Page 13 of A Gathering Storm
My wolf paces beneath my skin, restless in ways that have nothing to do with last night's violence. There's change on the wind—not the weather kind that brings storms rolling in from the Atlantic like ancient titans, but the bone-deep change that comes before everything you know burns to ash and forces you to rebuild from the ashes.
The mercenaries' bodies are already gone, dragged out to sea by Finn's tides or buried in Grayson's deep places where the ocean floor swallows secrets whole. Their weapons lie scattered among the rocks like fallen stars—silver bullets and military-grade hardware that confirms what I've suspected for months. Someone knows what we are. Someone with resources and reach enough to hire professional killers. Someone who wants us extinct.
But that's tomorrow's problem, another threat to catalog and counter when the sun burns off this mist and the world comes hunting again. This morning, I need to check Rafe's territory, ensure last night's incursion didn't leave traces that daylight might reveal to curious eyes. The path down from the cliffs winds treacherous in the half-light, slick with rain and littered with loose stones that would send a human tumbling to their death on the rocks below. My wolf's sure footing keeps me upright where human balance would fail, each step placed with predator precision.
The harbor spreads below like a painting done in shades of grey—weathered boats bobbing at their moorings like sleeping seabirds, the old pier stretching into water that mirrors the leaden sky. Early gulls wheel overhead, their cries harsh against the morning silence that follows every storm. The fishing fleet already headed out before dawn, following currents and instincts older than memory, leaving only pleasure craft and the ferry that connects us to the mainland twice daily.
The ferry. I pause between weathered pilings crusted with barnacles and dried kelp, the salt-sweet smell of low tide sharp in my nostrils. Its engine throbs dull against the quiet as it noses into the dock, disgorging the handful of passengers brave or foolish enough to visit Stormhaven in late October when the tourist season dies and the island shows its true face.
A few locals returning from mainland business—old Mrs. Campbell clutching a pharmacy bag, young Jimmy Lennox shouldering a duffel bag that suggests another failed attempt at leaving the island for good. A couple of tourists who'll find most things closed for the season, their disappointment already visible in the way they huddle together against the wind that cuts across the water like a blade.
And her.
The scent hits like a physical blow, driving straight through my defenses and into the primal core of what I am. My wolf surges to full attention with a certainty that rocks me back on my heels, every instinct firing at once until the world narrows to a single, impossible truth. The word roars through my blood, through bone and sinew, through every cell of my being until I can't breathe past it.
Mate.
Every muscle locks rigid as ancient instinct floods my system with recognition so intense it nearly drives me to my knees. The morning air suddenly tastes different—sweeter, sharper, alive with possibility and terror in equal measure. This isn't attraction or desire or simple lust—this is the universe realigning, destiny crashing into me like a rogue wave that strips away everything I thought I knew about myself. My wolf howls inside my skull, demanding I move, claim, possess, protect.
Eliza Warren steps off the gangplank with unconscious grace.
I know her name though we've never met, the way I know the tides and the phases of the moon. Know she inherited Clifftop House out on the north shore from an aunt she barely knew, a woman who kept to herself and asked no questions about the strange sounds that carried on the wind during full moons. Know she's a journalist from London, here to settle the estate and probably poke around for some quaint island color story. The kind of outsider we usually discourage with cold shouldersand careful misdirection until they grow bored and seek easier prey.
But knowing facts and seeing her are two violently different things, like the difference between reading about fire and having it burn through your veins.
Auburn hair catches the pale morning light like copper flame, pulled back in a messy knot that exposes the elegant line of her neck—pale skin that would bruise so easily under teeth and claiming bites. She's smaller than I expected—barely would reach my shoulder if we were standing close enough to touch—but she moves with unconscious grace across the wet dock planks, sure-footed despite the treacherous surface. City clothes mark her as foreign as clearly as a neon sign: tailored wool coat that's never known salt spray, leather boots meant for pavement not pier wood, the kind of soft cashmere scarf that won't last a week in Stormhaven's salt-rough winds.
She pauses to adjust her grip on a worn leather suitcase, and I catch her profile in the grey morning light. Sharp features softened by tiredness from the overnight crossing, a mouth that looks like it smiles easily when not pressed into a line of concentration. Dark circles shadow her eyes, but they can't dim the intelligence that burns there like green fire. When she turns to scan the harbor, taking in the weathered buildings and fog-shrouded cliffs with the kind of focus that makes my wolf bare its teeth in approval, I see exactly why she chose investigative journalism.
She sees everything. Processes it, files it away, builds connections faster than most people can follow. The way her gaze lingers on the too-new repairs to the old warehouse, the careful way she steps around the dark stains on the dock that could be rust or oil or blood—she's already hunting for stories in a place most visitors see as picturesque decay.
