The Lone Alpha's Luna

Three nights to the full moon, one trespasser limping across the eastern boundary, and a pack already looking for a reason. Gideon's boots hit the forest floor before his wolf has fully settled back into his bones. Knees bent, fists clenched, breath sawing in and out. The scent hits him again, wrong wolf on wrong territory, and he forces his lungs to slow, forces the animal back down into the dark place where it lives. Three minutes out from the boundary, tracking her since she crossed the creek. Female, alone, limping. The kind of trespass that gets people killed when a pack is already on edge, when a rival is looking for any excuse to call a challenge, and when the moon is three nights out and pulling at everybody's instincts like a tide. He moves through the ferns without sound, keeping the wind in his face. Rowan is not lost, is not sorry, and has a very specific reason for crossing that creek which she is not going to explain to anybody with that much authority in his voice. She will not give a name, will not explain the limp, and will not accept the escort off the territory that every wolf in the valley would accept gratefully. By the second day she has been given a room, which is a decision Gideon is going to have to justify to eleven people. What follows: blood he could not taste, a debt he did not ask for, a promise he could not keep, pain buried too deep to reach, a wall he refused to see, a door he swore he would never open, the poison people call duty, and blood that binds as much as it separates. *I love you. You're the only family I have left.* *You lied to me.* The cost is stated plainly by the end. Gideon loses the distance that has kept him functional as an alpha since his father died, which is that nobody in Silver Creek has ever been able to hurt him through somebody else. Rowan loses the anonymity she crossed three states to buy, and she loses it in front of a pack that has every reason to use it.