Bastian stood on the ridge overlooking the valley, the crisp mountain air biting at his skin, reminding him he was still here, breathing, standing, holding together a world that felt as though it was constantly threatening to splinter beneath his feet.

Below him, the forest stretched in every direction, a sea of evergreens swaying with the sharp autumn breeze. This land had been in his family for generations, before the world knew what Canada was, before borders and treaties and half of what people clung to now. It had always belonged to the pack.

But standing here, it didn’t feel as though it belonged to him.

It felt heavy. Claustrophobic. A burden dressed up as heritage.

His jaw tightened as the wind shifted, bringing the scent of pine and damp moss, tinged with something more distant, rain, inevitable and creeping in. It always reminded him of his father, that same sharp edge of tension, the kind that made you brace before the storm broke.

“They think a fated mate bond makes us powerful,” his father had once muttered, voice frayed at the edges. “I say it’s a curse, Bastian. It rots us from the inside out. Makes us forget who we are.”

He’d been thirteen then, standing right here, sneakers too thin for the cold, watching his father unravel in slow, terrifying inches. The man hadn’t shouted. He’d whispered. And somehow that had been worse. Madness didn’t always come loud. Sometimes it was quiet. Sometimes it sat inside the people you loved and hollowed them out from the inside.

And then his mother vanished.

One morning, she was there, brushing the hair off his forehead, laughing at something stupid he’d said about elk tracks. By nightfall, she was gone. No body found. No scent trail. No goodbyes.

The pack said rogues took her. But he remembered the argument.

He remembered her begging his father to listen, to see the sickness spreading through their bloodline. She’d touched Bastian’s cheek that night with gentle sadness, as if she knew it might be the last time.

She hadn’t run. Not really. No, something had taken her or forced her hand. And if that was true, if she hadn’t left him on purpose, then maybe he hadn’t been abandoned. Perhaps she had become another casualty of a legacy that never gave second chances.

And when she was gone, his father unraveled faster. She’d been the tether holding back the storm.

“Don’t look too long into the eyes of your mate,” his father had whispered one night, gripping Bastian by the collar with shaking hands. “The curse will lie to you. It’ll make you believe. And by the time you see the truth, it’ll be too late.”

That was the night Bastian stopped hoping for love. Stopped waiting for the mate bond to feel as anything other than a trap.

Then came Selene. And the bond with her never felt right, not a lie per say, but a script he’d been handed too young, told to follow without question. He’d tried. God, he’d tried. But deep down, something constantly itched under his skin. Something never fit.

He’d become Alpha too young. Thrust into it after his father’s death, fire, blood, and a rogue ambush, or so the council said. No one talked about it in detail. No one ever did. The silence around it spoke louder than anything else.

So he ruled with restraint. With control. With the kind of discipline that bordered on emotional starvation. Because letting himself feel too much? Hope too hard? That was a crack in the dam. And he couldn’t afford any more fractures.

A twig snapped behind him.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t turn. He didn’t need to.

“You’ve been brooding long enough,” Callum said from behind.

Bastian exhaled through his nose before glancing over his shoulder. Callum stood a few feet back, arms folded, his face unreadable. His Gamma. His friend. One of two wolves in the entire pack who could say something and not lose a tooth for it.

“Not brooding,” Bastian said, turning back to the view. “Thinking.”

“Same thing,” Callum muttered, stepping up beside him, boots crunching against dry dirt. “The pack’s restless. They can feel something’s off. You need to give them something before they start writing their own story.”

Bastian ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe I should. Maybe it’s time to make things official with Selene. Mark her. Give the pack what they need.”

Callum’s silence was sharp.

“You think faking a forever bond is going to solve this?” he asked, voice tight.

“I think the pack needs stability.”

“And what do you need?”

That question lodged somewhere behind his ribs.

Bastian didn’t answer.

Because if he admitted the truth, that he didn’t know what he needed, that part of him still believed his blood was cursed, that hope had always felt more dangerous than fear, he wasn’t sure he’d survive it.

Callum’s voice dropped. “Look, I get it. But pretending everything’s fine doesn’t make it true. It just turns you into another Alpha who breaks behind closed doors.”

Silence stretched between them. Below, the sounds of pack life carried—murmurs, fires crackling, distant laughter that didn’t quite reach this far up.

Bastian’s gaze drifted. “A human is coming.”

Callum gave a slow nod. “She lands in a few hours.”

His eyes snapped toward him. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

“I wanted to see how long you’d sulk up here first.”

Bastian glared. “Who is she?”

“Mira Danvers,” Callum said. “She got an invitation.”

That word landed heavy.

Invitation.

Something clicked, a door creaking open in the back of his mind, letting in a chill he couldn’t place.

“From who?”

Callum didn’t blink. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

The unease tightened in Bastian’s gut.

Someone had gone through the trouble of bringing her here. Of orchestrating this. And no one could tell him why.

He turned back toward the valley, that familiar burn threading through his chest again, the instinct that something ancient was moving beneath the surface.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Let’s get ready for our guest.”

As they walked back toward the village, Bastian didn’t say the part clawing at the edge of his thoughts, that whatever Mira was, whoever had sent her, it had already begun.

And this time, he didn’t think control would be enough to hold it back.