Chapter One
Laurie
The clearing, when I first shifted, was suddenly alive with new sounds and smells. The lake water lapping softly against the shore in the distance. Tara’s voice behind me, half-laughing and half-gasping at something one of the pups had done. An animal snoring in the woods nearby. It was beautifully overwhelming!
My bones still held warmth from the blazing memory of becoming what I had waited my whole life to become. My skin still hummed with the power of the moon, an echo of instinct running through my blood.
This new world held my full attention until I caught a scent that made my heart skip a beat. At first, I was confused, but then I saw him, running after Flappers, who came barreling towards me with Alexander right behind him. My heart swelled with joy.
Alexander stopped moving, standing about a hundred feet away, beneath the silver spill of moonlight. He was staring at me like he had forgotten how to breathe. My wolf, shy and sweet, spoke softly, as though sensing my anxiety. There he is, my wolf whispered.
Her voice was warmth, kindness, and love. A second self, newly awakened and somehow already familiar. She felt gentle in a way that surprised me. Not timid, but careful.
Marie, I thought, because somehow, I knew. I knew her name.
She answered with a quiet flicker of joy. And then, with all the certainty in the world, she said, He’s ours.
I froze— not because I didn’t want it to be true, certainly not because of that. Wanting Alexander had lived in me for so long that I had taught myself to keep it folded, small and hidden, where it couldn’t hurt me. Where it couldn’t become another thing the world could take away from me.
Now, the Moon Goddess had cracked me open.
Alexander inhaled. I saw the exact second it hit him. His entire body went taut. He looked stunned in the deepest, truest sense of the word. Like a man who had finally reached the end of a road he’d been traveling for centuries.
Flappers, as if he had known all along and was disgusted by the rest of us for taking so long to catch up, barked once and sat down beside me. Marie instantly adored him. Flappers, with his golden fur and brown eyes, was Alexander’s beloved Labrador, the most royally spoiled member of the family.
Natasha, Tara’s mom, laughed first. Warm, bright, impossible to miss.
“Alexander,” she called, delight threaded through every syllable, “it would seem your dog has a better sense of smell than you do.”
That broke the spell just enough for the rest of the world to rush back in. William, Tara’s father, laughed too, deep and booming. Tara jumped up and down, clapping her hands, doing her own happy dance, like something she had hoped for in secret had finally come to pass in front of her.
Mac muttered, “About damn time,” under his breath, then folded his arms and looked far too pleased with himself.
Alexander did not look at any of them. He only looked at me, and I could not move. I had dreamed of that look. Not once, or twice, but more times than I could count. I had been thirteen the first time I noticed him as something other than that tall guy who barked orders during a crisis and hung out with the King.
I had been sitting alone outside the sanctuary fence, knees drawn to my chest, pretending to watch the dogs when I was really trying not to cry. I still did that a lot back then. I cried quietly, privately, like if I made enough effort not to burden anyone with it, the pain might someday get tired of me and leave. Alexander had come striding across the yard with two sacks of feed over his shoulders like they weighed nothing at all, Flappers trotting beside him with a stolen treat in his mouth and the kind of shameless delight only dogs could carry without apology.
He hadn’t turned away awkwardly the way some adults did when they saw a hurting child who didn’t know what to do with her grief. He hadn’t overdone the pity either. He had just changed direction, walked straight over, and crouched down in front of me.
“You okay, sweetheart?” he asked.
I had simply stared back at him. He was impossible not to stare at. Tall, broad-shouldered, infuriatingly handsome even then, with eyes that had seen too much and still somehow knew how to laugh. He smelled like forest air and sweat and dog and something faintly sharp and male that made me feel warm in a way I was not ready to understand at the time.
Flappers had plopped down directly on my foot and looked offended by my sadness, his brown eyes full of kindness, his tail wagging gently.
Alexander sighed. “That’s his therapy technique,” he said solemnly. “He’s not licensed. If he sends you a bill, don’t pay it!”
I laughed before I meant to. Just a tiny sound. It snuck out like an unexpected sneeze. But it was the first real laugh that had escaped me in weeks. Alexander smiled like he had discovered sunlight.
That was the moment it began. Not the mate bond, I was far too young then, but I suppose I had always loved him. Back then, he made the dark feel survivable.
A few years later, when I was fifteen, I’d been in my favorite place, the dog sanctuary, when he’d appeared out of nowhere and jumped the sanctuary fence to retrieve a runaway puppy. He landed hard enough to knock himself into a mud puddle, then looked up at me, soaked and muddy and so profoundly annoyed that I laughed so hard I nearly fell off the rail I was sitting on.
I’d had such a crush on him.
At sixteen, he’d found me sitting near the skittish rescue pens and quietly sat beside me without asking questions, showing me how to wait without pushing, how to let frightened animals decide for themselves that the world might be kind.
“You’re trying too hard,” he’d told me.
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“I’m being patient.”
“You’re glaring supportively.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It absolutely is.” He’d leaned closer, lowering his voice as if sharing something important. “You must act like you don’t care. That’s what they find suspicious.”
