Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 27

POV: Adeline

The training yard was cold, but the pups didn't seem to notice.

They tumbled over each other in the early morning light, all gangly limbs and uncontrolled energy, their breath pluming in the frigid air. The youngest couldn't have been more than seven—old enough to begin learning the basics of defense, young enough that everything still felt like a game.

I had volunteered at dawn, finding Marcus before anyone else stirred and asking if they needed help with the younger wolves. He had looked surprised—then thoughtful—then nodded with something that might have been respect.

I needed to be useful. Needed to earn my place here with more than words and promises. If I was going to fight for this pack, I wanted them to see me as more than the cursed survivor who had brought danger to their door.

The pups gathered in a loose semicircle as I approached, their chatter dying into wary silence. I recognized the look in their eyes—the same guarded curiosity the children had shown that day by the woodpile, but sharper now. Edged with whispers they had overheard.

Cursed. Dangerous. Death follows her.

"I'm Adeline," I said, keeping my voice calm. "I'm going to help with your training today."

A boy near the front—perhaps nine, with dark hair that fell into his eyes—crossed his arms. "My father says you bring bad luck."

The words landed with the blunt honesty only children possessed. Around him, other pups shifted, watching to see how I would respond.

I crouched to his level. "Your father might be right. Bad things have happened to packs that sheltered me." I let the truth sit between us, unflinching. "But I also survived those bad things. That means I learned something about staying alive. Would you like me to teach you?"

The boy considered this with the gravity of someone weighing a serious offer. Then he uncrossed his arms.

"Okay," he said. "But if you curse us, I'm telling my father."

"Fair enough."

The tension broke. Not completely—whispers would take longer than one morning to silence—but enough that we could begin.

I started with the basics: balance, awareness, the way a wolf's body needed to be rooted before it could move with speed. These were lessons my grandfather had taught me in Ash Hollow's training grounds, passed down through generations of gammas who understood that defense began not with claws but with knowing where your feet touched the earth.

The pups stumbled. Overbalanced. Fell on their backsides and laughed at each other. But they also listened, their young faces serious when I demonstrated a stance or corrected a position. They wanted to learn—the same way all young wolves wanted to learn, regardless of what whispers their parents traded after dark.

"Your center is too high," I told a girl who kept toppling when pushed. "Bend your knees more. Feel the ground. Let it hold you."

She tried again. This time, when I pressed against her shoulder, she swayed but didn't fall.

"Better," I said. "Much better."

Her face lit up with pride. Something in my chest loosened at the sight.

The morning stretched on. I moved between the pups, adjusting grips and stances, answering the endless questions that tumbled from them like water from a spring. Why do we need to know this? What if someone's bigger than us? Can you show us that thing with your feet again?

Gradually, the wariness faded. They began to see me not as the cursed survivor but as someone who knew things they wanted to learn. Someone with patience for their mistakes and praise for their progress.

The same quiet strength that had survived five rejections—it was useful here too. Not as armor, but as a bridge.

I was showing a cluster of older pups a basic evasion technique when the sensation prickled across the back of my neck.

Being watched.

I didn't turn immediately. Instead, I finished the demonstration, guided one boy through the footwork, corrected another's timing. Only then did I let my gaze drift toward the edge of the training grounds.

Aiden stood near the fence, arms crossed, leaning against a post as if he had been there for some time. He wasn't hiding his attention—wasn't pretending to inspect patrols or review formations. He was simply watching.

And his expression—

My breath caught.

It was unguarded. Soft in a way I had never seen on him in public, where the Alpha mask was always firmly in place. His dark eyes held something that looked like wonder, or tenderness, or the quiet recognition of seeing something he hadn't expected and finding it beautiful.

He was watching me teach. Watching me build connections with his pack's young. Watching me become part of something instead of standing outside it.

And he was looking at me like I was everything he had ever wanted.

My chest ached with the weight of it.

"You're staring."

Freya's voice made me jump. She had materialized at my shoulder with the silent efficiency of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment.

"I'm not—"

"You absolutely are." Freya's grin was insufferable. "And he's staring at you. The two of you are ridiculous."

"We're not—" I started, but she cut me off with a laugh.

"You're not what? Clearly besotted? Obviously pining? So wrapped up in each other that the rest of us need to look away before we go blind from the intensity?"

Heat flooded my cheeks. "Freya."

"I'm just saying." She bumped her shoulder against mine, her voice dropping to something gentler. "It's nice. Seeing him like that. He's been alone a long time, carrying everything himself. And you—" She paused, choosing her words. "You've been running so long I think you forgot what it looks like to stay. Maybe you're both figuring it out together."

I didn't have a response. Across the training grounds, Aiden pushed off from the fence and turned toward the packhouse, the moment of softness tucked away behind his usual composure. But I had seen it. And Freya had seen me see it.

"Just promise me one thing," Freya said.

"What?"

"When you two finally stop dancing around each other, I get to say I told you so."

Despite everything—the war coming, the secret burning, the future I couldn't predict—I found myself smiling.

"Fine. You can say it."

"Excellent." She squeezed my arm and wandered back toward the pups, leaving me standing at the edge of the training grounds with my heart beating too fast and my wolf humming with something that felt dangerously close to hope.

That night, I lay in my narrow bed and let myself imagine.

A future here. Training pups on cold mornings. Sharing meals with Freya and Elena. Sitting at Aiden's side during pack councils, my voice carrying the weight of belonging. Running under full moons with wolves who knew my name, my scent, my place among them.

Waking to his heartbeat through the wall. Or maybe—someday—no wall between us at all.

The fantasy unfurled like something precious, fragile, too beautiful to hold for long.

And beneath it, sharp as a blade, the secret scraped against every tender imagining.

He doesn't know.

They don't know.

You're building a future on foundations of lies, and when they crumble—

I pressed my face into the pillow and breathed against the tightness in my chest.

For tonight, I let the fantasy stay. Let myself pretend that healing and happiness could coexist with silence. Let myself believe that somehow, against all odds, I could have this.

Just for tonight.

Tomorrow, the war would still be coming. The truth would still be waiting. And Ronan's shadow would still be stretching toward everything I was learning to love.

But tonight, I held the cedar wolf Aiden had carved for me and remembered the softness in his eyes.

And I let that be enough.