Tempting Trouble (COMING SOON ON INKITT)

IVY’s POV

The heat was coming, and with it, the madness.

Everywhere I turned inside the Social Hall, bodies were pressed against bodies. Hands wandering into back pockets. Hips grinding against the edge of sticky pine tables. Sweaty necks tilted back in the dim amber lighting, baring throats in quiet, hungry invitations.

It was the same every year around this time. The Ember was less than thirty days away, and the unmated wolves of the East Coast Pack were already losing their goddamned minds.

Once a year, the internal fire ignited in our blood. It didn’t matter if you were a high-ranking enforcer or a common pack scullery maid...when the season woke up, human logic packed its bags and took a hike.

Wolves fucked like feral animals in the woods, in the back alleys, in the supply closets behind the bar. Unmated wolves scrambled to pair off in advance just to have a warm body ready for the burn, because going through the peak of the Ember alone was pure, agonising torture.

Which made me an absolute freak.

At twenty-one, I was the only unmated she-wolf in the entire territory who was still a virgin.

In a pack where most wolves lost theirs by sixteen, my record wasn’t just weird. It was practically a medical anomaly.

“Hey, daydreamer,” Reeve barked over the roar of the jukebox, slamming a wooden tray stacked with foaming pint glasses onto the zinc counter. “Table four wants another round of dark ale, and table seven is waving a fifty-dollar bill like it’s a mating flag. Move your ass, Sorensen.”

I grabbed the bar towel from my shoulder and snapped it against his forearm. “I’m moving, I’m moving. Don’t pop a vein, Reeve.”

“I’ll pop whatever I want if we don’t clear these tabs before the night rush hits,” he shot back, flashing a quick, crooked grin. He scrubbed sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, his sandy hair sticking up in damp spikes.

Reeve smelled like roasted malt, spilt beer, and the lemon-scented soap we used to mop the floorboards at 3 AM. Warm. Familiar. Safe.

He grabbed a pitcher and leaned over the beer taps, keeping his voice down so the patrons shouting over darts couldn’t hear. “By the way. Miller from border patrol was asking about you again.”

I groaned, lining up four clean pint glasses under the draft nozzles. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“I told him you have a vicious temper and an allergy to small talk,” Reeve said cheerfully.

“He said that makes you exotic. Sì, come on. The Ember Moon is four weeks out. You can’t spend another season locked in your apartment with ice packs and chamomile tea while the rest of the eastern seaboard is getting laid.”

“Watch me,” I muttered, pulling the tap handle. Amber foam hissed into the glass. “I like my ice packs. They don’t snore, and they don’t try to mark my neck when they’re drunk.”

“Miller is a nice guy! Good pedigree, solid fighter, doesn’t smell like wet dog in the rain.”

“I don’t care about his pedigree, Reeve.”

“Because you’re waiting for the fairytale,” he sighed, rolling his eyes as he wiped down a row of empty shot glasses. “The magical mate bond. The thunderclap. The sparks flying off your skin like fireworks.”

I tightened my grip on the glass until my knuckles turned white. “I’m waiting for what’s mine. There’s a difference.”

That was only half the truth.

The other half was far darker, far uglier, and buried deep beneath the dead name I’d abandoned three years ago.

If any wolf in this room ever discovered who I really was, that the common bar girl pouring their draft beer was actually the runaway daughter of Alpha Marcus Thorne, they wouldn’t just laugh at my virginity.

They’d gut me on the spot, string my carcass from the timber rafters, and toast my blood.

My father was the butcher who slaughtered this pack’s kin fifteen years ago. I carried his cursed northern blood in my veins, and every day I stayed alive under Reeve’s family name was borrowed time.

“Fair enough,” Reeve murmured, nudging my shoulder gently with his. “Just don’t say I never tried to get you laid before the fever fries your brain.”

I shoved the loaded tray toward him with a half-smile. “Deliver the beer, matchmaker.”