I’d snorted.
He’d grinned.
The dog I’d been trying to coax from behind a water barrel came out and went straight to him, and Alexander’s smug look had irked me beyond belief.
“Traitor,” I’d whispered to the dog.
“Told you,”
“Shut up.”
By then it was already far too late for me.
I would see him crossing the yard and feel my pulse skip for no good reason. Hear his voice from another room and straighten before I even knew I was doing it. Catch him smiling at something ridiculous one of the pups had done and think, helplessly, there you are.
I had never planned to say any of that out loud. Never. How could I? He was Alexander.
King Mac’s Beta. His best friend. The one everyone trusted to keep a level head in a fight and a joke ready when things got too heavy. He had lived for centuries. He had fought battles I could barely imagine. He had loved this pack before I ever arrived in it. I was the shy girl Moon Shadow took in after rogues slaughtered my family.
So, I buried it.
I buried the flutter in my chest when he smiled at me too long, buried the way my thoughts drifted toward him at night. I buried the fragile, humiliating hope. I buried it all so carefully that eventually I almost believed it had died.
Incredibly, here he was, staring at me like the world had just handed him a miracle he did not trust himself to touch. Without realizing, I had shifted back. Thank the Goddess for Tara, who slipped a robe over my shoulders. Being naked didn’t bother me; I was far from ashamed of my body. I was the dorky pup who blossomed into a curvy, attractive woman. My hair was coppery colored and hung down to my waist. My eyes were deep blue, and Cindy told me I had eyelashes “to die for.” I knew I was beautiful, but I also knew that beauty would only take me so far in life. I strived to be beautiful in places no one could see.
Alexander took a few slow steps toward me, almost as if he thought I might vanish if he moved too quickly.
My throat tightened, and a shiver ran through my whole body. He stopped just outside the circle of stones.
Close enough now that I could see the pulse in his throat. The stunned roughness in his breathing. The way his hands flexed once at his sides as though every instinct in him was pulling him toward me, while his hard-earned control was telling him to go carefully.
He had waited a long time for this.
I knew that. Everyone did.
Alexander was two hundred years old, and somehow the universe had gone all that time without giving him his mate. There had been jokes over the years, gentle at first and then less frequent as waiting stopped being funny. Mac had found Tara. Others had found their mates. Families had formed, children had been born, generations had grown up beneath Moon Shadow’s watch.
And Alexander had remained alone.
Not lonely, exactly. He had too much pack, too much purpose, too much love around him to become hollowed out by solitude. But there had always been a question lingering under the laughter.
When his turn came, what kind of woman would the Moon Goddess choose for a man like him? Never, in my wildest private hopes, had I truly believed the answer might be me.
His mouth opened. Closed. Then he laughed once under his breath, the sound disbelieving and rough.
“Okay,” he said quietly, mostly to himself. “Okay.”
That almost made me smile.
Almost. I was too busy trying not to break apart from the force of what I felt. He looked at me fully then, and something in his face softened so completely it stole whatever remained of my breath.
“Laurie,” he said.
My name had never sounded like that before. Like the end of something long and the beginning of something even bigger.
And then, because he was still Alexander even with his entire life shifting under his feet, he dragged one hand over his face and muttered, “I am about two seconds away from having a full crisis. The bill from Flappers will be outrageous.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
His gaze snapped to my mouth like the sound of my laughter mattered more than anything in the world to him. That was dangerous. That was wonderful.
The pack, blessedly, began drifting back a little. Not far enough that they couldn’t watch, because apparently no one in Moon Shadow had ever heard of privacy, but enough to let us have our moment.
Mac and Tara stood side by side, quiet now, understanding in a way that made me feel strangely safe. Natasha smiled at me as if she could see straight through my ribs and liked what she found there. Flappers remained exactly where he was, seated like a dignified witness to an event he had personally arranged.
I looked down at him. “You knew?”
Alexander followed my glance and huffed a breath through his nose. “Know-it-all,” he muttered affectionately. Flappers raised his head proudly, then sneezed and covered his nose with his paws. There was something so cute about it that I burst out laughing.
“He’s allergic to his ego,” Alexander quipped, grinning at me, the smile I had grown to love so much over the years.
The mate bond pulsed, a warm, living thread stretching between us and pulling tighter with every heartbeat. He could feel it too. I saw it in the way his shoulders shifted, in the way his eyes darkened slightly with awareness, in the way he held himself so carefully.
“Can I touch you?” he asked.
The question broke something tender open inside me. Because he asked. Because for all his strength, for all his age, for all the power in him, he still stood there under the moon asking me like it mattered whether I said yes.
It matters, Marie whispered. But please let him. Please say yes.
“Please do,” I said softly.
Alexander exhaled slowly, and his fingers touched my cheek.
I almost jumped as the thrilling sensations bloomed so fast through my body that I gasped and nearly leaned into him without meaning to. The mate bond surged, no longer a thread but a current, moving through me in a rush of warmth and ache and yes, there you are.
