The name was out of my mouth before I could choke it back. "Kalen."
He didn't blink. Just stared, like I was a stray dog that had wandered onto his property. Then his lip curled. "Well," he said, and his voice was all gravel and threat. "Look what the goddess dragged in."
My throat sealed shut. Sixteen. I was sixteen the last time I saw him. Shoving my books off a desk, his breath hot in my ear. 'Maybe if you weren't twice the size of a normal wolf, someone would claim you.'
No one ever did.
And now he was here. A living, breathing monument to every humiliation I'd ever buried.
Elias frowned. "You two know each other?"
My mother's face did that thing, that guilty twist. I looked away.
Kalen's eyes scraped over me. I knew the inventory he was taking. The worn jeans stretched over my thighs. The hoodie pulling across my chest. The soft curve of my stomach. I wasn't built for sleekness or speed. I was built for endurance, for surviving winters. His stare said I was just built wrong.
"Yeah," he finally drawled, leaning his bulk into the doorframe. "We went to school together. She was hard to miss."
A hot, ugly mix of shame and pure rage lit up in my chest.
I made myself look right back at him. "Don't worry," I said, my voice low and tighter than I meant it to be. "I plan on staying out of your way."
He gave a lazy shrug, but for a split second, something shifted behind his eyes. Something I couldn't pin down.
"Good," he said. "Wouldn't want you to get crushed underfoot."
I spent that first night in my new room, staring at a ceiling I didn't know. The floorboards above me creaked. His floorboards. Kalen was pacing. A heavy, restless rhythm, back and forth, like a caged animal. Like something in this house was itching under his skin, too.
Like something in him recognized something in me and fucking hated it.
I looked down at my bare wrist. The ghost of the pack-mark was a cold ache. For the first time since they cast me out, I let it all land. The rejection. The exile. The sick joke.
Kalen Blackthorne.
My new stepbrother.
My old tormentor.
An Alpha whose scent alone made the dead thing inside me twitch.
Fate wasn't just cruel. It was a fucking comedian.
The ceiling was still there in the morning, pressing down. White and sterile, wrong. My body ached from a night of holding itself rigid. The whole house groaned around me, protesting my presence.
The air was all wrong. No pine, no moss, no pack. Just the smell of clean laundry, dust, and underneath it, that darker scent. Burned wood. Warm skin. Him. Kalen's smell was already seeping into the walls, a constant reminder I wasn't alone.
I sat up, pulling my hoodie closed.
Then I saw her. The girl in the mirror.
She looked tired. My hair was a mess of chestnut frizz, a cloud of rebellion. It never did what it was told. Today, it looked as pissed off as I felt. I pushed my glasses up my nose—the same big, round frames I'd had forever. They made my eyes look huge and lost.
I yanked the hoodie tighter.
It didn't help. I was big. Not soft. Not 'curvy' in a nice way. Solid. Thick arms, wide hips, heavy breasts that made every shirt feel too small. I was the kind of fat people didn't know what to do with. The kind that wasn't allowed for wolves. We're supposed to be sleek. Dangerous. Not… this.
I used to try to fold myself in. Wear clothes three sizes too big. Make myself smaller, quieter, less of a problem.
It never worked. They always saw the body first. Kael saw it. The whole pack saw it.
Kalen definitely saw it.
I went downstairs an hour later, hoping to God he'd be gone.
No such luck.
Kalen was in the kitchen. Shirtless, because the universe has a mean sense of humor. His back was to me, a landscape of muscle and ink. A tattoo like a claw mark ran down his spine. Another, a band of brutal runes, wrapped around his bicep. A pale scar cut across his shoulder blade.
He turned. For one heartbeat, his face was blank. Just… looking.
Then he dropped a bowl on the counter with a clatter. "Fridge works. Shocking, I know."
I blinked. "Wasn't asking."
"Didn't say you were."
The air went stiff.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Mistake. His eyes dropped—just a flicker—to where the fabric strained, then darted away. My stomach clenched. A hot flush crawled up my neck. Anger or shame, it was all the same acid feeling.
"You always this charming in the morning?" I muttered.
"You always this loud when you walk?"
The words hit like a slap. I flinched.
He didn't even blink.
I pushed past him to the fridge, refusing to let him see the sting. I'd survived my own mate's rejection. I'd survived a pack casting me out. I wasn't going to shatter over some asshole Alpha who peaked in high school.
I grabbed the milk and poured it into a chipped mug. It wasn't coffee, but it was warm and It was something to hold onto.