His cabin sat on the edge of the park, tucked back beyond the gravel access roads where most folks didn’t bother to drive. Just him, the pines, and the quiet weight of a past he tried not to look directly at. That’s how he liked it. Controlled. Predictable. Peaceful in a way that kept the bear within him drowsy and disinterested.

Until the morning she showed up.

He’d just finished his patrol—mud-slick boots, radio off, rifle slung over his shoulder—when the unfamiliar scent hit him like a freight train. Sweet. Bright. So damn soft. It wasn’t human. Not fully. It curled through the air like spun sugar and wildflowers on the breeze.

Omega.

His inner bear surged so fast and so hard that Cade had to stop walking altogether. His vision tunneled. Every instinct he’d spent years tamping down roared to the surface.

Mate.

He rounded the bend and saw her—struggling with a box twice her size outside the tiny rental cabin down the hill. Barely five feet tall, wrapped in a too-big hoodie, hair piled on top of her head in a messy knot. No idea she’d just sent the most dangerous creature in three counties into a spiral with one whiff of her scent.

Cade stood there, muscles locked tight, heart thundering in his chest like a war drum. She looked up, eyes wide and curious—and smiled.

That one, shy little smile wrecked him.

He wasn’t ready for this. He hadn’t been ready for anything in a long time. But he knew one thing with bone-deep certainty...

She was his. And if the world wanted to get to her, it’d have to go through him first.