His thumb moved once across my skin. The smallest touch—how was that enough to make me feel like that? The thoughts racing through my head made my cheeks turn red. I glanced at Tara, who returned a knowing smile, and I felt like I had been let in on a secret, a very delectable secret.
“Wow,” he said softly, “who knew?”
That made me smile despite the tremor in my chest.
“Well, Flappers, apparently,” I giggled. Flappers huffed and nudged my leg.
For a moment, we stood there like that. His hand against my face, my pulse racing and the moon shining overhead like it was beaming with joy. Then, softly enough that only I could hear him, he said, “I have waited two hundred years.”
“I know.” I reached for him then, unable to hold back, just running my hand down his arm.
“And somehow,” he said, voice roughening, “I got you.”
Tears stung unexpectedly, forming at the corners of my eyes. I laughed a little because it was either that or cry in front of half the pack.
“Are you disappointed?” I whispered.
“Laurie,” he said, like he couldn’t believe I was making him explain this, “do you have any idea how impossible it is that I got this lucky?”
“I feel like I’m the lucky one,” I replied.
No one had ever looked at me with that mixture of wonder and affection and disbelieving gratitude. I had spent so many years telling myself not to want too much. Not to believe in impossible things. Not to trust the universe with the fragile parts of me. And now the impossible thing stood in front of me with moonlight in his hair and my name in his mouth like something precious.
My wolf curled happily inside me.
He likes us.
That startled a laugh out of me too. “My wolf,” I explained, “she’s happy you like us.”
Alexander’s expression softened further at the sound. He stepped close enough that the heat radiating from him felt like the sun kissing my skin on a summer day. Close enough that I could smell him properly now beneath the sharpness of moon magic and the faint wild edge of his wolf.
Cedar. Clean skin. Leather. Something distinctly Alexander that my whole body recognized before my mind finished catching up. I had wanted him for so long, wanted his laugh, his silly jokes, his perfectly timed irreverence. The way he cared for the sanctuary dogs while pretending they were all manipulative little criminals. The way he stood half a step closer whenever he sensed I was uneasy, even before the mate bond gave him a reason. His hand slid from my cheek to the side of my neck, careful of the pulse there.
“Laurie?” My name again. A question this time, or maybe a warning. A thousand possibilities held in one low note as I looked up at him. The way his skin felt under my fingertips, I wanted all those possibilities. Now. I wanted him.
“I feel it too,” I said, because he needed to hear that. His look of relief was so immediate and so pure it made my heart ache.
“Are you sure you aren’t going to run away? I mean, I could give you a head start.”
That made me laugh again.
“I think it might be too late. I don’t think I could run away from you. And even if I wanted to, I am pretty sure you would find me.”
Slowly, giving myself time to stop if the moment became too much, I lifted my hand and rested it lightly against his chest. His heart was hammering, and the discovery stunned me. Alexander, who faced danger with a joke and disaster with a grin, was just as wrecked by this as I was.
The bond answered at once, warm and low between us. My legs shook. He felt it. “Easy,” he murmured, though I couldn’t tell whether he was speaking to me, to himself, or to both of us.
Then, because fate had a twisted sense of humor and couldn’t let a perfect moment remain uninterrupted, someone loudly cleared his throat. I looked at Mac, who stood behind Alexander with a huge smile on his face. I figured he was remembering how he’d felt when he first found Tara, a story I had made her tell me more times than I could count. I loved it because it was equal parts romantic and hilarious.
Alexander didn’t move his hand from my neck, but he closed his eyes with a look of long-suffering pain.
“Don’t,” he muttered without turning around.
I bit back a smile. “Don’t what?”
“Do not make me turn around and find Mac grinning at me right now. I am having a private spiritual experience.”
I cracked up, because that was exactly what Mac was doing. The sound rang out over the clearing, and for the first time in all the years I had known him, Alexander looked vulnerable. Adorably vulnerable. My fingers curled very slightly into his shirt. I felt the fabric there, the solid warmth of him beneath it, and I couldn’t seem to let go. I wanted to tear it off him, but I was trying desperately to be ladylike.
“Finally,” he said softly.
“What?”
He smiled in that adorably vulnerable way again. “I always felt that something was missing. Turns out it was you.”
No one should be allowed to say things like that while looking like him. It was preposterous! My body felt hot enough to set fire to the forest surrounding us. “Dangerous man,” I whispered, and the way his eyes changed, somehow becoming even more beautiful, made me realize how true that statement was.
I stood under the full moon with the circle stones still warm beneath my feet, my wolf newly awakened, and Alexander’s hand cradling the side of my neck like I was something irreplaceable. For once, I wasn’t waiting for happiness to vanish. I was standing inside it.
As he looked at me with two hundred years of loneliness ending all at once in his eyes, I did the bravest thing I had done all night. Not a kiss, not yet, I was afraid to light that fire in front of everyone. I stepped closer and pressed against him, just enough to let him know I was not stepping away.
Just enough to say yes without speaking, lost in the moment, with him looking at me like the moon had finally kept a promise.
