The Ash Wolf's Forbidden Mate (Hotshot Wolves #5)

1 Finn

The Pulaski bit into the dry pine root, throwing up a spray of dirt that did nothing to kill the green-gold glare of the canyon below.

The sun was already high, beating down on the ridge with a baking heat that turned the pine needles to dust. The retreat was still burning.

The aurum latens in the basement had caught, and the smoke carried a sour alchemical grease that smelled like burnt plastic and old batteries, coating my tongue and blinding my nose.

She is out there. West. On the wind. You are digging a ditch.

A sudden spasm caught the half-healed scars on my chest, the deep lacerations from the Alchemist’s blades pulling tight under my shirt.

My grip tightened on the ash handle of the Pulaski until the dry wood groaned.

I ignored the wolf, forcing my eyes back to the dirt line.

I’d meant to be long gone by now, but the overnight flare-up had kept me working alongside my brothers.

“Keep swinging, Finn,” Levi said, his shovel clearing the loose duff behind me. “If this handline doesn’t reach the granite slab, the green fire jumps the creek.” He wiped soot from his cheek with the back of his sleeve. “Not that I like being the warden’s shadow today.”

I drove the tool down again, the impact jarring through my shoulders. “Reed wants to be sure.”

“Reed is trying to keep us alive,” Levi said.

My mind wasn’t on the fireline. It was stuck in the dark of the night before, in the staging tent where I had stood in front of Kaia.

I had stopped two feet from her, then one, close enough that the air between us was gone, and I had closed my eyes and breathed her in.

Not because I wanted Tommy’s mate, but because her skin carried the thread of a woman I felt I’d always known.

It had smelled of clove. Sharp, dry clove, like spice kept in a dark drawer.

Her name is Sloane, Kaia had told me, her voice carrying the weight of a message she’d promised to deliver.

She was inside the Order undercover. She buried her wolf so deep she forgot the sound of her.

But the second you spoke on the comms, she felt the wolf clawing up the inside of her.

If she stepped into a room with you, Finn, the bond would seal.

All the way. And an awake wolf can’t walk into the next facility. She chose the war.

She said: tell him I heard him, and I’ll come find him when it’s safe to want things.

A beautiful lie. Shifters didn’t survive the Order by wanting things, and they didn’t survive by waiting.

“Finn,” Levi said, his voice dropping. “You’re vibrating. The whole line can feel it. If you don’t calm that beast down, the boys are going to start biting.”

I glanced across the fireline. Beto was working his sector with a savage rhythm, his eyes flashing a volatile yellow under his hard hat.

The rest of the hotshots were just as snappy, their wolves pacing the edge of their skin.

Two hundred and fifty people rescued, at least fifty of them dormant wolves, were waiting in the clearing below.

The collective pull of unmated hotshot wolves on the line was a heavy, suffocating vibration that made my back teeth ache.

“They’ll hold,” I said.

I reached up, my dirty fingers brushing the invisible marks on my other wrist. For years, I had pretended I was just another wildland firefighter swinging a tool on the ridge.

I had played the role of the quiet pack conscience, the stiff senior firefighter who kept his head down.

But the night before, Reed had stood in the circle of ash and stripped that camouflage away in front of the allied packs.

The Treaty Court line, Reed had called me. Signatory Five.

Reed’s grand, desperate design for revolution required a quorum of five lines, unbroken and anchored by succession—by pups—to override the Conclave’s legal hold.

If I walked away, if I let the Treaty Court line remain unanchored and empty, the legal foundation of Reed’s uprising would crumble before the first shot was fired.

“Finn,” Levi grunted, leaning on his shovel. “Pack’s moving down. Reed and Brann want you in the flats. Testing the rows.”

I stopped. The Pulaski hung mid-air, the steel blade gleaming in the harsh sun. “I’m not doing it, Levi.”

“It’s the order, Finn. Walk the camp. See if she’s down there.”

“It’s a cattle call,” I spat, my jaw clenching. “We’re treating two hundred and fifty traumatized women like inventory. Sniffing them like hound dogs to see if they fit our legal quorum. It’s exactly what the Order did to them in the cellars.”

Levi didn’t argue. He just stood there under the yellow hard hat, a massive, soot-stained wall in Nomex, and shrugged.

But his eyes were rimmed with gold, and his jaw was clenched.

“We need the quorum, Finn. Brann is carrying the ledger, but we need the fifth line anchored. You want to argue, argue with Reed. Until then, we walk.”

