Exiled Wolf, Fated Luna

Chapter 4 – Breakfast with Wolves

The smell of coffee and frying something wakes me before the sun.

For a few seconds I don’t know where I am. Ceiling too high. Mattress softer. Window cracked to wind in trees, not thin mountain air.

Grimvale. Right.

The bond hums low and steady in my chest. Somewhere below, Darian is awake, all focus and bone‑deep fatigue. My almost‑wolf stirs and—for once—doesn’t curl away from it.

I drag on jeans and a sweater, tame my hair, and step into the hall.

Voices float up from downstairs—rough, familiar, punctuated by clatter. Breakfast.

People.

Too late to hide.

The main room is softer in daylight: big stone fireplace, worn couches, long tables. Beyond, the kitchen is a storm of plates and steam. Wolves everywhere. Flannel, hoodies, workout gear. Laughter, complaints, the smell of coffee and meat.

Emotions brush my senses like static: sleepy, amused, irritable, worried. Not crushing, but a lot.

“Vexa!” Neri’s voice slices through the noise.

She’s on a bench, waving so hard she sloshes juice. Milo is glued to her side, eyes wide.

Every nearby head turns.

At the far end, by the counter, Darian talks with a scarred woman who looks like a female, meaner version of him. Sister. Beta. His gaze lifts as Neri shouts. Our eyes lock.

The bond pulls hard, like a hooked wire.

He doesn’t beckon. He doesn’t look away.

My feet move anyway.

I weave between tables, conversations dipping as I pass.

“…that her from Hollowpeak—”

“—thought she’d be taller—”

“—smell that? Alpha all over—”

Heat crawls up my neck.

I slide onto the bench across from Neri and Milo. “Hi.”

“You slept?” Neri demands.

“A little.”

“Good.” She shoves a plate at me. “Lyska made too many eggs and Vael said I can’t have five helpings.”

Scrambled eggs, toast slick with butter, crisp meat. My stomach growls loud enough that Milo startles.

“Thank you,” I say. “This looks… amazing.”

“We always eat together,” Neri informs me. “Unless people are on patrol or doing secrets. Vael says it keeps us from killing each other.”

“Truth,” кто‑то бурчит рядом.

The red‑haired warrior from last night leans back, giving me a frank once‑over. “So you’re the Hollowpeak gift.”

Not hostile, but not kind.

“Corren,” the scarred woman at the stove snaps. “Muzzle it.”

“Just making conversation, Vael.”

Vael’s eyes cut to me, sharp. I brace.

“You eat?” она спрашивает. “Or you plan to turn into bone at my table?”

“I—eat,” I manage.

“Then do it. We don’t need you fainting because you’re too proud to take a plate.”

Not tenderness. Not cruelty. Just practical.

I take a bite. It’s so good my eyes sting.

“See?” Neri tells Milo. “Told you she wouldn’t explode if she sat with us.”

On my left, Corren persists. “So, is it true you don’t shift?”

The table goes still.

“Corren.”

Darian’s voice this раз.

Low. Flat. Dangerous.

Sound in the room tilts toward him.

“You’re thinking it on your own time,” he says. “Not over my breakfast table. And not at her.”

He doesn’t say mate. The bond still shivers.

Corren holds his gaze a heartbeat, then drops his eyes. “Yes, Alpha.”

Darian’s attention sweeps the room, then lands on me. For a second the Alpha mask cracks, something raw showing through.

“Eat,” he says, softer.

It’s an order. It’s also… care.

My throat is thick, but I nod.

He turns away, vanishing through a side door with two warriors at his heels.

“You don’t have to answer him,” Neri says fiercely, glaring at Corren. “He’s dumb.”

“I’m not dumb,” Corren mutters, but doesn’t push it.

Milo glances at me. “Do you?” he whispers. “Shift?”

I could dodge. Lying feels worse.

“I don’t know what I do yet,” I say quietly.

Neri shrugs. “Orrik didn’t shift till he was seventeen. Everyone said he was broken. Then he broke two doors and a fence and now no one says it to his face.”

Someone across the room snorts. “Kid’s got a point.”

Something inside me loosens a fraction.

I eat another forkful. It sits warmer.

Around us, the room exhales. Conversations pick up, jokes fly, someone swears at the coffee machine. Not everyone forgets I’m here, but the sharp edge of scrutiny dulls.

Neri chatters about secret passages. Milo corrects her directions. Corren gripes about early patrol until Vael flings a towel that hits him in the face.

It’s not my pack.

Maybe it never will be.

But sitting here with a child who wants to show me hiding spots, a boy who smells like old fear and fresh hope, and an Alpha who just staked a line around me in front of everyone, the howling emptiness I carried from Hollowpeak… quiets.

A little.

Enough to taste, for the first time, how “guest” could someday become something dangerously close to home.