Chapter 54

Maren

The air in my childhood home carried every memory I didn’t want to unpack—baking bread on Sundays, muddy pawprints on the back porch, the faint tang of cedar that clung to my dad’s shirts after long nights patrolling with the pack. Coming back here was supposed to feel safe. It didn’t.

I woke with Kaelen’s arm draped heavy across my waist, his warmth a furnace against my back. His breath s