I wanted to throw the Pulaski into the canyon. I wanted to turn north and walk into the timberline right now, to hunt down the ghost that was running from me. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I didn’t have the list of names from Tommy’s Blood-Glass Ledger to correlate with Santos’ dormant map.

I had to buy time. I had to play the good soldier for one more hour until I could get those names out of Tommy.

I drove the Pulaski hard into the dry dirt, leaving the handle vibrating in the dust. “Let’s get it over with.”

We descended the rocky flank of the ridge, the trail giving way to the flat turnaround of the canyon.

The staging camp was a suffocating grid of heat and desperation.

The sun beat down mercilessly, baking the dry dirt until the dust rose in hot, choking plumes around our boots.

Tents were up for shade. The local packs had helped with supplies and personnel for this makeshift camp until more permanent arrangements could be made.

The sound of the camp was a constant, metallic rustle—the crinkling of hundreds of emergency blankets catching the hot wind like shards of broken glass.

The women, and one young man Tommy had called Eli, huddled beneath them, their shoulders pulled tight, their faces smudged with soot and dried sweat.

The air smelled of cheap washhouse soap, parched dirt, and the vinegar-like tang of the chemical suppressants still leaching out of their pores.

But beneath it all was the raw, electric current of fear.

“Our wolves are too close,” I muttered, my nostrils flaring.

Levi kept his massive hands open and visible at his sides, walking with a deliberate stride to make his heavy frame look smaller, less threatening.

Yet his eyes tracked every shift in the blankets, his enforcer instincts on hair-trigger.

“Dozens of unmated wolves pacing the perimeter is making the air thick enough to chew. It’d be worse without Brann and Reed holding the line. ”

My vision pulsed. I blinked hard, keeping the wolf’s yellow out of my eyes as I walked the dusty aisles.

I took a deep, desperate draft of the dry air, my sinuses straining against the alchemical soot.

I passed a cot where a woman stared blankly at the sky.

Nothing. I passed another cot, where another woman curled into a tight ball under her foil.

Nothing. Only the bitter, chemical frost of the Order’s needles.

With every row, the anger in my chest coiled tighter, a hot fluid rising in my throat.

I breathed in a third woman, drawing the air off her blanket, but my nose met only the scent of dust and cheap soap.

My wolf snarled behind my ribs, clawing at the walls of my chest. Not her.

None of them are her. The bond was a raw, open nerve, dragging me toward a woman who wasn’t here, while the scent of clove mocked me from the memory of another man’s mate.

I felt like a monster walking the rows. The sheer unfairness of it burned. The universe had woken my mate, had let her hear my voice across three floors of concrete, and then had scattered her into the dark.

“Finn,” Levi warned, his voice a low, warning rumble. “You’re drawing too hard. The boys at the perimeter are tracking you. You’re throwing off enough territorial static to start a riot.”

“I’m fine,” I snapped, my hand clenching into a fist.

Nearby, a young woman had her head tipped back, her mouth slightly open to catch the dry mountain air.

She wasn’t crying, just looking up at the sky as if verifying the sun was real.

But three cots down, in row ten, a younger dormant woman bolted upright.

She fisted her fingers in her blanket, her eyes wide and blank with panic as she stared at the green-gold smoke drifting over the ridge.

“They’re coming back!” she screamed, her voice cracking. “The Wardens—they’re coming!”

One of ours, Wren, tried to hold her, but the woman thrashed, her wolf trying to break through the dormant frost in a frantic surge.

I stepped in. I didn’t touch her, but I brought myself level with her. “The retreat is ash,” I said, my voice level. “Look at the ridge. Those are our wolves holding the line. There’s a wall around this camp that nothing crosses. You’re safe.”

She looked at my face, her breathing shallow, searching for the lie. She didn’t find one. Slowly, her shoulders dropped in relief.

Across the turnaround, Tommy was leaning against the hood of a field truck. Reed and Brann were with him, their heads bent over the glowing light of the Blood-Glass Ledger. The gold and red reflections flickered across their faces.

“Finn?” Levi asked.

Reed and Brann finally, finally stepped away from the truck—from Tommy and his ledger.

“Fuck this,” I said.

I left Levi standing in the aisle and walked straight toward Tommy.

Tommy was leaning against the fender of the truck, the Blood-Glass Ledger resting on the hood between his hands. The crystal was still churning, throwing its light up under his jaw—gold sliding to green, then to a deep arterial red as the trapped signatures turned over in the facets.