He laughed, hoisting the tray onto one broad shoulder, and disappeared into the noisy swarm of flannel-clad wolves, leather jackets, and rattling barstools.

The air in the hall was getting thicker by the minute. Cigarette smoke from the patio drifted inside every time the double doors swung open, blending with the heavy, musky stench of dominant males trying to out-posture each other across the pool tables.

A couple in the far corner booth had already moved past heavy petting; the she-wolf was straddling the guy’s lap, her fingers tangled in his hair while he palmed her ass through her denim shorts, their mouths devouring each other like they were starving.

I looked away, swallowing hard against a sudden, uncomfortable prickle of warmth at the base of my throat.

Get a grip, Ivy.

I picked up an empty pint glass, turned on the rinse jet, and began drying the rim with a fresh cloth. Just another Saturday night. Wipe the counter. Fill the orders. Collect the tips. Keep your head down.

Then the front entrance blew open.

The sound didn’t just carry over the jukebox. It ripped through the room like a sonic crack.

The twin oak doors, every four inches of solid, iron-reinforced timber, slammed back against the cedar walls with enough force to rattle the liquor bottles behind my head.

The entire hall went dead.

The laughing & shouting, clinking of beer bottles.

The jukebox music suddenly sounded thin, pathetic, and embarrassingly loud before someone behind the pool table scrambled to yank the plug.

Cold coastal fog rolled in through the open doorway, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of the sea and the hot copper reek of slaughter.

Blood.

Fresh, rogue blood.

A collective shudder ran through the pack. Every single wolf in the building stiffened, spines snapping straight, beer glasses lowering to the tables in unison. Nobody spoke. Nobody dared to breathe.

He walked through the mist like a nightmare given flesh.

Alpha Kane Ashworth.

Or as every wolf on the eastern seaboard called him when he wasn’t within earshot: Trouble.

He was six feet four of corded muscle, broad-shouldered enough to block out the doorway, radiating an aura of lethal, predatory dominance so heavy it felt like physical gravity pressing down on my skull.

His heavy black leather combat jacket was torn at the right shoulder, showing dark streaks of dried blood over battle-hardened skin.

He wasn’t wearing gloves, and the skin across his knuckles was split and bruised, caked with crimson dirt from whatever massacre he’d just wrapped up at the coastal border.

His jet-black hair was dishevelled, damp with ocean spray, falling into his face. High, sharp cheekbones carved out of granite. A strong, stubble-roughened jaw clamped tight in perpetual fury.

He didn’t look human. Even in his bipedal skin, he looked like a feral apex predator who had only paused his slaughter because he ran out of throats to rip open.

Beside him, his Beta, a sharp-featured wolf named Garrett, stepped inside, flanked by three senior pack enforcers. But no one was looking at them.

Every eye in the room was pinned on Kane.

A low murmur rippled through the she-wolves at the high-top tables near the entrance. Even covered in grime and rogue blood, the man was sickeningly gorgeous.

Raw. Brutal. The kind of dark, savage presence that pulled the air straight out of your lungs before your brain could remind you he’d snap your neck without blinking.

Rumour had it he hadn’t taken a woman to his bed in nearly six months.

Rumour had it he was completely unhinged after the last border raid.

Rumour had it the council was breathing down his neck because of the Ember Moon deadline.

Don’t look, I commanded myself, staring fiercely down at the glass in my hands. Wipe the glass, Ivy. Don’t you fucking look at him.

Every pup in the pack learned the rule before their first shift:

Never look the Alpha in the eye.

Making direct eye contact with an unmated Alpha was either an open challenge to his dominance, which meant a swift death, or an explicit invitation to have sex.

Since I had zero desire to die and even less desire to become pack collateral, looking at Kane Ashworth was strictly off-limits.

Footsteps thudded against the hardwood floor. Slow. Heavy. Deliberate.

He was heading straight for the centre bar.

