Three knocks. Slow. Like he has all night.
I’d come back to Blackpine Valley for one night—just one—to box up Nana’s cottage, sign the realtor’s forms, and drive out before the moon rose. The kettle’s still ticking on the stove, its whistle a taut breath away, when the mark on my wrist starts to burn. A hot, haunting sting I haven’t felt since I ran from here three years ago, shame and rage tangled like roots.
I press my palm to the ache, but it pulses harder. The same spiral scar Rhys Blackthorn once pressed his mouth to—before he rejected me in front of the whole pack, beneath the blood-bright Hunter’s Moon.
The floor creaks. Every sense flares with the old animal warning. I’m not alone.
Then, from the front porch, a voice I swore I’d never hear again, low and precise: “Open the door. I can hear your heartbeat.”
Rhys. I see the shadow of him through the warped glass, tall and still as a tree. My hand curls around the doorknob, caught between fury and the magnetic pull of his voice. I know what he did. What he took. I know I should hate him.
He leans in, so close I imagine the heat of his breath through the wood. “At moonrise,” he says, “they come for you.”
My heart slams against my ribs. The Hunt. Greyhollow’s ritual chase. Old law: a rejected mate inside the boundary on the Hunter’s Moon is fair game. I curse myself for coming back, even for one night.
Someone knocks at the back door. The sound is different—sharp, urgent.
On the porch, Rhys goes very still. His entire body tightens, like a wolf scenting blood.
“Don’t open that one.” His command is raw, edged with something dangerous and pleading all at once.
The air between us is charged. Two doors. Two threats. The mark on my wrist burns like fire. My next move could change everything.