Sam
Chapter thirty-two
The mate bond was still singing.
That was the only word for it. Singing. A low, steady hum that had settled into the marrow of my bones and showed no signs of stopping. Every breath carried Annabella’s scent deeper into my lungs, and every heartbeat sent the bond pulsing between us like a second bloodstream.
An hour ago, we’d been tangled together under the bedsheets with magic dissolving off our skin like mist. An hour ago, the mate bond had cracked open inside my chest and flooded me with everything she was—her want, her fierce, terrified joy—and I’d held her against me and thought, this is the only thing that has ever made sense in my life.
Now I was driving her family to Three Rivers, and I had twenty-four hours before I turned myself over to the Wolf Council.
My wolf had opinions about this. Loud ones.
Mate. Ours. Not leaving.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and breathed through it.
The bond made everything worse. Before—when it had been that raw, unnamed pull between us—leaving would have been brutal.
Survivable, but brutal. Now? The completed bond meant I could feel her.
Not just her presence, not just her scent, but the warm hum of her contentment as she sat beside me, the way her wolf had curled up against the connection, rumbling low and satisfied, like she’d finally found home.
If I walked into the Kennel tomorrow, the bond would stretch between us like a wound ripped open and held apart.
The SUV hummed beneath us on the winding back roads toward Three Rivers.
Annabella sat in the passenger seat. In the backseat, Aunt Jo had Ellie tucked against her side, both of them dozing.
Fred sat behind me, one arm around Emma.
Emma was staring out the window with a gentle, disconnected expression.
Fred caught my eye in the rearview and gave me a nod. Steady man, Fred.
Annabella hadn’t spoken since we’d gotten back in the car.
She sat with her knees drawn up, one hand resting on her thigh, fingers tapping out a rhythm I recognized—four taps, pause, four taps.
Counting. Mapping. Even now, even bonded, even with her wolf sated and her magic quiet, she was running threat assessments.
My wolf found that devastatingly attractive.
“You okay?” she asked, not looking at me.
I should have been ready for it, but the bond turned her voice into something I felt across my whole body, almost as if a warm hand was pressed flat against my chest.
“Define okay,” I said.
“Your scent changed. Three minutes ago, you smelled like…” she paused, nostrils flaring, “satisfaction. Now you smell like…like someone trying to solve a math problem while their house is on fire.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “That’s oddly specific.”
“I’m finding my wolf is oddly specific. So what changed?”
I remembered I have to leave you tomorrow. I remembered that the best thing that ever happened to me has a twenty-four-hour expiration date. I remembered that the deal I made to keep you safe is going to tear us both apart.
“Strategy,” I said. “Making sure everything’s in place for when we get back.”
She turned her head. Her beautiful eyes locked on me, and I felt her suspicion flare—quick and sharp. She could feel my agitation. The bond was too new for words, too raw for specifics, but emotions bled through it like ink through wet paper. And I was putting out distress like a radio tower.
“Strategy,” she repeated. Flat. Unconvinced.
“I’m a strategic guy.”
“Sam.”
“Annabella.”
She watched me for another three seconds. I counted. Then she shook her head and looked forward. “Fine. But you should know your poker face is absolute shit.”
“Excuse me? My poker face is legendary.”
She didn’t laugh. Her hand found my arm, and through the contact the bond flared—her reading me, deliberate and unsubtle. “Try again.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “There’s something I need to tell you. When we get to Three Rivers.”
“Why not now?”
“Because I want you to be able to yell at me properly, and you can’t do that in an enclosed space with your family sleeping three feet away.”
Her eyes narrowed. I felt her worry ratchet up, and underneath it, a thread of fear.
Mate hurts. We’re hurting mate. Stop this.
My wolf’s distress punched through me so hard the bond spiked, and Annabella flinched. Just a fraction…a tightening around her eyes, a quick inhale.
“Sam, whatever it is—”
“I know. We’ll deal with it.”
She held my eyes for a long beat. Then she reached over and put her hand on my arm.
Her touch was warm, grounding, and her emotions poured through the contact—concern, determination, and underneath it all, something so steady and sure that it made my throat ache.
She was choosing to trust me. Despite everything I’d done, every lie I’d told, every time I’d kept her in the dark, she was choosing this. Choosing me.
