The forest was humming again — the midsummer kind of hum that stuck to your skin, like sap, warm and sweet and just a little sticky.
Rai tucked a strand of sweat-damp hair behind her ear, the rest of it falling in wild coils down her back. She knelt in the clearing near the pups' den, laughing as two of the youngest tackled her from behind. She let herself fall onto the mossy ground with an exaggerated groan, sending them into high-pitched howls of delight.
"Mercy!" she cried, though her grin said otherwise. "You vicious beasts!"
A small, sharp-toothed boy puffed his chest. "We're training to be warriors!"
"Warriors don't bite their caretakers," she said, ruffling his hair with one hand while catching the other pup in her lap. "They guard them. Always."
The older wolves smiled quietly as they passed, nodding at her natural ease with the young ones. No one questioned why the pups clung to her like burrs or why their first word was often Rai.
She had grown into the heart of the village, even if her own beginning here had been feral, half-starved, and speechless.
Only one man remembered that part.
From across the clearing, Aryan stood in the shadow of the elders' longhouse, arms crossed over his chest, eyes fixed on her. His silver hair stirred slightly with the wind, though the forest around him was still. That was how it always was with Aryan — the world moved, and he stayed rooted.
He watched her the way a storm watches sunlight — in silence, in awe, in warning.
She hadn't seen him arrive, but she felt him now, the way she always did. His presence was a heat behind her spine.
Rai turned her head slowly. Their eyes locked.
Something low sparked in her belly.
He didn't smile. He never smiled outright. But the tilt of his head, the way his gaze lingered, soft and heavy — it said more than lips ever could. She let her fingers slide through the curls of a sleepy pup in her lap as she held his gaze longer than she should.
Aryan's jaw clenched.
She looked away first.
That night, she couldn't sleep.
The forest air had cooled, but Rai's skin was warm. She lay on her back in her small wooden cottage, sheets tangled around her bare legs, the scent of pine and smoke drifting in through the open window. She thought of the way he looked at her. Of how it made her feel — watched, but not prey. Seen.
Claimed.
She knew Aryan had never taken a mate — not because he was waiting, but because he was working. Always leading, always protecting. The weight of the pack had rested on his back for centuries. Mating was never his priority.
And when he'd found her, a shivering wild thing barely seven winters old, there'd been nothing but quiet care in him — a steady hand, a warm hearth, a place to belong.
But now…
Now, the way he looked at her sometimes made her skin prickle. And in the last couple of years, something in his scent had changed. Softer. Warmer. Like something opening.
Her heart thudded as the wind shifted.
The faint scent of smoked cedar drifted through her window.
Aryan.
Not close — not at her door — but near enough. She imagined him sitting outside his cabin across the path, sharpening a blade or tending a fire, pretending not to think of her.
Maybe he wasn't.
But maybe… he was.
Rai rolled onto her side, cheek pressed to the pillow. Her fingers curled into the sheet, a smile ghosting across her lips as her lashes drifted shut.
In the dark, her wolf stirred.
And across the village, so did his.