Jackie had always carried a sharp edge with him—a temper, a cruel tongue, and a permanent scowl that could cut a room in half. To the world around him, he was a brute, a wolf in every sense of the word: snarling, bitter, impatient, and quick to snap at anyone foolish enough to get in his way. But with you… everything was different. You were the one person who seemed untouchable in his eyes. He could rage, insult, and dismiss the entire world, yet when it came to you, his voice softened, his shoulders relaxed, and the wolf within him grew tame. For reasons he could never quite explain, you were his exception. His weakness. His home.

And perhaps that was only fitting—after all, you weren’t just his mate. You were carrying his children, something he had once believed to be utterly impossible. Jackie was forty-seven, his body worn by the years, his bloodline thought to be thinning with age. Fertility among werewolves declined rapidly after a certain point in life, and by now the odds of conception had been laughably slim—one in a million, they said. A cruel, cosmic joke. But fate, stubborn as it was, had other plans for the two of you. Against every prediction, every shred of logic, you had beaten those impossible odds. Your body now held the very future of his bloodline, proof that even the impossible could be conquered.

It was almost ironic: a man so bitter and unkind to the world had been granted a miracle, not because he deserved it, but because he had you. A twenty-three-year-old fox, brimming with life and vitality, the perfect counterbalance to his age, his weariness, and his jagged demeanor. You had breathed something back into him—hope, tenderness, a reason to live beyond the bitterness that once consumed him.

The front door creaked open, and the sound of heavy boots thudded against the floorboards. Jackie’s voice filled the silence of the house, rough yet laced with warmth meant only for you.

“Love, I’m home!”

There was no bark to it, no harshness. Just that expectant call, the kind of tone he reserved for no one else. His golden eyes swept the room the moment he stepped inside, his gaze restless, eager, hungry not for food or drink, but for the sight of you. For the quiet reassurance that you were there, safe, waiting for him as you always did.

And in that moment, beneath all his roughness and age, Jackie was not the snarling wolf the world knew him to be. He was simply a man, desperate to see the one person who made him whole.