Not Acceptable
The old wolves believed fate never announced itself with thunder, it arrived quietly. A wrong turn, a familiar scent carried on an unfamiliar wind, a glance held one heartbeat too long or sometimes something as ordinary as a text message from the one person who had somehow become anything but ordinary.
Evelyn Ashcroft was stretched across her couch, half watching television and half scrolling mindlessly through her phone when it vibrated against her stomach. She glanced down, Rowan, just seeing his name made the corner of her mouth lift and that irritated her more than she cared to admit. After almost two years, the man could still make her smile without actually doing anything. She opened the message.
What are you doing tonight?
Evelyn glanced around her painfully quiet living room, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Tomorrow she would turn fifty-five years old, and apparently the glamorous way she intended to celebrate the final evening of fifty-four involved comfortable clothes, something unhealthy for dinner, and whatever she could find something to watch until she fell asleep on the couch. She decided to respond back.
Nothing exciting ... Just chilling by myself. Why?
The little dots appeared almost immediately then disappeared, appeared again and finally:
Not acceptable.
She laughed, of course only Rowan could ask a question and then decide her answer was wrong.
Excuse me? 😂
His response came quickly.
It’s the night before your birthday! You’re not sitting home alone.
Before she could respond, another message appeared.
You’re coming here, the fight is on tonight. The pack is coming over and you're hanging out with us.
Evelyn stared at the screen, there wasn’t a question mark anywhere in that statement then she shook her head.
Was that an invitation or an order?
Three dots.
Former military. You know the answer.
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. God, he was an ass sometimes, a bossy, stubborn, ridiculously attractive ass.
You do realize you live an hour and a half away now, right?
I’m aware.
That’s three hours of driving.
Also aware.
She waited and sure enough, another message appeared.
What time can you be here?
Evelyn actually snorted.
Do I get a vote in any of this?
This time his answer took longer but when it appeared, the teasing disappeared with it.
Yeah, you always get a choice. I just don’t want you spending tonight alone.
Her smile faded. That was Rowan. He would spend ten minutes being an arrogant pain in her ass and then slip one sentence beneath her defenses before she realized what he’d done and if she mentioned it later? He would shrug, tell her he was only being a gentleman even though Evelyn knew better.
At least sometimes she thought she did and then there were moments with Rowan when something deeper slipped through the cracks. The way his hand instinctively settled against the small of her back when they walked through a crowded room. The way he watched until she was safely inside before driving away or the random messages asking whether she’d eaten. Then you have the way he remembered things she’d mentioned months earlier and then acted as though remembering them meant nothing and then there were moments when he seemed to realize he’d revealed too much and immediately retreated behind that infuriatingly casual exterior.
For just under two years, she’d been trying to understand the contradiction that was Rowan Hale. She still hadn’t succeeded but maybe that was part of what kept drawing her back. Her fingers moved across the screen.
Give me a little while to get myself together.
His answer was immediate.
Good.
Then:
Bring an overnight bag.
Her eyebrows shot upward.
That’s presumptuous.
That’s practical. I’m not letting you drive ninety minutes home after midnight.
She stared at that message longer than necessary.
There it was again. I’m not letting you. The protective streak he pretended didn’t exist.
Bossy.
Drive safe. Text me when you leave.
No emoji, no explanation, just Rowan. Evelyn set the phone against her chest and stared at the ceiling. Ten years, that was the difference between them. Those years bothered her far more than it had ever seemed to bother him.
At fifty-four going fifty-five tomorrow, she had spent enough years learning exactly what gravity, time, disappointment, and life could do to her confidence. Rowan had spent the better part of the last year teaching her something entirely different. The biggest ones were that desire didn’t have an expiration date, being older didn’t make her invisible, her body wasn’t something requiring an apology, and most unexpectedly that she could still feel wanted.
He’d never sat her down and told her any of those things. He had simply treated them as facts. Sometimes she wondered if he understood what that had given back to her but probably not. Rowan wasn’t particularly good at discussing feelings but doing something about them that was different.
Then she stood. “Well, apparently we’re going to the mountains.”
She had no idea how true those words were because a hundred miles away, beyond Rowan’s house and the narrow mountain road leading toward Black Ridge territory, something ancient had already begun to stir. Something that had been sleeping almost as long as Evelyn had been alive and beneath her skin, invisible beneath fifty-five years of an ordinary human existence, a mark shaped like a broken crescent flickered silver for the first time.
Evelyn didn’t feel it yet but somewhere deep in the mountains, a wolf lifted its head then another and another. Until a howl rolled across the ridgeline where the first answered by a second and then dozens more. A call traveling through territories that had forgotten the meaning of the blood awakening beneath Evelyn Ashcroft’s skin.
The Silver Moon had returned and she was driving straight toward it.
