“When is your heat due? It only works if you’re in heat.”
Rowen didn’t care that the others were in the room as we discussed this. The bond completely gave us a tactical advantage, and my mate was a strategist at best. “I can ask the druid to make me something to bring it on,” she murmured. “I know they have done it for couples wanting to conceive. They can do it for me.”
“Will that work?” Axel asked, looking between us. “Forcing it?”
“It’s a natural potion,” Rowen replied. “It encourages my hormones to come out and play.” She gave them a sly grin. “It just means I may be a little difficult on the run up to the heat.”
“Oh, joy,” Killian deadpanned, and the others laughed.
“As my inner circle, I ask you,” I said. “Do we take this to the pack? Tell them everything. The truth. If they know the why, they’ll fight harder when the next attack comes.”
Brand was frowning. “They already fought hard,” he told me. “None of them held back. I think if you tell them…” He glanced at Cody, and I saw him nod. “If you tell them the Pack Council isn’t happy you’re alpha here, you weaken them. This is an old pack, old ways, tradition means everything. Nothing says tradition more than the Pack Council.”
I stared at the floor. I knew he was right, but I didn’t like it. It wasn’t who I was. Deception wasn’t my nature. “I run my pack with honesty,” I reminded them all.
“Apart from when you first came here,” Killian reminded me. Unhelpfully, I may add. He saw my look and shrugged. “I’m just saying…”
Rowen moved closer to me. “The bond completed will help the doubters,” she murmured. “Once they feel that, once they know you and Iarethe true mates we’ve told them we are, it will bring the last of them over.”
“You think they doubt you’re my mate?” The very thought of it hadn’t even occurred to me.
“Killian has a point,” Rowen said, her gaze warm and steady. “We married for political purposes, they never knew you were an alpha, we never knew I was your mate… They have a right to be skeptical.”
“They know I am their alpha now.”
“And after my heat, they’ll know Iamyour true mate.”
Axel yawned. “Sorry, I didn’t mean… Fuck, I no longer know what I mean. I’m beat.”
I looked around the room. “We all are. We need to rest.”
“We can’t,” Brand said gruffly as he stood. “The only people I trust are in this room, Thalia and Diesel.”
“We’re spread very thinly,” Rowen murmured. “But we still should be able to sleep. Axel, Cody, you rest. Wolfe is here now; he and I can cover your duties. Take at least eight hours, then when you’re rested, Brand and Killian will rest. Then us, and that’s how we move forward until we’re confident of who we can rely on.”
Axel looked at me and then Rowen. “You sure?”
“Go,” I told them. “Sleep.”
Brand and Killian left not long after, both ready to take on the world, and I turned to look at Rowen.
“What about you?” I asked her. “You need to rest.”
“No, I need to go talk to the druid.” She reached for my hand. “And you’re coming with me.”
The forest deepened around us, each step muffled by moss and old pine needles, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and ancient magic.
Every step we took, every bend in the trees, felt like it too was waiting for what was coming. For what we were about to do.
Rowen walked beside me. I could feel her even when I didn’t look. Her scent had changed—stronger, sharper, threaded with something my wolf couldn’t name but craved all the same. Not heat. Not yet. But close enough that it made my spine tighten.
I wanted to ask if she was ready, let her know that this didn’t scare me—but I wasn’t sure how. Not because I didn’t want her. I did. My body ached for her in ways I didn’t understand before the bond began to bloom. The times we’d been together were everything they should be. But this potion? This heat?
Thischoicewe were about to make to strip ourselves down to raw instinct? When the pack was already weak?
It felt like cheating. It felt like surrender. I just didn’t know who I was surrendering to.
To Rowen. To the bond. To the Goddess.
