KEISHA’S POV

I wasn’t going back to Coldridge pack.

I decided that on the second morning after it happened. I was lying in the cabin bed and staring at the ceiling with the kind of blank clarity that only came after you’d already cried everything out.

There was nothing left for me in Coldridge. No mate, no status, no reason to walk back into that pack and pretend I wasn’t the girl who got publicly replaced at her own announcement ceremony.

I’d rather die than do that.

My wolf, Diane, hummed quietly in the back of my head. "Smart choice," She approved, feeling rather smug that I had finally listened to her constant nagging in my head.

Before I could change my mind, I reached for my phone on the bedside table and called Nadia.

She picked up on the second ring. "Keisha? Are you okay? I was going to come check onㅡ"

"I’m not going back to Coldridge." I interrupted her.

There was a brief pause and I was sure she could hear my heavy breathing on the line. "Okay..."

"I mean permanently. I want to stay. In Ashveil. If that’s still an option."

Another pause, longer this time. Thenㅡ "Oh my god, are you serious? Yes. Obviously yes, Keisha, oh my godㅡ" The excitement in her voice made my heart bloom with something warm. "Okay. Okay, let me sort out a proper place for you to stay. The cabin is great and all but it’s too far from everything. My dad has guest houses nearㅡ"

"Nadia." I pinched my brows.

"ㅡthe main quarters, they’re really nice, I think you’d love itㅡ"

"Nadia."

She stopped. "What?"

"Breathe." I laughed.

A beat passed and then she laughed, short and relieved. "Sorry. I’m just really glad you’re staying. I’ll come get you in the morning, okay?"

I exhaled. "Okay."

With that settled, I lay back in the soft sheets of my bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying not to focus on Diane who was practically pacing about my consciousness as the bond hummed.

No longer bound to Riven. But now to two men who I should never have been with.

Fuck my life.

****************

Nadia arrived the next morning with entirely too much energy for someone who hadn’t been the one lying awake for three nights straight.

The drive from the cabin into the main pack grounds took about twenty minutes and I spent most of it with my hands folded in my lap and my eyes on the road ahead, trying to prepare myself for anything. Nadia talked the entire wayㅡ about the guest house, about the pack’s weekly events, about a woman in the communications office who apparently had it out for everyone and was also somehow indispensable.

I tried to listen. I swear I did.

We turned through the main gate and the pack spread out ahead of us, bigger and more alive in the morning light than it had looked the first time I drove through it. People moving and crossing the open grounds, the quiet organized feeling of a pack that knew what it was doing.

Nothing like Coldridge.

A small smile pulled at my lips. And then I saw him.

He was standing near the gate with two of his senior wolves, listening to something one of them was saying with his arms crossed and his lips were pulled down with the frown he carried everywhere, the kind that made entire rooms seem to reshape around him.

Alpha Callum.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor of the car.

Diane went very still inside me as the bond crackled.

Nadia pulled up and cut the engine, already pushing her door open. "Oh good, my dad’s here. He can welcome you properly."

No. No. No.

I didn’t move for a second.

"Keisha?"

"Coming." I pushed the door open and got out, smoothing the front of my shirt with hands that were absolutely not shaking.

He turned when he heard the car and his eyes found mine immediatelyㅡ the bond snapped to attention in my chest like a live wire and I looked at a point just past his left shoulder and kept it there.

"Dad." Nadia was already beside him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "You remember Keisha."

"Of course." His voice was exactly as it always was. Giving nothing away. Like he wasn’t buried in me two nights ago. "Welcome to Ashveil, Keisha. I hope the cabin was comfortable."

"It was." I forced a polite smile. "Thank you for allowing me to use it."

A perfectly normal exchange between a guardian figure and the girl he’d known since she was nine years old. Nothing to see here.

"Of course." He said. He looked at Nadia then, already moving back into whatever conversation I had pulled him from. "Make sure she has everything she needs."

"Obviously." Nadia rolled her eyes affectionately at his retreating figure and then grabbed my arm, tugging me forward. "Come on, I’ll show you the house." 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

I followed her and did not once look back.

The guest house was small, warm and cozy as we stepped inside. I folded my hands across my chest, staring at everything in it.

This was perfect.

Of course Nadia showed me around. She was excited and eager to tell me everything in the house, letting me know where everything I would need was. She showed me the maid schedule. I tried to follow along but all I could manage were small nods and hums.

Was it obvious? That I had slept with her dad? How would she react if she found out?

Fuck.

Keisha came to a stop in the kitchen. "Are you okay?"

"Huh?" I blinked. "I’m fine."

"You’ve been weird since I picked you up this morning."

"I’m always weird."

"Not this kind of weird." She leaned against the counter, studying me with the focused attention that I had spent years both loving and finding deeply inconvenient. "Did something happen at the cabin?"

My heart stopped. "What? No."

"You just seem...off. More than usual."

"Nadia." I gave her a look. "I got publicly rejected three days ago. I’m allowed to be off."

She considered this. "That’s fair." She straightened up. "But you’d tell me if something else happened?"

"Obviously." The word came out steady and completely convincing and I made a mental note to feel terrible about that later.

She seemed satisfied enough. "Okay. Ohㅡ I spoke to the woman who runs the communications office here. They’re incredibly short staffed and you’re literally the most organized person I know so I may have mentioned your name."

I stared at her with shock. "Nadia..."

"She’s expecting you Monday if you want it." She smiled brightly. "You don’t have to. But it’ll give you something to do and sitting alone in this house thinking about Riven seems significantly worse."

She wasn’t wrong. But also not entirely right. I now had Alpha Callum and Dane to think about too.

"Fine." I muttered.

She left twenty minutes later and I stood in the middle of my new kitchen in my new house in a pack that wasn’t mine and took stock of my life for a long quiet moment.

Then I went to unpack because what else was I going to do?

****************

I started the job Monday.

By Wednesday I had learned the filing architecture, the communication channels and the names and general personality profiles of the four people I shared the office with. By Friday I had reorganized a backlogged system that had apparently been causing everyone quiet suffering for months and my supervisor had looked at what I’d done and then looked at me with a satisfied smile that told me she approved of what I had done.

The following Monday I came in to find my access level had been quietly upgraded overnight.

I didn’t need to ask to know who had done it. Alpha Callum or maybe even Dane. They were watching me. They hadn’t had the guts to address what happened but I knew they were watching closely.

I didn’t see Dane until day four.

I was crossing the eastern courtyard after lunch when the bond did what it always did nowㅡ gave me his location before I’d even processed looking for it. I found him on the opposite side of the courtyard walking with two border wolves, head slightly bent as one of them talked.

He looked up as though he could sense my presence.

One second of eye contact. Exactly one. Then I looked at the ground and kept walking and from my peripheral vision I saw him look away too.

That was fine. That was completely fine.

I went back to the office and sat down and stared at my screen for a moment before I resumed typing like a completely normal person who had not just felt her whole nervous system short circuit over one second of accidental eye contact.

Diane had the audacity to sigh dreamily.

I told her to shut up.

That night I lay in my new bed in my new house and looked at the ceiling and thought about the current state of my lifeㅡ no pack, no mate, a secret bond with two men I could never tell anyone about and a job I wasn’t looking for in a place I wasn’t supposed to end up in.

I turned over and forced my eyes closed.

I had work to do tomorrow and I needed to stop thinking.