“Again, Alpha?” Ronan’s voice carried a note of amusement as he fell into step beside me. His boots crunched over the damp earth, matching my stride as though he had walked this path a thousand times. And maybe he had—patrols were as natural to him as breathing.

I kept my eyes ahead, scanning the tree line where the shadows grew thick. The air was sharp with pine and the metallic tang of dew. Night still lingered, but dawn was pressing at the horizon, bleeding pale gold through the branches.

“Again,” I muttered.

Ronan chuckled. “Most Alphas would be sleeping after the day you had yesterday. Diplomacy. Agreements. Promises.” He spat the last word like it tasted bitter. “But you? You’d rather stalk the woods at dawn.”

“Sleep doesn’t quiet my head,” I said flatly.

And it didn’t. The weight of Darius’s stare still sat heavy on my shoulders, the echo of Lyra’s polite, measured smile etched into my memory. A deal had been struck, an alliance sealed in words, but my chest felt like a cage closing in.

The trees thinned as we neared the edge of our territory. Beyond this line of ancient oaks and thorn bushes lay the neutral ground—the stretch of land between my pack and the human settlement.

It looked harmless enough. A stream trickled lazily through the clearing, mist curling off its surface. Birds sang. But beneath that peace, I felt it—the hum of power, the pulse of danger.

This border had been painted in blood too many times to forget.

I slowed, letting my senses stretch. My wolf stirred beneath my skin, impatient, sharp-eyed.

Something felt… off.

It came on the wind—soft, fleeting. Not wolf. Not deer. Not anything I could immediately name.

I inhaled deeply, and it hit me again: warm, sweet, almost floral, with an undercurrent that didn’t belong in these woods.

Human.

But not like any human I had scented before. There was something threaded through it—something wild, buried deep.

I froze.

Ronan noticed. “What is it?”

“…A scent.”

He raised a brow. “Hunter?”

I shook my head slowly. “No. Something else.”

The wolf inside me pressed forward, ears perked, teeth bared—not in hostility, but in recognition. A strange pull twisted through me, low in my gut, as if I were standing at the edge of something vast and inevitable.

I clenched my jaw. “It’s nothing.”

But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie.

We continued along the border, but Ronan’s sharp gaze never left me.

“You’ve been restless since yesterday,” he said casually. “Since you agreed to bind yourself to Lyra.”

I shot him a look. “Careful.”

He grinned, unbothered. “Don’t tell me you’re thrilled about it. You didn’t exactly look like a man in love when you shook Darius’s hand.”

Love. The word sat wrong in my chest. “This isn’t about love. It’s about survival.”

Ronan shrugged. “Maybe. But I know you, Kael. Something’s eating at you. You’ve had that storm brewing in your eyes since before dawn.”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because he was right, but not in the way he thought.

We circled the border twice, but the scent lingered. Always at the edges, just out of reach.

Each time the wind shifted, it teased me again—faint, elusive, but unmistakable. And each time, my wolf strained against the leash, urging me to follow.

To chase.

To find.

I forced myself to turn away, muscles rigid with restraint. Whoever—or whatever—it was, it wasn’t our concern. Not now.

But deep down, I knew I was lying to myself again.

Because if there was one thing I trusted more than steel, more than blood, more than oaths… it was instinct.

And instinct told me this scent was not a mistake.

It was the beginning of something I wasn’t ready for.