Chapter 1

Gemma.

I stood on the curb outside the gallery with water running down the back of my neck, watching Hunter jog toward me with an umbrella, and for one stupid second I let myself feel relieved.

Then he angled it over Harmony Cox instead.

Every wolf gets one bond in a lifetime, one person the moon decides matters more than anyone else, and mine had walked right past me toward a woman he had known for barely a month.

I could smell her on him from ten feet away, something floral and expensive layered over the rain, and underneath it, faint but there, the beginning of a scent-claim that shouldn’t be there. My wolf caught it half a second before I did and went rigid inside my chest.

Three years I had waited for that pull between us to be finally answered. Three years of telling myself an Alpha’s mate deserved patience, that Hunter would come around to what the bond meant once the pressure of running his own pack eased off.

I was still telling myself that when he stopped six feet short of me and gave every last drop of shelter to someone else.

“Her shoes can’t get wet.” He didn’t even look at me when he said it. “Wait here, Gemma. I’ll get her in the car and come back for you.”

Harmony pressed against his side like she would fall over without him, her fingers curled into his jacket. I watched one whole shoulder of his shirt go dark with rain because he had tipped the umbrella her way completely.

My wolf scratched at the inside of my chest, whining low, wanting to close the distance between us. The bond between us pulled taut and then went strange, thinner somehow than it had felt that morning. I told her to be quiet.

“Sure.” I said. “Go ahead.”

He did not catch or care about the way my voice cracked. He was already steering Harmony toward the SUV, one hand resting at the small of her back.

I stood there in a puddle rising past my ankles, feeling my heart ache, feeling the bond ache right alongside it. It was a dull physical throb behind my sternum that no human woman would have had to carry home with her.

“You could wait in the car with us.” Harmony called back sweetly, tucking herself further under Hunter’s arm like the rain might actually hurt her. “It’s really pouring out here.”

I looked away, ignoring her.

I kicked off my heels and left them by the gutter. The asphalt underneath was cold and studded with grit that cut into the soles of my feet with every step I took, but I kept walking anyway.

My wolf hated it, hated the human shoes, the human road and the human pace of it all, pacing under my skin and begging to be let loose to run the distance instead, to burn through the ache the way wolves were built to. I held her back.

Shifting in the middle of a public street over a man wasn’t dignity, it was dramatic, and I had already given Harmony enough of a show for one night.

Three miles away from home, barefoot, in a downpour, while the man who was supposed to be my mate drove off treating another woman's comfort like the only thing that mattered in the world. Tears rolled down my cheeks, as I sobbed.

By the time I reached our street I had stopped feeling my feet or the ache in my heart, though the bond kept sending its own signal the entire way, some proof that Hunter was warm and dry and utterly unbothered somewhere across town.

Mates were supposed to feel each other’s distress. I wondered if he felt any of mine at all, or if three years of near-silence from him meant the bond had already started closing itself off from his side.

I did not waste any energy wondering whether Hunter had called to check that I made it home in one piece. I already knew exactly what the answer would be.

My mother met me at the door with a towel before I even managed to knock, her nose wrinkling instantly at the mix of rain and my scent gone sour with distress. A mother’s nose never missed that kind of thing on her own pup.

“Gemma.” She took one look at my bleeding feet and her jaw went tightened, her face twisting in anger. “Sit down right now.”

She wrung out the hem of my sweater over the sink, muttering something under her breath about Alphas who could not tell the difference between a mate and a stray they had picked up off the street. I did not stop her. It felt good to let someone else be angry on my behalf for a while.

She did not ask a single question until I had stopped shaking, wrapped in a blanket on the couch with a mug of hot tea warming my hands, my wolf finally settling now that we were somewhere that smelled like pack, like home, like people who wouldn't hand our shelter to a stranger.

When I finally told her what happened, she was quiet for a long moment, pressing her mouth into a thin line I recognized well.

“You’re done with him.” She said at last. “Tell me you’re done, Gemma.”

“I’m done.” I answered. I’d already decided that on my walk here, somewhere around the second mile, when I figured the bond’s pull had started to feel less like fate and more like a leash.

