Page 55 of Wolf's Reckoning
“She needs someone willing to make the hard call. Someone who doesn’t flinch when blood spills.”
“She’s not flinching either,” he said, nodding toward where she’d gone.
“No,” I agreed. “That’s why it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Because I hadn’t come here to oversee a transfer of power. I hadn’t come here to play politics with men who didn’t deserve to lead a den of rats, let alone a pack. I was here because something was coming. I’d seen it in the shadows at the edge of our territories. I’d smelled it in the broken bones of prey that rogues sent as a warning.
And I knew—knew—that when it hit, this pack needed more than tradition. It needed someone who didn’t give a damn about playing nice.
Rowen thought she was still fighting me. She hadn’t realized we were already fighting on the same side.
Just not for the same future.
Chapter 14
Rowen
I wasn’t avoiding him.
I told myself that again as I shut the door to my rooms with a little more force than necessary. The wood creaked in protest but didn’t splinter. Shame. I needed something to break besides my own composure. Wolfe was playing a game I hadn’t agreed to—and somehow, I was already losing.
He hadn’t challenged my father. He hadn’t demanded the title. Hadn’t even thrown a single punch or issued a single command in open forum.
And yet…he was everywhere.
He’d walked into Blueridge Hollow and taken up space like he’d never left. Spoken to my father like a son returning from exile. Paced our borders like they were already his.
And the worst part? No one stopped him. Not the suitors. Not the pack. Not even the druid.
Not me either.
They were watching him the same way they’d once watched my dad—like he might just have the answers. Likemaybe, finally, someone strong enough had come to carry the weight of this place.
I should’ve been angry.
Iwasangry.
But underneath that? I was scared. Not of Wolfe. Not exactly. But what it meant if the Hollow started bending for him. Of what it meant if they already had.
I dropped into the chair near my window and stared out at the pine-slicked slope beyond the ridge. Mist moved low across the ground like a second skin, clinging to every root and stone.
This land was mine.Mine. I was born to it. I’d bled for it. Sacrificed more than Wolfe could understand, just to be seen, let alone respected. And now he strolls in with his big dick energy and wry smile, and suddenly everyone’s forgotten that I’ve been holding this pack together by the bones of my back?
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I closed my eyes and whispered to the silence: “What is your angle, Wolfe?”
Because there was one, there always was. The question wasn’t whether he was playing the game. The question was how many pieces he’d already moved without anyone noticing. And whether I had the guts to flip the board while he crowned himself leader.
I couldn’t ignore the pang of guilt; my father had made him heir, and all Wolfe had done was accept it.
After my “talk” to myself this morning, I went and did the same thing again. I had hidden and wallowed, which was stupid. Wolfe didn’t expect me to hide; in fairness, Wolfedidn’t expectanythingof me except to be the reminder of why he left this pack in the first place.
When I thought about it, was there any wonder he was hostile? Hehadloved me when we were younger, no matter how much I tried to deny it, and I told him I chose my pack over him. I had hurt him. I knew it then, as much as I knew it now.
The irony that he had ended up coming back and would be the one toinheritthis pack was not lost on me. Karma really was a malicious bitch. I could have saved myself years of fighting against a system if I had listened to my heart instead of my head ten years ago.
But then I’d have been his wife, and while I had loved him then, I think we’d both changed too much to be nostalgic about the past. He was most definitely not the male that I knew. He was harder, more ruthless, still sayingfuck youto anyone and everyone, but now he had the power behind it.
