The Alpha's Second Chance Son

Chapter 3: The Scent on the Wind

Ronan POV

Morning fog rolled low over the road by the time the first gray light broke through the trees, and I still hadn't shaken the feeling that something was about to happen.

I'd run the border most of the night, checking on the patrols Callum had doubled, making sure every gap in the tree line was covered. Ash hadn't calmed down once. If anything, he'd gotten more restless the closer we got to morning, pacing tight circles in my mind every time we passed the stretch of road where the Ashford family's relatives were expected to cross.

They're not here yet, I told him, more to keep myself steady than to inform him of anything he didn't already know.

They will be.

I dropped my head and kept moving, weaving between the pines at an easy lope, letting the cold air and the rhythm of running do what it always did clear my thoughts, quiet the noise in my head. For a while it worked. The mist thickened as the sun climbed, turning the whole forest silver and soft, and for the first time in days, I let myself relax.

Then the wind shifted.

It hit me all at once a scent so sharp and sweet it stopped me mid-stride, paws skidding in the wet dirt. Strawberries. White chocolate. Two things I'd always loved and never once smelled together like this, carried on cold morning air from somewhere close.

Ash went utterly still inside me.

What is that, I said, though some part of me already knew exactly what it meant. No ordinary scent stopped a wolf like this. No ordinary scent made every instinct in my body snap to attention at once.

Mate, Ash said, and the word landed in my chest like a physical blow. That's her. That's our second chance.

No.

Ronan

I said no. I forced myself to keep breathing evenly even as my heart pounded against my ribs. I'd had a mate. I'd had a mate who looked me in the eyes and told me she never wanted me or our daughter, who ripped a piece out of both of us and walked away without a backward glance. I was not doing that again. I was not opening myself up to be gutted a second time by a bond I couldn't control.

It's not the same, Ash said. You don't know yet. Don't decide anything until you see her.

I didn't want to see her. But my paws were already carrying me toward the sound of an engine on the main road, drawn forward by that scent like it had a hand wrapped around my throat, pulling.

I crested the ridge overlooking the road just as a car came into view, moving slow and careful along the gravel, headlights still on despite the growing daylight. Three people inside, I could tell that much even from a distance, a driver, and two smaller shapes in the back and passenger seats. The scent grew stronger with every second the car drew closer, thick and warm and impossibly sweet, until I could barely think past it.

Get us out of here, I told Ash. Now.

Why?

Because if that scent belongs to who I think it belongs to, we are not doing this. Not like this. Not with everything we don't know yet.

Ash reluctantly obeyed, pulling us back from the ridge, angling us to run parallel with the road instead of straight toward it, putting distance between us and the source of that pull even as every cell in my body screamed to close the gap instead. I kept us moving fast, faster than I needed to, like speed alone could outrun what I already suspected.

It didn't work.

Through the trees, I caught a flash of the car's side window rolled down a few inches, a pale hand resting on the frame, dark hair moving in the wind. I couldn't see her face. I didn't need to. The scent alone told me everything Ash already knew and I was refusing to accept.

She's young, I said, forcing the thought out before Ash could get ahead of himself. Too young. You understand that, right? Whatever this is, we don't act on it. Not for years, if that's even her in that car.

I already told you it's her.

You don't know that.

I know it the way I knew Mia wasn't right for us the first time we scented her, and you didn't listen to me then either.

That stopped me cold, mid-stride, paws digging into wet earth. Ash had never said that before never once, in four years of silence about my first mate, suggested he'd felt something was wrong from the very beginning. I didn't have time to unpack it. The car was slowing, approaching the checkpoint where I knew Callum had stationed two warriors overnight, exactly where it was supposed to.

We need to go, I said. I need to think. I need to be human before I do something stupid.

You already smelled her. You're already thinking about her.

He wasn't wrong, and that terrified me more than anything else that had happened all morning.

I pulled us back into the deeper trees, putting real distance between myself and the road, my heart still hammering in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the run. Whoever was in that car whoever carried a scent strong enough to override four years of careful, deliberate numbness was about to become a permanent resident of my territory. A minor. Someone I had absolutely no right to want anything from, no matter what my wolf was screaming.

I need to know if it's really her, I admitted finally, slowing to a stop at the edge of a clearing, chest heaving. And then I need to figure out how to survive knowing it and doing nothing about it.

Ash didn't answer. He didn't need to. I could feel him settling into the same terrible, aching patience I was about to force onto both of us, watching the road below where the car had finally stopped at the checkpoint, engine idling, waiting for whatever came next.

I stayed hidden in the tree line, unwilling to move, unable to look away.