Rejected By The Alpha

Chapter 3: The Scent Beyond the Trees

Gideon's POV

I shifted before I hit the tree line, clothes tucked into the saddle pack I kept strapped near the checkpoint for exactly this reason. Four legs ate ground faster than two ever could, and Ridge — my wolf, my other half, the part of me that never learned to be as careful as the rest of me — surged forward like he'd been waiting all morning for a reason to run.

The fog hadn't burned off yet. It clung low to the ground between the pines, turning the whole forest silver and strange, muffling every sound except my own paws hitting frozen dirt and the distant rush of the river that marked our northern boundary.

Something was wrong before I even reached the checkpoint. I could feel it in the tension running through Ridge, a low hum of alertness that had nothing to do with the cold.

Then the fog thinned, and I saw the road.

Two vehicles. The first, an old, battered truck, engine straining, barely holding together as it took the last curve before the gate too fast. The second, sleek and black, gaining ground behind it with a hunter's patience that made every hair on my body stand up.

Reyne's men. Had to be.

I put on speed, cutting through the trees on a line that would bring me out ahead of both vehicles, right at the gate itself, where my four warriors were already stationed and waiting.

And that's when it hit me.

I don't have words good enough for what it felt like, even now. One second I was a wolf running toward a border dispute, calculating angles and threat levels the way I'd trained myself to do for seven years. The next second, some scent reached me on the wind — impossibly faint through the fog and the distance and the smell of a straining engine — and every single calculation in my head went silent at once.

Ridge stopped running. Just stopped, mid-stride, nearly sending us both tumbling into the underbrush.

Mate.

The word rose up from somewhere so deep in me I hadn't known it still existed. Not a word I chose. A word that simply arrived, whole and certain, the way gravity arrives when you step off a ledge.

I hadn't felt anything like this in five years. I'd told myself, somewhere around year two, that I never would again — that whatever door in me led to a bond like that had been slammed shut and bolted the day Selene walked out with barely a word of explanation.

And now, standing frozen in the fog with a truck full of strangers barreling toward my gate, that door didn't just creak open. It blew off its hinges entirely.

Who, I thought, forcing my paws back into motion, forcing Ridge to keep running even as every instinct screamed at me to simply follow the scent and nothing else. Which one of them is she?

The truck's brakes screamed against the pavement as it finally reached the gate, skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust and gravel not fifty feet from where my warriors stood in formation. The black vehicle behind it slowed as well, hanging back at the tree line like it didn't dare cross fully onto marked Stonewood territory — which meant whoever was driving it knew exactly whose land this was and knew better than to test me directly. Not yet, anyway.

I broke from the trees at a dead run, still in wolf form, drawing startled shouts from two of my own warriors before they recognized me and dropped into ready stances instead, weapons lowering.

The truck's driver door opened.

A man stepped out first — mid-forties, solid build, moving with the deliberate care of someone who'd spent a lifetime being watched by people who wanted him dead. Hollis Callahan. Had to be. He raised both hands slowly, palms open, a gesture I recognized instantly as someone following old, careful peace protocols.

I should have shifted back right then. Instead I stood frozen at the edge of the trees, drawing in air like a starving man, trying to isolate one scent out of the chaos of engine exhaust and fear-sweat and old fabric.

The truck's back door opened.

A teenage boy climbed out first, moving fast to stand near his father, scanning the treeline with wide, frightened eyes. And then—

Then she stepped out.

I don't know how else to describe what happened in my chest except to say that the entire world narrowed down to a single point, and that point was a young woman climbing out of the passenger side with her shoulders squared like she was ready to fight anyone who so much as breathed wrong in her family's direction.

Ridge went utterly still inside me. Not with caution. With recognition.

Her.

I forced myself back into human skin right there in the tree line, pulling clothes on with hands that weren't entirely steady, my mind racing through every reason this couldn't possibly be happening and finding every single one of them insufficient against the simple, overwhelming truth standing forty feet away from me.

The black truck at the tree line's engine revved.

One of my warriors called out a warning. I barely heard it over the roar of my own pulse, because the driver's side door of that black truck was opening too, and two men were stepping out onto the very edge of my territory — men wearing colors I recognized instantly.

Fallow Creek Pack.

Reyne's men had followed them all the way to my border, and they weren't stopping at the tree line. They were walking straight toward the girl who'd just become the single most important thing in my entire world, and I had exactly no idea yet what they intended to do about it.