The mountains heard him first.
A single howl ripped into the night air — primal, broken, resurrected.
The forest answered, leaves trembling as wolves from every corner of Blackthorn Ridge lifted their heads, ears pricked, breaths held. The sound was impossible — a ghost's voice echoing after half a decade of silence. The Alpha's wolf… awake.
Marcus was the first to reach him.
Killian stood at the border of pack lands, body trembling violently, breath ripping out of him in ragged, animal bursts. His eyes—once coal black—were now the molten gold of a rage-struck wolf barely held in human form.
"You need to shift," Marcus said quietly, cautiously. "You can't hold him back this time."
Killian's jaw clenched. "I can't—" his voice cracked, and not with weakness, but with a kind of devastation. "She's a human."
"But she's her," Marcus replied.
Anger — or grief — or some savage combination of both, twisted through Killian's chest, stealing his breath.
"She can't be her," he snapped.
Marcus was calm, but his voice shook with the weight of honesty. "But your wolf knows what you refuse to say."
Killian turned on him so fast, Marcus nearly stepped back.
"She's gone, Marcus," he growled. "Alina died in my arms. I buried her. I held her—she was cold."
"And yet," Marcus said quietly, "you just looked into the eyes of a woman who made your wolf rise from the dead."
Silence.
Killian's hands were shaking. His chest felt too tight, like it was being split between what he knew and what he felt. But instinct was louder than logic tonight — and instinct pointed in one direction.
Toward her.
Toward Lena Marshall.
Killian's breathing spiraled as memories crashed back — not mental memories, but physical ones. A scent beneath a full moon. A laugh that soothed wounds better than time. Light touches. Promises whispered into fur. Pain. Love. Howls that echoed beneath stars.
Alina.
Gone.
Dead.
And now, here he was — breathing again, dying again. Because if this was fate... it was the cruelest one yet.
"What do you want to do?" Marcus asked, low.
Killian stared out into the dark, eyes burning.
"I want to reject her," he whispered.
The forest stilled.
Marcus blinked. "Killian—"
"I want to tear the bond apart before it roots. Before it destroys her. Before it destroys me again."
"You don't mean that," Marcus said firmly. "I know you. You'd weather hell if it meant saving her again."
Killian's ghost of a laugh was hollow.
"Yes. And that's exactly why I need to keep her away. I'm the reason she died. I won't drag her into another war she never asked for."
Marcus swallowed his argument.
Killian stood taller. The Alpha in him rose, fractured but iron-willed.
"She's not mine," he said. "Not this time. Not again."
Marcus looked toward the forest as the Alpha's breathing turned shallow — the prelude to a shift he hadn't allowed in five years.
"But your wolf," Marcus said softly, "doesn't believe in coincidence."
Killian didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
The wolf had made its decision.
Lena didn't sleep.
She sat in the quiet of the cabin, hands curled around a cup of chamomile tea that did nothing to cure the shaking inside her.
Her mind wouldn't stop replaying the moment Killian had touched Ethan's watch. The wildness in his eyes. The way he'd looked at her like her face held a history she didn't remember. The way he left — like leaving was the only way he wouldn't break.
"What was that?" Ethan muttered as he walked into the room, hair still damp from a shower. "That man looked like he wanted to rip the world apart."
Lena stared into her tea.
"I… don't know," she said honestly.
But she did know something.
She felt him.
Not like an argument, or a crush, or a threat.
It was deeper. Like her bones had remembered something her mind couldn't.
She kept tasting pine in the air. Hearing echoes of footsteps she hadn't taken. Feeling heat rise in her chest when his voice replayed.
Ethan came to sit beside her, careful, gentle.
"You're quiet."
She tried to smile. "Just tired, I guess."
He wrapped an arm around her. "We'll get used to this place. Build a life. Be boring and safe. That's what we want, right?"
She gave a weak laugh.
"Right."
Her body didn't agree.
The clock struck midnight.
Somewhere under the moon, a wolf howled — long, deep, guttural.
Lena's heart thumped hard against her ribs.
She didn't know why her breath caught.
She didn't know why her eyes burned.
But she knew, without understanding, that the howl was tied to her — and that the person making it wasn't calling out to the pack.
They were calling out…
to her.
Back at the ridge, Killian stood under moonlight blazing silver on his skin. His shift was done — his body heaving in the aftershock of his first full transition in five years.
Bones realigned.
The wolf stood — midnight fur, muscles thick with power starved too long.
He threw his head back and howled once more.
Not as a leader.
Not as an Alpha.
But as a wolf who'd lost his mate…
… and just found the impossible.