“Alpha,” a breathless voice cooed from the front row of booths.

It was Tahlia, one of the council elder’s daughters, clad in a red slip dress so tight it looked painted on.

She stood up, tossing her bleached-blonde hair over one bare shoulder, offering him her throat in a blatant, shameless display of submission.

Her scent, heavy, cloying vanilla perfume laced with synthetic pheromones, wafted across the aisle.

“Welcome back,” she purred, stepping directly into his path, her manicured fingers reaching toward his leather sleeve. “We were so worried about the northern patrol. You look exhausted, Kane. Let me take you upstairs...”

Kane didn’t even slow his stride.

He didn’t blink. He didn’t acknowledge her existence. He simply walked straight through her personal space, his shoulder brushing past hers with enough callous force to send her stumbling back against the table, sputtering with her red dress twisted around her thighs.

“Jesus,” someone whispered two stools down from me.

I pressed my thumbnail hard into the meat of my palm, trying to anchor myself against the sheer pressure waves rolling off him. The air behind the bar was turning electric.

“Drinks,” Garrett ordered, stepping up to the far end of the counter where Reeve was frozen mid-stride. “Whiskey. Three bottles of the reserve. Now.”

“On it,” Reeve stammered, his usual swagger evaporating into thin air. He bolted for the liquor cage.

I kept my eyes glued to the zinc countertop, wiping down the same dry, spotless patch of metal for the third time.

Then the temperature dropped.

A shadow fell over my hands.

The scent hit me first.

It wasn’t like anything I’d ever smelled on another wolf. It wasn’t the cheap cologne or stale sweat of the bar patrons.

It was rich, dark, charred cedar wood. Crisp ocean brine. The cold, electric snap of ozone right before a lightning storm. And beneath it all, a thick, heavy, devastating musk that made every primal nerve in my body scream.

My skin broke out in feverish goosebumps. A sharp, violent shock of heat shot straight down from my collarbone into the pit of my stomach, coiling low in my groin with such sudden intensity that a ragged gasp scraped the back of my throat.

What the hell?

I froze.

My hand stopped on the rag.

Slowly, against every survival instinct screaming in my skull and three years of careful, paranoid discipline, my chin lifted.

My eyes travelled up the blood-splattered leather of his jacket.

Past the broad, solid expanse of his chest.

Past the thick, corded column of his neck.

Straight into his face.

He was staring directly at me.

His eyes weren’t just grey. They were the colour of a churning winter storm over jagged rocks, rimmed with a violent, glowing ring of molten amber. The mark of his beast, right at the surface, ready to tear free.

I couldn’t look away.

It felt like walking off the edge of a cliff. My breath vanished. The entire Social Hall, the murmurs, the clinking bottles, Reeve returning with the whiskey, faded into absolute white noise.

There was only him.

And me.

Kane’s storm-grey eyes narrowed slightly. He leaned his upper body across the bar, bringing his bruised face inches closer to mine.

I could feel the furnace-like heat radiating off his skin. I could see the dark spatters of dried blood across his cheekbone, the pulse throbbing violently against the side of his neck.

Then his head tilted.

His nostrils flared.

He drew in a slow, deep breath, pulling the air around me deep into his lungs.

Once.

Twice.

Every muscle in his massive frame went dead, stone rigid.

The pupils of his storm-grey eyes dilated until the black completely swallowed the amber. His lips parted slightly, exposing the sharp, gleaming edge of his canine fangs.

He smelled me.

He smelled the crushed wild blackberries. The winter pine. The cold river mist.

And buried deep underneath it all...the sudden, molten flare of the Ember answering him.

“You,” he growled.

The sound wasn’t human. It was a low, guttural snarl that hummed through the zinc counter, straight into my fingertips, rattling the bones in my chest.

His large, calloused hand came up from his side, bloodstained fingers reaching across the space between us, aiming straight for my throat.