Page 28 of Alpha Unbound

The cabin isn’t much more than rot and old bones now—its porch collapsed in a sag of splintered wood, sagging like the ribs of a long-dead beast. One busted window gapes open, the glass jagged and dust-filmed, as if the house itself is squinting at the world with suspicion. Ivy coils up the siding in thick, choking ropes, wrapping around the frame like it’s trying to drag the whole damn structure back into the dirt. The chimney leans, cracked down the middle like a snapped spine. Moss carpets the roof, and black mold blooms along the lower boards.

But it’s the air that really gets me. Too sharp. Too still. As if every tree and shadow is watching, waiting for the misstep. The kind of silence that doesn’t just fall—it presses. Watching. Weighing. Daring you to step closer.

I kill the engine, step out, and let the silence wrap around me. Then I catch it—a distinctive scent that is definitely male, definitely wolf, and vaguely familiar. Not one of my pack and not one I've smelled in a long, long time.

Luke.

And just like that, I’m hit with a memory so clear it slams through me like a live round.

We were sitting on the back porch of the McKinley place—summer night, poker chips clacking on the table, a jar of shine between us. Luke leaned back in his chair, cocky grin plastered across his face.

"One day you’re gonna end up with my kid sister, you know that?"

I nearly choked on the sip I’d just taken. "Not a chance in hell."

He just laughed. "Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Rawlings. But I see the way you look at her. Like she’s the only thing keeping the stars up in the damn sky."

My jaw clenched so hard my molars ached. I’d looked away, pretending to focus on reshuffling the deck, but my pulse was hammering in my throat. Just the idea of Kate—off-limits, too bright for someone like me—stirred something I didn’t have a name for yet. Something dangerous. I remembered the heat of it then, how quickly I buried it under a scoff and a swig of shine.

I’d shut him down, told him he was drunk, delusional, and dead wrong.

But he wasn’t.

And now, years later, standing here in the woods with Luke’s scent still lingering in the air like a challenge, I wonder if he knew back then—if he felt it before I did. Before I ever let myself want what I shouldn’t have.

I freeze mid-step, my breath catching as if someone punched me in the chest. The scent’s faint but distinct—buried under layers of mold and pine, but it cuts through the cold like a brand to the senses. Still his. The kind of scent that shouldn’t be here, not anymore. It’s earthy and sharp, with that odd metallic undertone I remember from nights long past—back when Luke still showed up at poker games and made sure Kate got home safe.

A thousand details flood in at once: the way his scent always carried a trace of cedar smoke, the way his presence filled a room without noise. And now, all of that wrapped in decay, like the memory of him has been decomposing right alongside this damn cabin. I crouch, trying to isolate the direction, heartbeat thudding loud enough to drown out the trees. My wolf presses forward, ears straining, nose working overtime. It’s weak, scattered—but it’s real. And it makes the hair rise along my neck. Luke McKinley has been here. Recently.

Which begs the question: why the hell hasn’t he come home?

I recognize it because it's the same scent I picked up inside McKinley’s Mercantile. Hidden in the corners of the place, the faint scent was easy to miss unless you were trained to find it. I thought it was old—a ghost scent, more memory than presence. Something clinging to the wooden shelves, the faded floorboards, maybe even the quilts Kate keeps stacked by the window. Something left behind by someone the building hadn’t stopped waiting for. But even then, it felt too strong. Too intact. I told myself it meant nothing because believing otherwise opened doors I wasn’t ready to walk through. Believing otherwise opened doors to pain, truth, and the idea that the past might not be as buried as we pretended. But it does mean something. It means he was close. Too close.

He was here, and it wasn't all that long ago. The scent had weight—recent enough that the pine needles hadn’t reclaimed it, recent enough that my wolf hadn’t dismissed it as imagination. There was a clarity to it, like the ghost of him had brushed past me, just out of reach. It makes the air feel thinner, makes the silence ring louder. Whoever Luke was with, they didn’t linger. But he was here. And for a heartbeat, that means he’s not just a rumor or a regret. He’s real. Out there. Close.

I track it, slow and low, through frost-laced brush and over crumbling stone. The scent is a whisper, faint and elusive, threading between tree trunks and vanishing beneath patches of rotting leaves. I have to stop often, crouch low, recalibrate my direction as the trail loops and fades. Whoever Luke was with—or running from—knew what they were doing. They didn’t just leave. They erased their path. Disrupted the flow. Turned the forest itself into camouflage.

But the ground still tells a story—it always does. Every step is a question—what snapped this branch, what moved that stone? I move slowly, reading the forest like a map scrawled in damageand instinct. I’ve tracked insurgents through the desert, hunted shadows across bombed-out villages. I know what silence looks like when it’s forced. This—this is practiced. Professional. The kind of trail designed to disappear the moment you find it.

Then, just behind a collapsed pine trunk, the trail breaks.

Gone.

The scent ends in an instant—cut clean, replaced by a chemical haze so sharp my wolf recoils like he’s taken a blow to the face. I hiss a breath through my teeth. It's chemical masking—strong, high-grade stuff.

Not the kind you pick up at a supply store. Not the kind some local yokel moonshiner would think to use. This is the same kind of scent suppressor we used in tactical ops overseas, built to confuse trained wolves, dogs, drones—anything that hunts by air and instinct. It doesn’t just blur a trail. It annihilates it. Rips the thread right out of the forest’s weave.

I’ve seen this before—covert ops, black sites, and teams that never officially existed. Whoever did this didn’t just want to cover their tracks. They wanted to make sure no one even knew a trail had ever been there.

That means Luke didn’t just stumble into something—he was in it, deep. Either he got in over his head with people who move like shadows and clean their trails with military precision, or he’s running scared, cutting ties so clean he vanished right out of his own life. That scent didn’t linger by accident. It was a flare, faint and fading, as if he left it on purpose but couldn’t stick around. And someone else came behind him to wipe it out. Deliberate. Efficient. Like he mattered enough to erase. Whoever they were, they wanted to make damn sure he stayed missing.

And that’s the part that rattles me. This isn’t desperate. It’s not improvised. It’s surgical. Intentional. The kind of operation that leaves no trace and expects no glory. Whoever Luke’sgotten tangled up with doesn’t make mistakes—they eliminate variables. Quietly. Thoroughly. They plan for contingencies, clean up loose ends, and scrub their footprints from the earth before the dirt even settles. This is ghost-level precision.

And if Luke’s caught in the middle of that kind of silence, then he’s either in deeper than I thought—or he’s already too far gone to claw his way back out alone.

And if he’s running? He’s not just scared—he's being hunted.

The wind changes direction, but there’s nothing else to smell. No food wrappers, no boot prints, no grease on the hinges, no trace of warmth left behind. Just the sharp tang of cold metal and mildew, the kind of rot that clings to old bones and forgotten places. Even the animals have stayed clear—no scat, no nests, not a single fresh track. It's too clean, too abandoned in a way that doesn’t happen naturally. The space has been stripped of life and memory. The kind of empty that isn’t just absence—it’sintentional. And it leaves a weight behind, pressing into my chest like the forest itself is warning me to leave well enough alone.

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