Asher leans into his father’s touch, a small, fragile smile touching his lips.
I look at Kade over the top of Asher’s head. Through the mate bond, I feel his profound, aching relief, mirrored by my own. The political war is over. The human threat is neutralized. But the biological war—the war for my son’s humanity—is fought every single day in the quiet moments of the morning.
And so far, we are winning.
An hour later, the Pack House armory smells of gun oil, neoprene, and the sharp, metallic tang of sweat.
I stand in the doorway, watching Kade.
He is stripped to the waist, his chest heavily scarred, his left sleeve pinned neatly to his chest. He is practicing his close-quarters combat forms with his thermal-bladed combat knife. He moves with a fluid, deliberate grace, but there is a