I didn’t deserve it. I knew that. But I held onto it the way a drowning man holds onto anything that floats. Her thumb traced a slow circle against my skin—unconscious, soothing—and my wolf settled just enough for me to breathe.
I used the silence to run through my list. Again. Obsessively, because that’s what I did when I couldn’t control what was coming—I controlled what I could.
Ryan had all the intelligence I’d gathered on Kane’s network.
Every name, every connection, every thread I’d spent four years pulling.
Derek knew where I’d kept the backup files on Webster’s operations: physical copies, encrypted drives, three separate locations.
If something happened to me, that information didn’t die.
Gideon would keep eyes on Council movements.
Sofia would take care of Annabella. Not just practically—emotionally.
Sofia had a gift for making people feel claimed, like they belonged, and if there was anyone who needed that right now, it was the woman sitting beside me.
Thomas and Wally would handle medical. The Three Rivers enforcers were solid, Carlito and Jase especially.
Annabella had her own people. Mina would keep calculating the odds and finding solutions nobody else could see.
Zeke would keep everyone grounded with his quiet strength and his healing magic. It still felt like swallowing glass.
The road narrowed as we approached Three Rivers territory.
The invisible border was marked by standing stones, ancient, moss-covered, half-buried in the earth.
Two figures stood in the road ahead, planted directly on the Pack border.
One tall and commanding, amber eyes catching the late sun.
The other smaller, delicate, and unnervingly still.
I hit the brakes. Hard.
The SUV skidded. Everyone jerked against their seatbelts. Ellie woke with a startled cry, and Aunt Jo pulled her close. Emma made a confused sound.
“What’s happening?” Fred asked, already shifting forward in his seat.
Talia Johnson and Bethany Rose stood in the middle of the road next to a blue Honda.
“Damn it,” I breathed.
They were early. Twenty-four hours early.
“Stay in the car,” I said, reaching for the door.
“Hell no!” Annabella was out of the SUV in two seconds flat, light building around her fingers. “Like I’d let you face the Council alone.”
Stubborn, impossible, magnificent woman.
I moved to put myself between her and Talia.
“Sam Shaw.” Talia’s voice carried that diamond-hard authority, but underneath it—underneath—I caught something I’d never heard from Talia Johnson before.
Fear.
“You’re early, Talia.” I kept my voice level. “We had a deal. I have twenty-four more hours.”
“What deal?” Annabella’s head whipped round to me. “What the fuck is going on?”
Shit, shit, shit. This was not how I wanted this to go down.
“I made an agreement with the Council,” I said. Kept my eyes on Talia. “I turn myself in, take the fall. In exchange, Three Rivers stays safe. No invasion, no retaliation. You, Mina, Zeke—free. All of you. They won’t hunt you.”
Annabella went very still. “You what?”
“It was the only way—”
“You made a deal?” Her voice was dangerously quiet. “And you did this without telling me?”
“It’s the right call, Annabella. The strategic—”
“Fuck your strategy!” Her magic flared, throwing sharp shadows across the road. Ellie’s face appeared in the SUV’s rear window, wide-eyed. “You’re not turning yourself in. Not now, not in twenty-four hours, not ever.”
“It’s the only way to protect you. Protect the Pack—”
“Then we find another way!” She stepped forward, putting herself between me and Talia. Standing in front of me. Protecting me. My wolf nearly lost it. “We just got out of the Kennel. I’m not letting them lock you up in it.”
“Moonbeam—”
“Don’t you Moonbeam me, Sam Shaw. Don’t you dare.
You just—We just—” Her voice cracked, and I felt it: the raw, bleeding edge of what I’d done to her.
We’d completed the mate bond; she’d let me in, all the way in, past every wall, every scar, every reason she had to never trust anyone again.
And I’d been planning to leave the whole time.
“If I may,” Talia interrupted, her voice cutting through our argument. “Your debate, delightful as it is, is moot.”
We both turned.
“What?” I said.
“We’re not here for you.”
“Then why are you here?”
Talia Johnson, who never showed weakness, who considered vulnerability a tactical liability, looked at me with something that might have been exhaustion…or grief.
“Kane has taken control of the Wolf Council,” she said. “We’re here to ask for asylum. We are all being hunted now.”