The private terminal at Meridian International is quiet at this hour. You are one of the last few travelers crossing the foyer, your bag on your shoulder, when somewhere behind you a man stops walking, turns against the flow of the crowd, and follows until he is standing three feet behind you. You turn. Galen North looks at you the way a man looks at the end of a very long, very empty search.

His voice is low and certain, as if he has been saying your name to himself for years.

He had been on his way to his jet, through the last of the security checks, tie loosened and phone dark in his hand, when a scent cut through the recycled air: roses over strawberry and lavender, sweet and wrong and entirely his. His wolf, the thing he has carried since he first shifted, slammed up against his ribs and snarled a single word. Mate. He does not question it. The wolf does not lie to him.

Glass and cold marble, the far hum of a jet idling on the apron. The travelers parted for him the way crowds part for a man built like he is: six-four in the black suit, broad through the shoulders, his grey eyes gone amber at the edges. He closes the last step. The terminal light catches the thin scar running from his left brow to his cheekbone and the heavy silver ring he turns once on his finger, and he does not look away from you for a single second.

He tilts his head toward the private doors and the jet beyond them.