My phone buzzed on the table before she could reply. Hunter’s name lit up the screen at one in the morning. I almost let it ring itself out, but curiosity got the best of me, and I picked up anyway.

“Are you still sulking?” He asked, in the tone people used on children.

“No.” I said. My mom stared intently at the phone, grinding her teeth.

“Harmony’s got a fever now. She keeps saying it’s her fault I had to go pick you up, and she won’t stop apologizing for it. If you’re free tomorrow, could you go talk to her? She’s tearing herself up over nothing.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it for a second.

“You want me to go comfort her?” I repeated slowly.

“Gemma, she was really shaken up today.”

“So because she got scared, I’m supposed to be the one holding her hand through it? I walked home barefoot in a storm tonight, Hunter. I’ve got cuts all over my feet right now. And you’re calling me at one in the morning to ask me to babysit the woman you chose over your own mate?”

He went quiet for a couple of seconds. Then he said, in that tone he always used when he wanted me to feel small. “You never used to be this petty, Gemma.”

“And you never used to make me choose between my comfort and hers. We’re done, Hunter.”

“Gemma! Don’t be dramatic and do what you’ll regret. It’s one in the morning.”

“Exactly my point. Go take care of your girl instead.” I ended the call before he had the chance to answer.

My wolf begged to be let out, but I sat quietly instead, swallowing the pain in my chest.

By morning the ache in my chest had not gone anywhere, though my head felt clearer than it had in weeks. I packed a bag, grabbed my spare key, and drove over to the house we had rented together, the one with my name on half the lease.

I knew Hunter would already be out running border patrol like he did most mornings, and I would be in and out before he even realized I had come by at all. I opened the door and paused.

A pair of soaked white sneakers sat by the entrance, still dripping onto the floor. On the coffee table sat a half-empty glass of milk. And laid thick over both of them, unmistakable even to a human nose, was Harmony’s scent, worked so deep into the fabric of the couch that it had all but buried mine underneath it.

And there, curled up in my exact spot on the couch, wrapped in my own pajamas, was Harmony, looking up at me with wide, wounded eyes like I was an intruder in my own home.

“Gemma, please don’t misunderstand this.” Her voice came out small and trembling. “Hunter said I could stay over, I didn't touch anything of yours on purpose, I promise.”

Hunter walked out of the kitchen wearing an apron, carrying a bowl of oatmeal, his hair still messy from sleep, with no sign of border patrol anywhere on him.

“Just in time.” He said. “Harmony had a fever again last night, so I let her stay over. Don’t start with me, Gemma. It’s not what it looks like.”

“It’s exactly what it looks like.” I said. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

My wolf had gone quiet inside my chest, watching everything through my eyes without making a single sound for the first time. It was not only that Harmony was wearing my clothes. It was that our bond, the one that was supposed to make him ache at even the thought of another woman’s scent on his skin, hadn’t so much as flickered.

It was the way Hunter set that bowl down in front of her like she was something precious, the way he brushed a strand of hair off her face.

Her scent was all over my couch, my blanket, even the side of the bed I could see clearly through the open bedroom door. Mine barely lingered underneath hers anymore, and for a wolf, that was an eviction notice.

“Gemma, come on now.” Hunter frowned when I still had not moved from the doorway. “Don’t make this into something it isn’t.”

I looked at him for a long moment, at the mate I would have burned down half the world for only a week ago, and felt absolutely nothing in me reach for him anymore.

“You want to know what’s actually strange here, Hunter?” I asked. “Standing in an apron in a house you’re about to lose.”

His whole expression dropped in an instant. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you should enjoy this house while it still has your name on it.” I gave him a small smile. “Things change fast once a pack starts asking questions about its Alpha’s judgment.”

“Gemma, whatever you’re planning, just talk to me first.”

“I’m done talking to you, Hunter.”

“What exactly do you mean, Gemma?” He asked, already walking towards me.

“Nothing at all.” I said, and turned for the door. If he wanted to keep playing house with her, I would let him enjoy it a little while longer. “Enjoy your oatmeal, Hunter. Goodbye, Harmony.”

I walked out before either of them could ask what I actually meant by any of it, already reaching for my phone to call the one person in this pack who could make absolutely certain Hunter Ward understood exactly what he had just thrown away.