The Eighth Wolf

Chapter 1

The rain had been falling for three days straight.

Bang Chan stood beneath the dripping eaves of the old stone building, watching water race in silver threads down the cracked pavement. He'd come to this town only because the hunting was poor in his territory—too many hikers, too many cameras, too many eyes that might see a wolf larger than any natural beast padding through the undergrowth. He needed supplies, needed to be among humans just long enough to remember why he avoided them.

He hadn't expected the scent.

It hit him as he pushed through the heavy oak door—a library, of all places, tucked into the corner of the town square like a forgotten secret. The smell of old paper and dust, yes, but beneath it, something else. 

Something that made his canines ache and his chest tighten with a sudden, violent want.

Wolf.

Not just one. Two.

Chan froze in the entryway, every instinct screaming at him to turn, to run, to remember what he'd been taught. 

Alphas didn't seek out other wolves. 

Alphas stood alone. 

Alphas especially did not follow their noses toward the source of a scent that smelled like sunlight on snow, like home, like *mate*—

*Impossible.*

His mother's voice, sharp as broken glass. 

*Males cannot be mates, Christopher. The moon does not make those kinds of mistakes.*

But his feet moved anyway, carrying him past the circulation desk, past the sleeping elderly librarian, down aisles of sagging shelves that seemed to lean together like gossiping elders. The scent grew stronger, headier, until Chan could taste it on the back of his tongue. Sweet. Wild.

 Wrong in all the ways that made his heart hammer against his ribs.

He found them in the mythology section.

One was reading in the corner—smaller frame, dark hair falling across his forehead as he squinted at a book about lunar cycles. He looked up as Chan approached, nose twitching, and his eyes widened. Chan catalogued him automatically: beta energy, wary but not frightened, calculating. 

This one would be trouble.

"You're standing in my light," the beta said, not unkindly, but there was steel beneath the words. A warning.

"I wasn't looking for you," Chan said. His voice came out rougher than intended.

"Didn't think you were." The beta—Minho, his scent suggested, though Chan couldn't say how he knew—tilted his head toward the next aisle over. "He's been waiting for someone who smells like storm clouds and loneliness. Didn't realize he'd be waiting for an Alpha."

Chan's hands curled into fists. "You know what I am?"