(Kieran POV)
I found her in the stables, laughing at something young Thomas had said while he brushed down one of the mares. The sound of her genuine mirth should have pleased me—after weeks of careful politeness and guarded responses, hearing Catherine truly happy was what I'd been hoping for.
Instead, it sent something dark and possessive clawing through my chest with enough force to make rational thought difficult.
Thomas was one of our younger pack members, barely twenty-two and blessed with the kind of easy charm that made humans comfortable rather than wary. In human form, he looked like exactly the sort of man Catherine might have danced with in London ballrooms—handsome in conventional ways, unthreatening, safe.
Everything I wasn't and could never be.
They stood close enough t
