Seduced By My God-Father

Chapter two

COLDER THAN I REMEMBERED:

I woke up to the sound of wolves.

Not howling, nothing so dramatic. Just movement beyond the tree line, the soft percussion of paws on pine needles, the occasional low call that the pack used when they ran together at dawn. I had forgotten how that sound felt. Like something in my blood answering before my mind could form a question.

I lay in my old bed and stared at the ceiling and tried to remember who I was.

Sera Moonveil. Twenty-one. Environmental studies, two semesters from graduating. I liked black coffee and terrible reality television and the particular quiet of libraries at closing time. I was practical. I was sensible. I had a plan for my life that did not involve werewolf pack politics or forbidden complications or the way my Godfather's eyes had rested on my face last night like I was something he was trying very hard not to look at.

Right.

I got up and got dressed and told myself firmly that yesterday's strangeness was just the disorientation of travel. Everything would be clearer in daylight.

It was not clearer in daylight.

The pack had gathered for the morning meeting by the time I made it downstairs, not a formal thing, just the habit of it, twenty or thirty wolves drifting toward the clearing behind the main house with coffee cups and low conversation. I recognised faces. People who had known me since I was small, who had watched me grow up with the collective slightly-distracted affection that packs had for children who weren't quite theirs.

They were warm with me. Welcoming in that uncomplicated way. Soren, who had been my father's beta and had a laugh you could hear from three clearings over, pulled me into a hug that lifted me off the ground. Della, who ran the pack's medical station and had stitched up more of my childhood injuries than I could count, held my face in her hands and told me I was too thin and needed feeding.

It was good. It was genuinely good.

And then Roger came out of the house.

The change in the clearing was subtle but immediate,the kind of shift that happens when an alpha moves through their pack, a slight straightening, a reorientation, the way sunflowers don't announce they're turning but simply turn. He walked to the head of the clearing in a dark jacket, coffee in one hand, and he didn't raise his voice or call for attention. He simply stood there, and the conversation settled.

He ran the meeting with the same economy he applied to everything. Territory patrol updates. A schedule for the winter supply runs. A mention, brief and clipped, of increased activity from the Ashvale pack on their northern border, he didn't elaborate and nobody pushed him, which told me it was worse than he was letting on.

I stood at the edge of the group and watched him.

Four years ago he had been formidable. Respected. The kind of man that rooms organised themselves around.

Now there was something else underneath it. Something that looked, from a certain angle, like exhaustion. Like someone who had been holding something heavy for a long time and had learned to hold it so still that other people had stopped noticing the weight.

I noticed.

That was going to be a problem too.

After the meeting broke up I fell into step with Mia, who handed me a second coffee with the efficiency of someone who had anticipated the need.

"Ashvale?" I asked quietly.

She glanced around. "Three border crossings in the last two weeks. No engagement, but they're pushing the line."

"Why?"

"That," she said, "is a question Roger is not currently answering out loud."

"Is he answering it quietly?"

"He's barely answering his own name quietly." She paused. "He's been like this for about three months. Since the autumn equinox."

I filed that away. "What happened at the equinox?"

Mia opened her mouth.

"Mia." Roger's voice came from behind us.

We both turned. He was standing ten feet away, grey eyes on Mia, expression unreadable.

"Beta Soren needs you at the eastern trail," he said.

It was not a request. Mia gave me a look that promised a continuation of this conversation later, and left.

Roger looked at me.

"Walk with me," he said.

We walked the tree line in silence for a while, which should have been uncomfortable and was somehow not. We had always been able to do this exist in the same quiet without needing to fill it. When I was small I found it soothing. Right now I found it unbearable in a way I couldn't entirely explain, because I was too aware of him beside me. The pace of him. The warmth that came off his skin even in the cold morning air.

I focused on the trees.

"How was university?" he asked finally.

"You received my transcripts every semester. You know how it was."

A beat. "I know your grades. I'm asking how it was."

I looked at him sideways. That was unexpectedly direct.

"Lonely sometimes," I said, because he had always been able to pull honest answers out of me regardless of my intentions. "Good. I learned things. I built something that was mine."

"And now you're back."

"And now I'm back." I paused. "You still haven't told me why."

He was quiet for long enough that I thought he might redirect again. Then he said, "Your wolf."

I went still.

He kept walking, and I made myself match his pace.

"What about it?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.

"You're twenty-one, Sera. Most wolves your age have shifted at least once by now."

"I know when I am."

"The fact that you haven't..." He stopped. Turned to look at me. Up close, in the particular morning light that came through the pines, there were shadows under his eyes I hadn't clocked before. "It concerns me."

"It concerns me too," I said. "That doesn't explain why you needed me here to address it."

Something moved behind his eyes. Something that looked almost like pain before he shut it down.

"There are things I can't explain yet," he said. "Things I need you to trust me on."

"You're asking me to trust you without giving me the information required to make that choice."

"Yes," he said simply.

I stared at him. "You know that's not fair."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't."

And there it was again that strange quality I hadn't been able to name last night. Like he was carrying the weight of something he wasn't going to put down, but he was no longer pretending it wasn't heavy.

I looked away first.

"Fine," I said. "For now."

We walked back toward the house in silence. At the steps he paused, and I became very aware that we were close, closer than we needed to be, the space between us something I could have measured in inches.

"Sera." His voice was quieter than usual.

I looked up.

For just a moment, one unguarded second there was something in his expression that rearranged the air in my lungs. Something that looked nothing like the careful distance of a Godfather, and everything like something he had been working very hard not to show.

Then it was gone.

"Stay close to the main house today," he said, his voice back to its normal authority. "Don't go past the eastern trail alone."

He went inside.

I stood on the steps and breathed carefully through my nose and reminded myself, with great seriousness, of every reason why I was being ridiculous.

It took longer than it should have.