His Trouble Maker

Chapter 138

GRAYSON

“What about a garden wedding in honor of your mom?”

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If the moon goddess ever asksfor my favorite moment in this lifetime, | think I'm going to tell her about this

one. Right here. Jessica's laying on top of me, all bone and warmth and habit, barefoot and too serious, making

suggestions about our wedding like it isn’t the most holy thing I've ever heard cout of her mouth.

Well, not exactly suggestions. More like commands, whispered against my collarbone like they're secrets she’s

still afraid to speak loud.

“Not too many people,” she murmurs, her lips moving against my throat as she talks. “No stupid speeches. No

throne chairs. And no omega-binding rituals. | want it soft. Just us.”

Just us.

Just us.

| hold her tighter like that'll keep it real.

The bed of the truck is lined with one of my jackets after she took it off. Crickets are singing somewhere near the

trees. Above us, the sky cracked wide with stars. Moonlight spills down her back like a second skin.

She shifts, rests her chin on my chest so we're face to face, moonlight pooling in her lashes. She’s studying me

like she’s memorizing the shape of my face. Or the sound of my heart. Or the color of what we'll lose.

“Would you really do it?” she asks. “A garden wedding?”

“I'd marry you in a landfill if you asked,” | say, smiling like it doesn’t ache. “But yeah. Garden sounds nice. You'd

look like spring.”

“Gross.”

“I mean it.”

“You're gross.”

She hides her smile against my ribs, arms winding tight aroundlike she wants to burrow inside and stay. | let

my hand wander through her hair.

“Promisesomething,” she says, voice so soft | almost miss it.

“Anything”

“If something happens-if things go bad-I want you to remember this. | love you.”

| don’t say anything right away. I just look at her. Her eyes, her mouth, the starlight strung across her

9:35 Thu, Sep 4

Chapter 138

cheekbones like freckles. Every piece of her is already a memory and we're not even gone yet.

“Jess,” | whisper, and my throat goes tight around it. “You don’t have to-"

“I want to.”

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She brushes her fingers down my chest like she’s writing her ninto me. Like she’s marking the place she'll

haunt when she’s gone.

“I love you,” she says again, firmer this time. “And | need you to survive it.”

Gods.

| feel like I should be stronger than this, but my eyes are burning and my heart's a fist. Like if the world burns, if

the gods fall, if monsters take her, they'll have to go throughto keep her love.

The moment that Jess allowedto kiss her lips is the moment | decided I'm going to keep her forever. We just

did it, and I'm so sure she’s still tired and aching but | don’t think | can get over this girl.

My girl.

My Jessica.

My omega and luna.

My everything.

| vow to always love her, choose her and protect her.

“Grayson!”

“Grayson!”

My nclaws through the trees like it’s bleeding, like it's scared of what it finds, and my chest seizes before |

even inhale, lungs clenching around memory and fire and the aftertaste of her nin my mouth.

I'm on my knees.

| don’t remember falling.

Something's burning.

No, everything's burning!

“Grayson, con!” Pierce again louder now, more real, all human panic and no divinity, and | want to scream

at him to shut the fuck up, because he’s pullingout of her, pullingout of our moment, and | was still

holding her in that bed of my chest, | was still hearing her whisper, “Just us,”

But she’s not here.

And I am.

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Chapter 138

And the world smells like fland silver and monster blood.

| gag on it.

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Cough hard enough my whole spine punches back up through my shoulders, and I lurch forward like something's

trying to crawl out of me.

“Get up, man,” Pierce growls, rough hands on my arms now, yanking, bruising, real, “We need to move, the fire

is catching and-"

| coughed and my eyes snapped through the woods and saw what I'd done.

The whole pack village is turning into ashes and the sky is all red. Every roof we ever kissed under, every den

where cubs were born, every wooden promise passed from mouth to mouth like hope gone, black, curling,

collapsing inward, and the flames climb taller than any god we ever prayed to.

