We stayed on the porch until the first flakes started to fall, not thick but steady, the sky closing down from pale blue to a dull, soft gray. The distant engine noise faded, replaced by the hush of snow landing on already frozen ground.
Hooper’s phone buzzed, loud enough to make me jump. He pulled it from his pocket, thumbed the screen, and his face went still—a different stillness than usual, the kind that meant something important had just rerouted the day.
He looked at me, then at the road leading up to the ranch. “Rawley says we’ve got company.”
I felt my gut turn, the old panic starting up, but Hooper didn’t move. He just pocketed the phone and straightened his jacket, the same way you’d brace for a hard wind or an unexpected turn on a dirt road.
“Cops?” I asked, my voice raw in my throat.
He shook his head. “Not yet, but Eleanor’s people are in town. Maybe a day away, maybe less.”
“How much do you know about Eleanor?”
Hooper’s lips twisted into a sour expression as if he had just bitten into a lemon. “Enough.”
The word hit, but not the way I expected. Instead of the old, familiar dread, there was a different feeling—a kind of resolve, a readiness I didn’t recognize as my own.
I looked out over the white expanse, Emilio’s breath warm on my neck, and waited for whatever came next. Hooper stood beside me, silent and solid as the porch itself, and together we watched the snow erase the horizon, one flake at a time.
Chapter Nine
~ Hooper ~
The only warmth in the room came from the woodstove and the half-dead sun dragging itself over the horizon. I sat across from Liam in the farmhouse’s front room, our chairs angled to the window but neither of us watching the view.
My coffee had gone from sweating to clammy to inert, beads collecting around the rim and rolling down the mug in slow surrender. Emilio slept in his bouncy seat on the floor, so quiet it was like he was pulling extra silence into himself to compensate for all the noise we weren’t making.
Liam had taken up the corner of the couch, arms loose across his knees, as if his own body was a field position he’d never quite mastered. The low winter light cut across the shape of his jaw and the pale of his hair, giving him the washed-out look of an old newspaper clipping.
He stared at the knot in the wood floor by my boot, like he was waiting for it to move. I wondered how long he’d been cataloguing the details of this house, running odds on every sound and shadow.
When he spoke, it was in that same careful, present-tense delivery he used when he was loading me up with all the facts I didn’t want. “She’s not coming for me,” he said. “Not really.”
He didn’t look up. “If it was about having a mate, she would’ve just waited for me to come home. But she’s an alpha. A Peterson. She can’t let it go because if she does, everyone will know she lost something that belonged to her.”
I let the words settle, watched the steam finally die off the mug. I’d been expecting a speech, or at least a venting, but this was worse. He sounded like a guy listing out parts for a tractor repair—no inflection, no panic, just the necessary inventory.
He went on, “If she gets here, she won’t try to talk. She’ll walk through that door with lawyers and muscle and make sure it gets done in a way that looks like I was always going to say yes. She’ll take me home, she’ll marry me, and I won’t be allowed outside without guards. Not for my safety, but for her convenience.”
Something in my head flicked over—like a switch gone bad in the breaker box. I realized I was holding the mug so tight my palm was freezing against the side. I forced myself to let it go.
“She’s not coming to negotiate,” I said.
“No,” Liam said, “she’s coming to correct the record.”
I went very still, the kind of still that comes before a fight. The house around us seemed to quiet even more, like the walls were listening.
I imagined the scenario the way Liam must have: Eleanor in a coat that cost more than most cars, boots crisp and unmarked, lawyers with clean folders and pens that clicked with each new condition. And behind them, two or three hired Betas who would smile and ask please before making sure you did what you were told.
She wouldn’t even raise her voice. She wouldn’t need to. Not with the legal papers, not with the inheritance, not with the local sheriff’s department on speed dial.
I didn’t want to make it about me, but my mind ran the variables. If she wanted to get Liam, she’d need to take down the whole ranch. She’d need to walk right past Rawley and every single vet he’d ever let work the land, and she’d need to do it without starting a war in the front yard.
But if Liam wanted to go quietly—
He must’ve read it on my face, because he finally looked up and fixed me with those ice water eyes. “I’m not going back,” he said. “But I want you to know what she’ll do if she gets the chance.”
“She won’t,” I said, and I made it sound like I actually believed it.
