wakes before I kill the engine.
I sit in my car at the edge of the Pack Guard Agency lot, hands steady on the wheel while my magic presses outward like breath against glass.
Four years of telling myself the tether was dormant, buried deep enough that it no longer got a vote.
The flutter beneath my ribs is professional focus.
That's what I call it, the lie I allow myself until I open the door.
October air cuts across my face, sharp with pine and the metallic bite of old workings. My life-weaver senses slip past the agency's perimeter before I consciously release them.
I make it six steps before I stop. Something is wrong. Very wrong.
I close my eyes and let my magic sink deeper.
The wards are thinning where they should be strongest. Containment lines have gaps hidden beneath layers of patched magic.
Some of the deterioration is natural. Some of it isn't. And beneath every fracture, pouring power into the failing structure faster than it can bleed out, is a signature I would recognize anywhere.
Caleb.
My chest tightens. He's feeding his own reserves into the building. Of course he is. Even after four years, I know exactly what kind of man Caleb Thorne is: the kind who'd bleed himself dry before admitting he needed someone else to hold the line.
I open my eyes and keep walking. The front entrance rises ahead in glass and steel, modern and immaculate, every line built to give nothing away. That feels like him too.
A young lobby guard checks my credentials, and his eyes flick up to my face and go careful.
"Tessa Wynn." Not a question. "They said you were coming."
"Word travels."
"You have no idea." He hands the badge back too fast, like it might bite him. "Whole floor's been on edge since Director Thorne cleared your contract personally. He doesn't do that. Ever." He catches himself, like he's said too much, and straightens. "Third floor. He's expecting you."
"Does he usually clear contracts himself?"
"Not in three years I've worked here." A beat, weighing whether to say more. "Good luck up there."
Good luck. Not welcome, not congratulations. A warning dressed as courtesy. I file it and head for the elevator.
The car carries me up, and I use the ride to slow my breathing. The bond is not dormant. It never was. I've simply become very good at pretending I can't feel it.
The doors open. Six dominant wolves hit my senses at once, power filling the corridor like weather moving in. Field commander. Intelligence. Tracker. Two signatures I don't recognize.
And then... him.
Everything inside me goes still. I walk into the briefing room.
Caleb Thorne stands at the head of the table, and for one dangerous second, I forget how to breathe.
Dark hair threaded with more silver than I remember.
Broad shoulders beneath a black shirt. The scar cutting across one side of his face catches the overhead light, a pale reminder of violence survived.
He looks harder than he did four years ago.
More dangerous. More tired. Still devastating.
His hands are braced against the table as if he's holding something enormous perfectly still.
I remember those hands differently: warm against my skin, steady at my waist, the way he used to loosen beneath my touch, as if I were the only person he trusted enough to stop guarding himself around.
The memory lands low and warm before I can stop it.
Then his eyes find mine, and every wolf in the room goes silent.
The air changes. They feel it. Maybe not the bond itself, but the instant their Black Wolf director sees me and something inside him stops obeying.
The pull begins beneath my sternum: one hard tug, then another.
My body remembers before my mind can stop it: his hands on me, his voice in the dark, the low rumble that used to rise from his chest when I touched him. Four years collapse into one heartbeat.
His gaze darkens. "Tessa."
One word. Level. Controlled. Everyone else hears their director greeting a consultant. I hear the wolf.
Mine.
The word doesn't come from him. It doesn't have to. My life-weaver magic crashes into the bond, and heat unfurls beneath my ribs, sudden and intimate. I lock my knees. Do not react. Do not cross the room.
"Director Thorne." My voice, at least, still belongs to me. "Thank you for the expedited contract approval."
A muscle jumps once in his jaw. His eyes never leave mine. The sound that rises in his chest isn't quite a growl, but it isn't far off either, and he cuts it short before it can finish.
The man seated to his left breaks the silence. Six-four, broad shoulders, brilliant blue eyes, expression carved from stone.
"Roan." Caleb's voice, low. "Introductions can wait. We're already behind."
"They can." Roan doesn't sit down yet. His gaze cuts to me, assessing in a way that has nothing to do with courtesy. "Just so we're clear on the record, Ms. Wynn, your file says life-weaver. It doesn't say why the director personally expedited a contract that normally takes six weeks."
"Ask him." I hold his stare. "I only signed what was put in front of me."
Something shifts behind Roan's expression. Not approval. Close enough. "Your credentials have been verified. The briefing can proceed."
Not a welcome. A challenge. Prove you belong here. Fine. I've spent most of my life doing exactly that.
"Understood."
Roan holds my gaze a beat longer than courtesy requires. "Good. We don't have time to babysit anyone through this."
"I don't need babysitting. I need the archive schematics."
Something that might almost be respect crosses Roan's face before he buries it.
"Sit," Caleb says, before either of us can say more. "We have a containment failure in the lower archive requiring immediate assessment."
I take the empty chair three seats away from him. Far enough to be professional. Not far enough to stop feeling him.
The briefing lasts forty minutes. Infrastructure decay. Anchor instability. The backup containment system failing right along with the primary. Technical language built to make a crisis sound manageable. It isn't.
"Ward integrity is holding at sixty percent," the intelligence operative says, ash-brown hair, steel-gray eyes, no wasted syllables. "Trending down. We don't have a clean cause yet."
"You don't have a clean cause because you're not looking at the right system," I say, before I've decided whether it's my place to say it.
Every head at the table turns.
"Explain," Caleb says. Not a challenge. An order that sounds almost like relief.
"You're tracking ward integrity like it's failing on its own. It isn't. Something's compensating for it in real time, which is the only reason it hasn't already collapsed." I don't look at Caleb when I say it. I don't have to. "Find what's compensating, and you'll find where the real damage is."
The intelligence operative's eyes narrow, recalculating. "Noted," he says, and writes something down.
While the others talk, I let my senses move through the bones of the building, and the deeper I read, the colder I become. The decay isn't natural. Someone has been cutting the system apart with precision. And every time it fails, Caleb compensates. With himself.
"You're certain it's not organic decay?" the intelligence operative asks, watching me now instead of his tablet.
"I'm certain." I hold his gaze. "Organic decay is messy. This is surgical. Someone wants it to look like age."
"Gideon," Caleb says, and I file the name away, "cross-reference the timeline against personnel access."