She's beautiful, but that's not what has me frozen in place like prey caught in headlights. It's the recognition singing through every nerve ending, the way my wolf strains against my control, desperate to go to her. It's the mate-bond already forming, gossamer threads of connection I can feel spinning between us though she has no idea I exist, no knowledge of the supernatural world that just claimed her as its own.
My hands clench into fists hard enough that bones creak in protest. Every instinct screams at me to move—to stride across the dock and introduce myself, to guide her away from the exposed pier to somewhere private, somewhere safe. To explain what she is to me, what we could be to each other if she can accept the impossible. To claim her before another male catches her scent and?—
The thought cuts off as possessiveness roars through me hot enough to make my vision blur red at the edges. Mine. The word pulses with my heartbeat, primitive and absolute. Mine, mine, mine. The wolf doesn't care about complications or consequences. It only knows she belongs to us with a certainty that bypasses rational thought entirely.
But intelligence wars with desire, cold logic dousing primal need like ice water over burning coals. She's everything dangerous to what I've just built with blood and desperate alliances. A human outsider with professional curiosity and the skills to satisfy it, armed with camera and notebook and the kind of persistent charm that makes people tell her things they shouldn't. A journalist who makes her living uncovering secrets, and I've just sworn blood oaths with five other predators to keep ours buried deep as ocean trenches.
She could destroy us without meaning to, with nothing more than innocent curiosity and bad timing. A string of photographs at the wrong moment—Jax from man to wolf, all fangs and fury. One overheard conversation about territorial disputes andhunting grounds. One glimpse of a swirling mist where man becomes wolf, and everything unravels. The treaties written in blood and witnessed by stones older than memory, the territories carved out with tooth and claw, the fragile peace I've killed to maintain—all of it burns if she learns the truth.
And she will. My wolf won't let me stay away from her, and staying away is the only thing that might keep her safe. Already I'm memorizing the way morning light plays across her skin like watercolors, the way she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear with delicate fingers that were never meant for violence. I'm breathing deep, pulling her scent into my lungs like a drowning man gulps air—rain and vanilla and something uniquely her that makes my mouth water and my wolf whine with need.
The irony cuts deep enough to draw blood from my soul. Last night I forged a brotherhood in storm and violence, six dangerous men bound together to protect what we are from those who would hunt us. This morning, the fates hand me my mate—the one woman who could destroy it all simply by existing, by being curious, by asking the wrong questions at the right time.
She starts walking, pulling her suitcase over the uneven planks with determined efficiency that suggests she's faced worse obstacles than wet wood and morning mist. Her coat flares in the harbor breeze, revealing the curve of her waist, the feminine lines that make my wolf whine with need so acute it's nearly pain. She doesn't look back, doesn't sense the predator watching from shadows between the pilings. Completely unaware that her life just veered onto a collision course with teeth and claws and midnight hunts, with a world where monsters are real and some of them fall in love.
The harbor road swallows Duncan Ross’ ancient Land Rover like the mouth of a cave, winding up toward the village center where she'll find Finch's solicitor office with its dusty files andolder secrets, the single inn that stays open year-round for the handful of hardy souls who visit Stormhaven when it shows its true face. Duncan will get her up to Clifftop house and probably fill her head with local legends and lore. The others in town who see her pass by will eye her with the suspicious looks of locals who can smell "outsider" from a hundred yards and know exactly how dangerous questions can be.
But those same locals will help her—island hospitality runs deeper than suspicion, especially for a woman alone with her aunt's tragedy fresh as morning frost. They'll tell her which roads flood in heavy rain, which shops stay open past tourist season, how to work the old house's temperamental heating system. They'll weave a net of casual kindness around her that will make leaving harder than staying, because that's how small places claim the souls they want to keep.
Her aunt is dead, and Eliza Warren is very much alive. Alive and here and mine in ways she can't possibly understand yet, in ways that terrify me more than silver bullets or government hunters.
I remain frozen in place long after she disappears, my wolf howling protests that vibrate through my bones like struck tuning forks. The morning mist clings to my skin, cold and damp as grave shrouds, but I'm burning from the inside out with need so intense it borders on madness. My carefully ordered world—the one I've maintained through blood and will and ruthless control for thirty-seven years—just caught fire and I'm watching it burn.
The smart thing would be to avoid her entirely. To let her settle the estate and leave within the month, never knowing how close she came to monsters that hunt beneath human skin. To protect her through distance, keep her ignorant and safe and far from the violence that shadows my life like a faithful hound. To sacrifice my own desperate need on the altar of her safety.
But even as I think it, I know it's as impossible as asking the tide to stop or the moon to change its course. The mate-bond doesn't care about smart or safe or the careful walls I've built around my heart. It cares about completion, about the missing piece of my soul that just walked off a ferry in designer boots and a cloud of vanilla perfume. My wolf won't let her leave. Can't let her leave. The very thought makes my chest constrict like something vital is being torn away with rusty claws.
