Something had shifted in Blackthorn Ridge.
Wolves could sense change the way humans sensed weather. Before a storm, the air thickened. Before a fight, instincts sharpened. Before a revelation — before something old and buried began to stir — the pack grew restless. That restlessness was spreading, quiet and intimate, like winter frost creeping under a door.
And at the center of it all… was Killian.
He didn't speak of it.
He didn't need to. When an alpha carried a storm inside him, the pack felt every rumble.
Killian had become sharper in the past forty-eight hours. His silences were heavier. His presence — already a force of nature — became uneasy to be around. Wolves normally held their heads high when he entered a room. Now, they lowered their gaze and held their breath, confused and afraid to be caught in the crosswind of whatever brewed beneath his skin.
He didn't shift.
He couldn't.
But his wolf was no longer sleeping.
Marcus Blackwood watched him from the doorway of the training grounds. Killian was in the center, sparring with two of the senior betas. He moved like a blade, precise and lethal — but unfocused. Every now and then, he'd miss an opening, or fail to pull back just before contact. Something was wrong.
Killian wasn't supposed to miss.
"Enough!" Marcus called out.
Killian paused, bare chest heaving under the sun. He stayed still a moment too long. One of the betas — Daniel — stepped forward, concerned.
"Alpha?" he asked.
Killian didn't answer.
Marcus did.
"Get out," he snapped at the others. "Now."
The training grounds emptied under the weight of an alpha command. Marcus stayed, arms crossed, waiting for Killian to look at him. For a moment, they just breathed — the history between them heavy, old, and still unspoken.
"What's going on?" Marcus finally asked.
Killian didn't turn.
"You're slipping," Marcus continued. "And whatever's making you like this isn't just your own problem. It's the pack's."
Killian's jaw flexed, then released.
"Don't push," he muttered.
"I'm not pushing," Marcus said. "I'm bracing."
Killian exhaled, a sharp sound that wasn't really a laugh. The kind of sound made by a man who knew exactly how close he was to breaking — and knew no one could catch him if he did.
"I thought I was ready to feel again," Killian said, voice low. "Turns out, I was wrong."
Marcus stepped closer.
"What did you feel?"
Killian finally looked at him.
"Her," he said. "Not just her scent. Her presence. Like…" He swallowed the rest, almost painfully. "Like she was never really gone."
Marcus blinked.
It was the closest Killian had come to admitting anything — and Marcus instantly understood.
"You think the girl… Lena — smells like Alina."
His dead mate.
The only woman Killian had ever loved. The woman whose death had sent him into a year of madness, then five of numb restraint.
Killian didn't answer. He didn't need to.
"You think that, and your wolf stirred for her?" Marcus pressed.
Killian didn't deny it.
Marcus cursed under his breath. He paced, running a hand over his head in disbelief.
"Killian… if that's true, then—"
"I know what it means," Killian cut in quietly.
He didn't need the words spoken. He wasn't sure he believed them himself. But even if there was the smallest chance…
The pack would come undone.
Because if the alpha's wolf believed that a human — an engaged outsider — carried the echo of a dead Luna… it could ignite something wild. Something dangerous.
Marcus steadied himself, mentally flipping through every protocol, memory, and cautionary tale he'd ever lived. But it still wasn't enough. This wasn't something he could handle with a strategy.
Finally, he asked what he'd been avoiding.
"Does she know?"
Killian's expression didn't change. But something dark flickered in his eyes.
"No," he said.
"And you haven't told her."
"I'm not going to."
Marcus stepped closer until he was inches from him.
"She needs to stay away."
Killian didn't move.
"You need to stay away from her."
Killian's jaw clenched.
"You're asking me to stay away from something I've been denied for five years," he murmured. "Something I prayed — begged — to feel again. And now that it's here, you're asking me to pretend it means nothing."
Marcus stared at him.
"No," he corrected softly. "I'm asking you not to lose everything again."
That same morning, Lena Marshall walked into Blackthorn Ridge's only grocery store and immediately felt unsafe.
Not because of violence. But eyes.
Everyone stared.
She could feel it — a subtle crackle in the air, like she'd walked into a room where a private conversation had just ended. Whispers trailed her steps. The man at the register avoided looking directly at her when she paid. A woman in the cleaning aisle abandoned her basket when Lena turned down her row.
It wasn't normal.
And it made her skin tightly drawn around her bones.
She hurried back to Ethan's Jeep, heart hammering. The bag of groceries sat untouched in her lap. Her thoughts drifted — unwillingly — to the forest line she'd passed earlier.
The woods were quiet.
Too quiet.
She didn't know why, but she felt watched. And not by people.
She caught her breath when a sudden sharp pain struck behind her eyes — a flash of forest, moonlight, running.
A name flickered in her mind.
Killian.
Why him?
Why did that name feel familiar?
Night fell over Blackthorn Ridge with a velvet hush. The full moon rose, silent and silver, watching without blinking.
Killian stood on the balcony of the pack house, hands braced against the rail.
He could smell her.
All the way from the town's edge.
Human. Warm. Soft. The impossible thread of something ancient in her scent — something that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
His wolf paced inside him like something caged and furious.
Broken.
Hopeful.
Her name, too, flickered on his lips.
Lena.
His eyes shifted to gold.
And when he exhaled, the forest exhaled with him — as if the whole land held a single breath.
Waiting.
Wanting.
Bracing.
For what came next.