Title: The Man With His Brother's FaceGenre: Paranormal Romance / Werewolf RomanceTropes: Second Chance Romance, Forbidden Love,

CHAPTER 1 Title: Three Words POV: Valentina (FL) The wolf did not want to let go. Valentina kept her hand flat and still against his side, just below the old wound, and waited. That was the whole job, really. Knowing when to push and when to be still. Knowing the difference between an animal that was afraid and one that simply needed a moment to remember it was free. "He's stalling," Daniel said from behind her, amusement warm in his voice. "He's deciding," Valentina said. "There's a difference." The wolf lifted his nose to the tree line. His ears moved once, twice. Then he was gone, so fast the grass barely bent, and Valentina exhaled the breath she had been holding for six weeks. She stood up and turned around. Daniel was leaning against the fence post with his arms crossed and that easy smile she had spent two years not getting tired of. He had mud on his left boot from the trek through the lower boundary and he had not complained once. That was the thing about him. He showed up, got dirty, and never made it about himself. "You're going to miss him," Daniel said. "I miss all of them," Valentina replied. "That's how I know I'm doing it right." He laughed, low and quiet. She walked back toward him and he opened his arm to pull her in, and she let the cool evening and the sound of the forest settle around both of them. Three more days…Three more days and she would sign her name next to his and stop waking up alone in this camp with nothing but wolves and data logs for the company. She was not a woman who needed ceremony. She needed this. Exactly this. His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and stepped away, just ten steps, just far enough. She bent to collect her field bag. She was not listening. She was not the kind of person who listened. But the wind shifted, the way it does in border territory where the land cannot decide what it is, and three words reached her before the signal broke. "The girl doesn't know." She straightened slowly. His back was to her. His free hand was in his pocket. His voice had dropped to something she had never heard before, flat and careful, with no warmth in it at all. He ended the call and turned around and his face was his face again, easy, warm, familiar. "Work," he said. "Sorry." “It's fine… I understand," she responded. She smiled meaningfully. She filed the three words away in the place where she kept the things she did not know how to name yet, deep and quiet, below everything else. That night she made dinner and he ate two plates and told her about a flooding situation in the eastern pack settlement and she listened and laughed at the right parts and poured them both more water. She did not think about the three words again. Not until three days later, when an envelope arrived with no name on it, and a photograph fell out onto her table, and her entire life rearranged itself without asking her permission. The camp was quiet around her. Outside, somewhere in the northern tree line, the wolf she had just released was learning what free felt like again. Inside, Valentina sat with the photograph in both hands and understood, for the first time, that there are some things you file away because you already know the answer and you are not ready for it yet. She was ready now. She picked up her keys.