Page 38 of Alpha’s Wife

Savannah points at me, triumphant. “See. This is exactly why we needed another set of eyes. Write it down.”

And just like that, I’m apparently fully involved, the notebook shoved into my hands, arguing about where the lights should hang and whether there’s time to build another stall and whether the little ones can be trusted with sparklers. Maeve says absolutely not. Savannah and I overrule her because kids love sparklers. For well over an hour, I forget everything else—the tablet under my pillow, the magic I gave away last night, the war waiting to be fought. I just sit in the warm bakery and help plan a party, and it’s so ordinary and so good that it takes me a while to notice it’s making my chest ache.

People are building lives here. Real lives, the kind where things are planned months in advance and good things are anticipated. They’ve taken the harshest stretch of coast I’ve ever seen—the wind blowing all day long and the sea constantly trying to take and take—and they’ve made a home here with parties, lights, bonfires, and a notebook full of plans.

And not a single one of them is spending their days thinking about the island. Not the way Ronan does, but they’re loyal to him, for good reason, and I’m not sure he can see how wrong it would be to test that loyalty.

He’s given these people everything they wanted and needed, and they love him for it. This settlement doesn’t need a war; it wants a winter solstice.

“You’ll come, won’t you?” Savannah asks, and I realize she’s watching me. “To the fair? We could use a hand on the stalls, and I’m hoping you can talk Ronan into doing story time with the pups—they’re in awe of him.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” And I mean it, though I’m not sure why they think I have so much sway over Ronan. If I did, I’d stop this war.

One thing I know for sure, though, is that these people deserve their party, their futures, the lights down the main street, the bonfire, and the children deserve their sparklers. If that means I have to keep going behind Ronan’s back to defuse this war before it gets started, then I will. This might not be my home, but it’s theirs, and that’s worth fighting to protect.

I just wish it didn’t have to be him I have to protect it from.

Chapter 18 - Ronan

I’m back on the water by late morning, running the third boatload of the week across to the island.

Not to the harbor side, where Tristen’s wolves are no doubt still nursing the beating they took the other night. This is the wild north where no one watches, and where two years of quiet, expensive work has gone completely unnoticed by my half-brothers—a new settlement, on their own soil, tucked into the fold of a hill and disguised behind a wall of wards so strong that you could walk within ten feet of it and feel nothing but an icy coldness and the sudden urge to be somewhere else.

It cost me a fortune, and I had to call in every favor I had ever been owed, but I did it. Ferrying people over, laying stones, building infrastructure. It’s been slow and tedious work, but it’s worth every fucking penny. When I pull the trigger on this war, I won’t be begging for a seat at the table; I’m already here. I’m already standing on their precious island, an army at my back, and no one will send us away ever again.

I maneuver the boat in through the gap in the rocks and feel the wards close around us as we pass beneath them—like a cold drag across the skin. Once I pass through, the world seems to fall silent. The boats on the crossing behind fade away, no patrol horns, nothing but the calm of my own settlement standing on the ground that the island doesn’t know is already lost.

I think back to this morning when I woke with Selene against my chest, and how I lay there watching her, telling myself I’d get up any moment, but instead, the moments dragged on. That’s new; I’ve never once wanted to stay in bed when I knew there was work to do. No woman has held my attention once I’d taken what I wanted.

Selene’s magic has threaded through my wolf now, there for the reaching whenever I want. She didn’t hold back; she gave me everything, and I’m not even sure she realizes. I woke up stronger than I’ve ever been, and it’s grown enough that I no longer have to be careful. I’m ready to take the island. That’s why the boats are running heavier this week. I’ve been holding off, waiting to be sure I wouldn’t be risking lives unnecessarily, but now, with the bond magic behind me and steadying the pack around me, I know we’re unbeatable.

I felt it at the docks this morning, in the way my men dropped their eyes from mine without me trying. They feel it too, even if they can’t name it. I saw it in the way the pack is working together seamlessly, with barely any vocal communication. If they can work like that on the ships, imagine what they can do in battle.

Despite everything, my mind keeps wandering back to Selene and how I fully intend to take her back to my bed tonight. I have the bond, but I want to have her again, too.

Cole’s already on the jetty when I bring it into the dock, having come over with the first run earlier today. Further up, dozens of men are hauling crates up the path to the smart cabins that now line the cove. Forty families live here now, all building something real and fully onboard with my plans—I’ve promised them the earth, and now I’m going to deliver.

A woman who came over last year with her husband and two children to run the farmstead finds me almost as soon as I’m on land. They’d lost everything when their previous pack splintered and turned on one another. “We’ve put the gardens in,” she says.

“I told you it’s good soil here,” I tell her, and I mean it. The island is incredibly fertile compared to the rough coastline. She stops long enough to fill me in on the farmstead progress, which will hopefully help to sustain the settlement going forward by next season, before running off to chase one of her pups who shoots by. Looking around at the calm success here, I remember this is what they’ve crossed the water for. That’s what some of the recruits, like Davey, are starting to forget—not that I blame Davey, necessarily, after his experience; he certainly hasn’t been himself since he got back, more fired up, and it’s starting to affect the other young ones. I want them engaged, but I don’t want bloodshed for the sake of it—only what is necessary to take down my half-brothers.

The men, especially the younger recruits, are in high spirits over the beating Tristen’s wolves took; it’s making them cocky. I see Davey approaching with some of them, already telling some kind of story about the raid, and making a beeline for me as soon as they round the corner.

“We should hit them again,” he says, “hit them while they’re down and take the harbor.”

“Listen to this one,” Cole says somewhere behind me. “Found his teeth after his unofficial stay on the island.”

A few others laugh, but not Garrick, an older wolf that’s been with me three years and was one of the first to set up over here with his family when I asked for volunteers. He sets down the crate he’s carrying and looks at Davey.

“Easy to talk about taking ports and fighting when you’ve got no one but yourself to worry about,” he says. “Some of us do.”

Davey has the sense to drop the grin. “I’m not saying it’s free, I’m just saying it’s better to strike first. We’re here to take it, right?”

I can see Garrick is going to snap back, so I raise my hand. “That’s enough.” I don’t need to raise my voice; the bond magic does enough, and I feel it working through them. My alpha wolf has always commanded respect, but this is different, and I wave them off in the opposite direction to continue their work.

It’s the plainest I’ve seen it work, but I also don’t miss the shifting dynamics in the pack, the younger ones hungry for a fight, the older ones more focused on what they have to lose. Selene and Ryder don’t think I notice, but I do. I just trust myself to pull them together when it counts.

Cole falls in beside me as I head up the path and waits until we’re past the last of them before he speaks.