Chapter 1

The Luna Who Came Back

The GPS lost signal about two miles before the turnoff, which was fine, because Elena didn’t need it anymore. She still knew this road. Knew which pothole to swerve around, knew the exact spot where the trees started leaning in over the pavement like they were trying to get a better look at you.

Five years. You’d think a person’s hands would forget a road in five years. Hers hadn’t.

She’d told herself the whole flight over that this was going to be simple. Get in, get her father’s things, sign whatever needed signing, get out. She had a return flight booked for Thursday. She’d looked at the confirmation email about six times since landing, like it was proof of something.

The gate came up faster than she expected. New paint on the sign. She noticed that first, stupidly that someone had bothered to repaint the packhouse sign at some point in the last five years, that life here had just kept going, adding coats of paint, having kids apparently, none of it waiting around for her.

Good. That was the point of leaving. You weren’t supposed to come back and find everything exactly the same, frozen, like a museum of your worst year.

She parked outside her father’s house and sat there a second with her hands still on the wheel.

Then she got out, because sitting in the car wasn’t going to pack any boxes.

She felt people notice her before she actually saw anyone. That was a wolf thing, or maybe just a small-town thing, hard to say, a kind of ripple, heads turning down the road, a woman stopping her sweeping to stare. Elena kept her eyes on the front door and her stride even and didn’t give anyone the satisfaction of looking rattled, even though her stomach had dropped somewhere around the gate and hadn’t come back up yet.

“Elena? Elena Voss?”

She recognized the voice before she turned around. Marta, from the bakery older now, flour on her hands like she’d left the oven running to come outside.

“Hi, Marta.”

“Oh my god. I heard about your father, I am so sorry, but I didn’t think  I mean nobody said you were ” Marta’s eyes did the thing everyone’s eyes were about to keep doing this whole trip, apparently, flicking up toward the packhouse on the hill and back again, fast, like she hadn’t meant to do it.

“I’m just here for his things,” Elena said. “Won’t be long.”

“Well.” Marta didn’t look convinced, but she nodded anyway. “He talked about you all the time, you know. Right up until the end. I’m glad you came back, even if it’s just for this.”

Elena didn’t know what to do with that, so she just said thanks and got herself inside before Marta could ask anything harder.

The house smelled like him. That got her more than she expected, not the boxes, not the empty chair, just the smell, pipe tobacco and the cedar blocks he kept in his closet for months that had probably been dead for a decade. She stood in the hallway a full minute before she made herself move.

His study was untouched. Pen still uncapped on the desk like he’d meant to come back to it. She started with the easy stuff, the desk drawers, the shelf of paperbacks he swore he only read once. The filing cabinet in the corner she left alone. She wasn’t ready for whatever was in there yet.

She found a photo of the two of them tucked inside one of the paperbacks, her and her father at some packed bonfire years back, both of them squinting into the sun. She almost laughed. Almost cried, too, which annoyed her, so she set the photo face-down on the desk and kept going, faster now, like speed could outrun feeling anything.

She’d gotten through maybe two boxes when the light in the doorway changed.

She knew who it was before she looked up. Some part of her chest just knew, the way you know a storm’s coming before you see the clouds, and she hated that part of her a little for still working.

Damon.

He filled the doorway the way he always had, except bigger somehow, harder around the jaw, like the last five years had worn away whatever had been soft about him back then. His eyes landed on her and just stayed there.

For a second, something moved across his face that she wasn’t ready for. Not the cold, in-control Alpha look she’d been bracing herself for the whole drive out. Something rawer. Like he was looking at a door he’d bolted shut himself, years ago, and never actually expected to see open again.

Then it was gone, and his face went back to whatever face he wore for everyone else now.

Nobody said anything for a second too long.

She felt it happen anyway  that pull in her chest she used to think of, embarrassingly, as a string tied between them. She’d been so sure it snapped the night he sent her away. Apparently it hadn’t snapped. Apparently it had just been waiting.

“Elena.” Lower than she remembered. Rougher.

“Alpha.” She used the title on purpose and watched it land somewhere behind his eyes.

“You’re back.”

“For a few days.” She crouched back down over the box at her feet mostly so she wouldn’t have to keep looking at him. “My father passed. I’m handling his affairs. That’s the whole reason.”

“I heard about your dad. I’m sorry, Elena. He was a good man.”

“He was.” She didn’t give him anything else.

The quiet after that had a weight to it she remembered  five years of things nobody had said, stacked up in the room like furniture nobody used. He looked around at the half-packed shelves, at a man’s whole life folded into cardboard, and something tightened in his jaw before he caught it.

“If you need anything while you’re here”

“I don’t.”

Came out sharper than she meant. She let it stand anyway.

She watched it land on him  a small version of what he’d done to her once, in front of the whole pack and something dark passed behind his eyes for a second. Fine. Let him have a taste of it.

“Right,” he said quietly. “Of course.”

He didn’t leave. Not right away. He stood there for a few more seconds like a version of himself was trying to cross the room toward her and he was holding it back with both hands, and honestly, she understood that, because she was doing the same thing from her end.

Finally, he stepped back off the porch.

“Northern wards haven’t been right lately,” he said. “Territory’s had some trouble. Just  be careful out there, okay?”

Not an apology. Not any explanation for what happened five years ago, though some stupid corner of her had apparently been waiting on one anyway. Just a warning, set down carefully, like he wasn’t sure she’d even pick it up.

Then his boots were on the gravel, and then he was gone, and she was alone with the boxes and a pulse that wouldn’t slow down no matter how hard she told it to.

Through the window she watched him cross the yard, watched two pack members straighten up when he passed like soldiers catching sight of an officer. He didn’t look back at the house. She noticed that, and hated that she noticed it, and hated more that some part of her had actually wanted him to.

She sat back on the floor, boxes half-sorted around her, and pressed her palm flat against her chest like that would help anything at all.

You did five years without him, she reminded herself. You can do one week.

Her wolf didn’t answer. But she felt her turn toward the door anyway, slow, the way she used to before Elena had taught her not to.

Damon didn’t stop walking until he hit the tree line.

His wolf hadn’t calmed down at all  if anything it was worse, some low steady growl under his skin that hadn’t let up since the second he’d smelled her. For five years he’d told himself the bond was dead. Five years of practice, and it had taken about four seconds standing in that doorway for the whole thing to fall apart.

 She’s back, his wolf said. Nothing subtle about it. Ours.

He shut his eyes and stood there a minute, hands in fists at his sides, while behind him, in the house he’d once meant to fill with her laughter, Elena Voss knelt in the dust of her father’s life and fought the same fight he was fighting.

Neither of them said it out loud.

They didn’t need to. Whatever they’d both spent five years pretending was dead had just opened its eyes again, and it wasn’t going back to sleep, not this time.