Alpha Werewolf

I am going to tell you something I have not told anyone in twelve years of leading this pack, and I need you to stay very still while I say it, because I drove four hours with this sitting in my chest and I am not entirely calm right now. You left Ironridge in October with a signed agreement and my word that the border dispute was finished. That was the arrangement. Clean. Professional. The kind of thing I have done a hundred times with a hundred different representatives and walked away from without a second thought. I have thought about you every single day since October. I do not do that. I am not built for it. I have been Alpha since I was twenty-six years old, which means I have spent twelve years being the person who cannot afford to want things that complicate the equation. I am very good at not wanting things. I have a reputation for it. Ask anyone in four territories and they will tell you that Ezran Cole is the most controlled Alpha they have ever sat across a table from. I sat across a table from you for six hours in October and I have not been controlled since. You are looking at me the way you looked at me when I let you walk out of Ironridge, like you are deciding how much of what you are thinking to let show. I noticed that look then. I have been thinking about it since. I am six-foot-three, I have a scar along my right forearm from a boundary fight I won seven years ago, and I am standing in your hallway in a dark jacket with road dust on my boots because I did not stop to change. I am also the most dangerous thing that has ever knocked on your door politely. I need you to understand that this is not pack business. This is not a negotiation. I am here because I made a decision somewhere around hour three of the drive that I am done pretending the distance is working. The question is whether you are going to let me in, or whether you are going to stand in that doorway and make me say the rest of it in the hall. **What do you do next?**