“Grayson-Grayson, fuck, look at me-"

But | can’t.

Pierce’s hands are back-clutching now, desperate, his voice hitting that pitch that means survival, but I'm still

kneeling watching them burn.

“She's still out there,” he barks, draggingby the collar of my shirt, yankingup onto feet that don’t feel

like mine, “you burn now, you burn alone-she’s not in this fire.”

“Move,” Pierce grits, already haulingtoward the treeline, boots crunching scorched glass, shoulders hunched

against emberfall like he’s draggingthrough hell and won't letstop, “there’s a break by the southern

stream-"

“Where's Theo?” | rasp, spitting soot.

“I don’t know. He's not here. He left this for you.”

Me.

This fire.

This fucking ruin.

His gift.

We push through a burning thicket, thorns scorched black, deer bones blistering underfoot, and smoke claws up

my throat again but | shove it back down-there’s no time, no time, not if | want to find her before he finishes her.

“I need my truck,” | growl, low, feral, eyes stinging but sharp now. “We cut southeast, we’ll find the bend and

hit the field-"

Pierce nods, grunts, already adjusting course, and we break left, shoulder to shoulder, bodies low, lungs hot, and

the forest screams behind us like it knows we're running from what we deserved-but fuck it.

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Chapter 138

| don’t care about saving the pack now.

| care about her.

“Grayson,” Pierce pants, voice hoarse, “if she’s already—"

“She's not.”

“But if—"

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“She’s not.” | stopped him with one look. Teeth grit. Eyes blazing. “I was wrong. Jessica is not dead. | can still feel

her.”

“What do you mean?” Pierce pants beside me, voice rough with ash and disbelief and whatever kind of stupid

grief he’s trying to swallow down like it doesn’t matter that she’s mine, not his, mine to mourn, mine to chase.

“I mean she’s fucking alive,” | spit, spinning on my heel as the bond coils tight insidelike it knows it's been

seen. “lI mean | can feel her fucking crawling.”

He blinks, just once, stunned, but I'm already moving-already running, already throwing myself through the

burning trees like they're nothing but paper gods in my way. Bark rips against my arms, ash bleeds into my

lungs, but none of it matters because she’s moving too. | can feel it.

She's hurting.

She's alive.

She's calling forand I'm coming.

“Grayson-Grayson, wait-" Pierce curses, slamming after me, boots crunching, catching up. “You felt her? just

now?”

“Not just now. The whole time.” | hiss, ducking under a branch. “I didn’t know what it was. | thought-I thought it

was ghost-pain. Grief. But it’s not. It's her. It's her.”

“You're sure?”

“I am mated to her,” | growl. “Don’t askif I'm fucking sure.”

We break through a clearing, half of it eaten by fire already, the air thick with blistering heat and something

else-her scent. Weak. Wrong. Warped. But hers.

| drop to my knees, palm flat to the scorched ground, and it’s like my spine locks onto it. The bond hums so loud

| think my teeth might shatter. | close my eyes and | see her, not clearly, not with vision, but with bone, with

need, with the kind of direction only wolves know when their mate is bleeding somewhere beneath the skin of

the world.

“She’s in the tunnels,” | whisper. “Under us. Stone, cold, old. She's locked in.”

Pierce sucks in a breath, backing a step like I've gone full feral, but | don’t care. I'm past grief. I'm already

halfway into the earth trying to dig her out with my own fucking hands.

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Chapter 138

“You think Theo-?"

“I know he did.”

Pierce curses.

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I'm already climbing back up, turning for the truck, voice a growl as | spit, “I need shovels. Blades. Chains. Salt.

I'm not just breaking her out. I'm ending this.”

“Grayson-"

“I told you,” I snap, grabbing his shirt, dragging him close enough he can see the bond boiling behind my eyes,

“she’s alive. And if we don’t get to her now, she won't be for long.”

His nod is slow. Final.

We run.

We run like it matters.

Because it fucking does.

AD

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