When I was a girl, I used to murmur to the trees hoping a dryad would talk back to me. It was one of my favorite stories my mother told us when we were small. The idea of ancient magic fascinated me for the vastness of its possibilities.

There was a time it was richly infused all around us. Only witches and other supernatural beings remain to keep it alive.

Caden cocks his head, waiting. His impatience is palpable, an invisible force pulling taut between us to make me answer.

His jaw works, cheek spasming. He folds his arms, the thin material of his shirt stretching over his sculpted biceps and shoulders. His muscles bunch and bulge larger with the low warning rumble vibrating from him. I snap my gaze up to meet his surly expression.

“I don’t have time for this. What,” he repeats, slow and firm, “are you doing all the way out here, Avery?”

The roughness of my name leaving his lips makes my breath hitch. I haven’t heard him say my name since we were teenagers. It’s tinged with his Alpha command, compelling me to obey his wishes.

“Nothing, Alpha Blackburn,” I finally answer after the longest stretch I can get away with, offering the barest dip of my chin.

The title leaves my tongue thick and heavy. It’s difficult to say anything else as bitter memories stir a pang in my heart, flitting through my mind. Running through the forest with Caden when we were young. Splashing each other at the big natural spring everyone swims at and him pushing me in the deep end near the waterfall.

My father clashing with his. Claws slicing through skin. My attention cut to his shoulder, pulse going jagged as our past haunts me.

He’s dissatisfied with the answer. “That doesn’t tell me why you’re out here. Explain yourself.”

I almost choke the liatris clipping when I yank it free of my bag, tucking the satchel behind me. If I keep him distracted, he won’t ask to search it.

“Just on a walk to gather herbs and medicinal plants. Sir,” I tack on after a beat.

My throat stings, clogging with my buried emotions. I deaden my heart to every member of the pack…except when it comes to him.

He glances from the flowering purple stalk in my clutches to my patched up hiking boots, giving me a slow once over, frowning.

“Alone?”

I blink. “Of course.”

It’s not like anyone in the pack other than my sisters would be caught dead hanging out with me. Except Taryn, but she’s a wild she-wolf who just likes the thrill of anything illicit and off-limits.

Another disgruntled rumble leaves him. He opens his mouth as if he’s going to question me further, then tears his attention from me, swiping a hand over his stubbled jaw. I’m reluctant to admit he looks ruggedly handsome when he does that, and my bitter hatred for him grows a new thorn.

“Don’t cause me any more problems than you already have,” he says.

I bite back the caustic reply I want to sling at him, though I can’t quite keep my face clear of my outrage. He gets in my face to intimidate me into submission. I hold my ground, daring to maintain eye contact instead of lowering my gaze.

I shouldn’t even try him like this. He’s the pack alpha. Has been for four years since his father passed.

Giving Caden Blackburn an ounce of attitude, or anything less than my absolute loyalty, is a terrible idea.

At my insolent display, he huffs, carved body seeming to grow larger—the universal sign amongst shifters that they’re feeling their wolf because of high emotions. Still, I don’t give him an inch of ground, instinct pushing me to get closer. My chest rises and falls faster and I slip a hand into my pocket to wrap around my shears. Without the true increased power a wolf would grant me, they’re all I have to defend myself with.

As Alpha, he could decide to make my situation worse whenever he wants for any reason, I remind myself.

Scream it at myself, really, because for some insane reason, I find myself succumbing to instinct by leaning in another inch, daring him to close the scarce gap of space left between us rather than trying to end this so I can get as far from him as possible.

His pupils dilate, blue swirling with the gold of his wolf. I lick my lips, lost to the thrall of the strange moment we’re locked in. We breathe the same air, an invisible tether drawing us together.

My heart pounds, stomach tightening as he begins to dip his nose.

Is he going to scent me?

He lingers at my jaw, chest rising and falling. Awareness of him tingles through me, warmth pooling in my core.

The broad expanse of his rugged body.

The heat of him bleeding through my clothes.

The taste of his spicy musk on my tongue.

Caden jerks back with a grunt before reaching my neck, coming to his senses. I release a shaking breath, unsure what just transpired between us.

Or why part of me…wanted him to graze his nose along my neck to mix our pheromones together so I’d smell like him. I blink rapidly, ignoring the flush spreading through my body.

He stares at me, eyes narrowing at my hand still in my pocket. I step back too slowly for his full shifter speed. His grip yanks my arm free, growling when he sees the shears.

“You’ve always been your father’s daughter, haven’t you?” he accuses.

“No,” I grit out.

“No?” His handsome features contort with anger. “You weren’t trying to get close enough to stab me with these? That’s not how challenging the alpha works.”

He wrenches them from me with little effort and brandishes them in my face. I foolishly try to snatch them back. He blocks me with his arm. I retreat, blowing out a frazzled exhale.

“It’s not—I wasn’t.” I rub my forehead and screw my eyes shut as I push out the words. “I wasn’t going to use them. You know I’d never be a match for your strength if you… They were only meant for protection.”

He goes rigid, scrutinizing me in stony silence for several harrowing heartbeats. I can’t read his expression.

“Go home, Avery,” he bites out at last as he tosses the shears to the ground.

He storms past me, running his fingers through his hair. I watch him until he’s out of sight, then hiss tightly, throat burning as I sink to my knees beside the discarded shears. I bury my face in my hands until my body stops trembling from the flood of adrenaline and tears stop pricking my eyes.

I scrub at them and push to my feet with a huff. That was reckless, but I survived it. At least he didn’t find out about the actual rules I broke by going to town.

Seizing my abandoned shears, I spot the trampled cutting I dropped when Caden grabbed me. One of us stepped on it from the looks of how crushed it is.

Sighing, I brush it off as best I can. Hopefully I can salvage something useful out of it.

3CADEN

Avery’s scent follows me long after I let her go. I do my best to finish checking the borders with it tickling my nose. It’s distracting. Far sweeter than I remember when I last caught it on the wind.

I shouldn’t be able to pick up her scent still. Not at this distance, diluted by the smells of nature and other packmates as I venture closer to more populated areas.

Even as an alpha shifter, my heightened senses have a limit. So how the hell am I aware of exactly which direction she’s in on this mountain right now?

Scrubbing my face, I dismiss it as my damn imagination conspiring with my lack of sleep to toy with me.

I know this land like the back of my hand. I’ve committed every mossy patch, every trickling stream, every tree hollow to memory since I was a pup knowing it would become mine to guard and protect when it was my time to take over the responsibility for my father as his successor.

Of course I know where Avery Morgan is. It’s the alpha’s duty to always be aware of his enemies.

Tonight is the full moon. As shifters, our connection to it and the moon goddess is strongest on these nights. We run as a pack to honor the gift she bestowed on the first wolf to walk amongst man and nature. It’s a time of celebration every month, to guide the younger members of the pack coming of age for their first shift, but I’m not in the mood.