Claiming His Luna

The scent hit him before she even stepped out of the trees, and honestly, Kade's first thought was: okay, that's not fair. He'd been Alpha of the Thornwood pack for three years now, which meant he knew this forest better than he knew his own phone's home screen. Every trail, every scent marker, every spot where the ground turned to mud after a storm — all of it lived in his head, permanently. So when a brand new scent rolled through all that familiar noise, he clocked it immediately. Wildflowers. Woodsmoke. And under both of those, something that made the hair on his arms stand up like he'd touched a doorknob after walking across carpet in socks. Not a threat. Just... a lot. He'd gone out to run the eastern border solo, which he preferred, because patrols with the full pack always turned into a whole thing — everyone talking over each other, somebody inevitably starting drama about whose turn it was to check the north fence. The moon was three nights out from full, and he could feel it building under his skin like his body was buffering for something. He told himself that was the only reason he was out here alone tonight. He was, it turned out, extremely wrong about that. She walked out from between two birches like she owned the place — no sneaking, no low crouch, none of the stuff a wolf usually does when they know they're somewhere they shouldn't be. Dark hair loose, catching the moonlight. And her eyes found his immediately and just... stayed there. No looking away. No dropping her gaze the way literally everyone did around him. "You're trespassing," he said, and it came out way more intense than he meant it to. Great start, Kade. "Funny," she said, not moving an inch. "I was gonna say the exact same thing to you. This is Ashford territory." Ashford. Yeah, that landed like a brick. Thornwood and Ashford hadn't said a civil word to each other in ten years, not since the border dispute that had gotten wolves from both sides hurt over land nobody even really used. Old drama, the kind nobody remembers starting but everyone still holds onto. And here was an Ashford wolf, alone, standing in his woods like she had every right to be there. Which, to be fair, she kind of did, if this really was the border. "I'm Elena," she said when he didn't say anything for a beat too long. "Beta of Ashford. You're the Alpha everyone warned me about." "Warned you how, exactly?" A small smirk. Not quite a smile, but close enough that he felt it somewhere in his chest anyway. "That you'd try to intimidate me into leaving before I got a chance to explain why I'm here." He crossed his arms, planting himself the way he did when he needed the ground under him to remember whose territory this was. "So explain, then." "There's something hunting in the valley between our territories." Her voice dropped the challenge, got serious fast. "Not wolf. Not human either. It's taken two of ours this month. And one of yours — don't look shocked, word travels even across a border neither pack's supposed to cross." Kade's jaw locked up. He had lost someone last month — Emory, seventeen, gone without a trace three nights before the full moon. No scent trail. No blood. Just an empty clearing and a mom who wouldn't stop asking questions he didn't have answers for. He'd told the pack it was probably an accident. He hadn't wanted to consider the alternative, because the alternative meant something was hunting inside his own territory and he hadn't even noticed. "So you came all the way out here to tell me my own land has a problem I didn't know about." "I came," Elena said, stepping closer — close enough that he could hear her heartbeat pick up, close enough that whatever pull he'd felt from her first breath sharpened into something he couldn't just brush off anymore — "because two proud packs refusing to talk to each other is gonna get more of us killed. I don't care about the border, Alpha. I care about my people. I'm guessing you care about yours too." He looked at her — really looked. Shoulders squared, not backing down an inch even though she had to feel exactly how close he was to losing his grip this near the full moon. Most wolves standing this close to an unfamiliar Alpha would be radiating please don't eat me energy. Elena wasn't giving off any of that. She stood like the ground belonged to her, and something in him — something old, something that could not have cared less about a border drawn a decade before either of them were fully grown — recognized exactly what that was. "Walk with me," he said, before he'd fully decided to say it. "Show me where you found the tracks." Surprise flickered across her face, gone fast, replaced by something warmer she didn't quite manage to hide. "That's it? No power move? No demanding I grovel first so you know I'm not just here to spy on Thornwood?" "Would that work? The demanding?" "No." "Then it'd just be wasting moonlight." He tipped his head toward the tree line. "After you, Beta." She fell into step next to him without another word, and for the first time in three years, Kade walked his own land not alone, but with someone next to him someone from a pack that wasn't his, moving through the dark like they'd been doing this for years instead of minutes. He told himself the whole way down that this was strictly about the missing wolves. He did not believe himself for one single second.