Chapter 2

Four broad-shouldered Hale elders crowded into my tiny apartment living room.

The thick, domineering scent of the Pack filled every corner.

Noah curled into one end of our worn couch. His face was white, and his fingers had turned blue at the knuckles from gripping his pants so tightly.

A gray-haired elder frowned. With the blunt entitlement of someone inspecting damaged goods, he reached for Noah’s nape scent gland.

“Can’t even manage the most basic restraint. He’s practically feral—”

“Don’t touch him!”

Noah’s Alpha instincts were driven into a corner.

A sharp, vicious young-wolf snarl burst from his throat.

The force of pure Hale blood swept through the room like a storm. The elder staggered back two steps and slammed into the doorframe.

Silence fell.

A grown wolf had been forced back by a twelve-year-old boy.

But Noah froze.

The gray-haired elder steadied himself against the frame. He did not come closer again. He only stared at Noah.

That wary, disgusted look made Noah shrink farther into the couch.

He looked down at his hands. His breathing broke apart.

Black claw tips slipped slowly between his fingers. They tore through the couch cushion, then dragged helplessly across it.

“Noah!”

I dropped to my knees in front of him and held his temples.

“Look at me. Three things, Noah. The clock on the wall. The rug. My hand.”

But this time, the surge in his top-tier Alpha blood was too violent.

The wolf inside me, weakened for twelve years, barely stirred. I could not build enough of a barrier to contain the chaos. Noah’s claws kept scraping the floor with a sound that set my teeth on edge.

Ronan stepped out of the shadows.

He did not touch Noah.

He only lowered his head slightly and spoke one word, threaded with absolute command.

“Retract.”

It was a pure Alpha command.

Invisible rank and pressure crashed down like a boulder.

Noah’s body jolted.

Then, before his terrified eyes, it betrayed him. His claws dragged back beneath his skin. His fangs receded. His bones snapped into place.

Noah collapsed against me, gasping, horror written all over his face.

“Poor child.”

Serena stepped forward at exactly the right moment. A soothing calming Luna scent flowed from her palm over Noah’s forehead.

“He should never have had to face his awakening alone. If he had returned to the territory sooner, it never would have become this ugly.”

Then Serena looked at me, her polite smile still perfectly in place.

“You have done a great deal raising him alone.” She paused, as if she truly pitied me. “But you saw what happened just now, Elara. He needs more than a life spent hiding in that little apartment.”

She glanced down at Noah, then back at me.

“Hale will teach him how to survive.”

With a few gentle words, she reduced twelve years of keeping my son alive to nothing more than hiding.