Chapter 1: The Return
The knock on my door comes on a Wednesday afternoon while I’m teaching Noah how to braid grass.
We live at the edge of a small town called Mirren’s Hollow—far enough from pack territory that the wolves don’t bother us, close enough to the forest that I can feel the old magic in the earth when I go barefoot. It’s quiet here. That’s the point.
“Mommy, I did it!” Noah holds up a crooked green braid, and I kiss his forehead because it’s perfect.
The knock is louder the second time.
I slide Noah a juice box and move to the door. Through the peephole: a woman I don’t recognize, thirty-something, wearing clothes that scream pack. Dark jeans. A leather jacket. A silver wolf pendant at her throat—the kind you only wear if you were born into it.
My stomach drops.
“Sera Hollow?” Her voice is respectful. Scared, even. That’s new.
“I don’t know you.” I keep the door cracked, hand ready to slam it shut.
“I’m Maya’s cousin. From the northern territories.” She takes a breath. Her eyes are red-rimmed, like she’s been driving through the night. “I’m here because Lena Blackwood is dying. And only you can save her.”
The world tilts.
Lena. Kael’s sister. The one person in that entire pack who was ever kind to me without wanting something in return.
I don’t ask how she found me. Don’t ask how they know where I am. Of course they found me. A healer bloodline doesn’t stay hidden forever. “Tell Kael to find another healer.”
“There is no other.” The woman’s eyes are desperate. “She’s been cursed. The healers in the territory can’t touch it. The pack council has been consulting for two weeks. You’re the only name anyone keeps coming back to.”
“No.” I close the door. But not all the way. Because I’m weak, and Lena was kind to me once.
“She asks for you specifically.” The woman’s voice cracks. “Before she dies, she wants to see you again.”
My hands are shaking.
I crack the door wider. “What’s your name?”
“Cara.”
“If I agree—and that’s a huge if—I have conditions.”
“Anything.”
“I come alone. I heal Lena. Then I leave. Kael Blackwood stays away from me. Completely away. I don’t want to see him, speak to him, or be in the same room as him. Those are non-negotiable.”
Cara nods like she’s been expecting this. “Okay.”
“And my son stays with Maya while I’m gone.”
“How long—”
“As long as it takes.”
I pack a bag while Noah naps. Moonstone herbs for protection—they ward against blood magic, the kind that doesn’t care if you’re willing. Healing crystals. My grimoire, years of handwritten notes passed down through my mother and her mother before her. I take the iron bracelet last, the one I haven’t worn since I left Blackwood territory. Old habit. Old armor.
Maya arrives within the hour. She’s human, warm-eyed, the most grounding presence I’ve ever known. She pulls me into a hug at the door without asking questions. She never asks questions. She just shows up. I don’t know what I’d do without her.
The drive to Blackwood territory takes six hours. Cara drives in near-silence. I watch the landscape change outside the window—suburbs giving way to farmland, farmland to old-growth forest, the trees growing denser and older the further north we go. This part of the country belongs to the wolves. Anyone who doesn’t know that just hasn’t been paying attention.
I haven’t been here in five years.
We pass the territory boundary around sunset. The air shifts. It’s physically different here—charged, alive, heavy with old magic baked into the soil over generations. The werewolf energy in the ground recognizes me, responds to me. My skin prickles.
“You okay?” Cara glances over.
“Fine.”
I’m not fine. Because the closer I get to Blackwood territory, the more I can feel it. A pull in my chest. A vibration in my bones that feels like—
No. No.
The mate bond.
It’s supposed to be dead. I spent five years killing it, starving it, burning through the connection until there was nothing left. We rejected each other. It was supposed to be final.
But as we cross the last checkpoint and drive through the gates of the pack house, as my feet touch the ground of the place where Kael Blackwood once owned every piece of my heart, the bond roars to life like it never stopped.
Every nerve in my body ignites.
