Chapter 1: My Ex-Husband Comes to Demand a Reunion

The autumn mist over Luqiao Town had yet to disperse when droplets of water already covered the glass doors of the wilderness emergency service company. Nora Finch was pinning a first-aid kit inventory to the corkboard, the astringent scent of povidone-iodine still clinging to her fingertips. A low engine growl came from outside. Two black off-road vehicles rolled through the standing water and lined up in a straight row at the entrance. On their grilles, an emblem showed a crescent wolf fang biting into the outline of the Ironspine Mountains, gleaming with a cold metallic sheen beneath the murky daylight.

Hank Doyle came in from the backyard carrying a stretcher and wiped the rainwater from his face. “That convoy belongs to the Ironspine Wolf Pack, doesn’t it? What brings them here?”

Without turning around, Nora crossed out the final line on the list with a red pen. “Don’t touch the stretcher. Move those two boxes of first-aid kits from the backyard into the garage before they get soaked. And saw down those two dead cedars by the entrance. Their roots have rotted in the mud; a gust could send them crashing into the yard.”

“I’m sawing trees? You want me to saw trees?” Hank grinned, showing a mouthful of white teeth. “Hold on. I’ll take off the brace on my lower back first, or I won’t be able to handle the saw.”

The door was pushed open, and a cold wind carrying the scent of pine needles poured inside. Logan Voss stood in the doorway, water dripping from the hem of his gray coat. He did not enter, remaining outside on the threshold. Three werewolves followed behind him, all wearing dark jackets with their hands in their pockets as they stared at the stretchers and emergency blankets hanging in the yard.

Nora tucked the red pen behind her ear and came around from behind the counter. She was thirty years old and not tall, but she held her shoulders and back perfectly straight, as if she might heft a stretcher and rush out the door at any moment.

“Hank, give me the saw.” Nora’s voice was even. “We’ll talk after you finish. Logan, you’re standing in the doorway and blowing wind in my face.”

Logan did not move. His gaze passed over her and landed on the stack of documents spread across the counter. He had seen those papers before. Three years ago, he had signed them himself.

Nora walked to the counter and pulled open the bottom drawer, taking out a yellowed sheet of paper. Its edges had worn into fuzz, and the creases had turned white. She slapped it down on the tabletop in front of Logan. One corner curled upward, pinning down a rusted thumbtack.

“What price are you planning to offer this time to buy me back?” Nora asked. Her voice was not loud, but every word landed squarely on the page.

Logan lowered his head and looked at the paper. It was a divorce agreement. The ink had faded to gray-blue, but his signature remained, its strokes strong and decisive, with an almost imperceptible tremor at the end. He stared at the signature for two seconds, touched the page with his fingertips, then pulled his hand back.

“The Elders’ Council has no price,” Logan said, his voice very low, as if afraid of disturbing something. “Only an order.”

“An order?” Nora gave a short laugh and pushed the agreement toward him. “That’s what you said three years ago, too. You ordered me to marry into the wolf pack, ordered me to serve at the bed and hearth, ordered me to hand over the herbal formulas from the mountains. Now you’re ordering me to come back because Marcus Raine’s pack crossed the boundary marker east of the Ironspine Mountains last week, and you can’t handle it.”

Logan’s brows twitched. Hank had heard every word. The saw in his hand stopped in midair, and his eyes swept back and forth between the two of them twice.

“Marcus’s trespass is an internal matter of the wolf-pack alliance,” Logan said. “The Elders’ Council wants you to bring back the resonance method for the stone formation. It has nothing to do with the trespass.”

“Nothing to do with me?” Nora pointed at the signature on the agreement. “It has everything to do with me. When you signed this three years ago, I had never even heard the words ‘guardian bloodline.’ You said it was the wolf pack’s rule. I said that since I’d signed, I had to honor it. Now your rules have changed, and you want me to return the rules to you. Why should I honor that?”

Logan did not answer. One of the werewolves behind him took half a step forward, but Logan raised a hand to stop him.

Nora went around behind the counter and took a glass jar from the drawer. A deep-green herb floated inside, its roots wrapped in several coils of black stone patterns. She placed the jar beside the agreement and tapped the glass with her fingertip, producing a hollow sound.

“This is guardian grass gathered from the back mountains of Luqiao Town. When I dug it up three years ago, its roots were already wrapped in those stone patterns. Your pack told me they were the catalyst for the guardian bloodline. I couldn’t keep it alive. It’s been soaking here for three years, and its roots have pierced right through the bottom of the jar.” Nora rotated the jar halfway, making sure Logan could see the hole in its base. “You want the resonance method for the stone formation? Then tell me first: do these roots count as part of the method?”

Logan stared at the hole, his expression darkening. The werewolf behind him began whispering to another, their voices shredded into fragments by the wind, making the words impossible to distinguish.

Hank leaned the saw against the wall and stepped forward. “Nora, don’t waste your breath on him. I’ll make three calls and get the Luqiao Town police patrol over here. The last time these wolf-pack people came to town, they cut off the police station’s radio communications.”

Nora didn't look at Hank. Her gaze stayed locked on Logan's face. "You don't need to make that phone call." She said, "I just want him to answer one question. Three years ago, when he signed the agreement, was Elias Voss present? And who pressed the Codex fire-seal at the end of the document?"

A muscle in Logan's jaw tightened. He glanced toward the bottom of the agreement, where a charred fire-seal bearing the wolf-pack Codex totem was supposed to be. But the paper was clean—only the signature, no seal.

"The fire-seal was wiped away," Logan said, his voice dropping another notch. "No, it wasn't wiped. It was never pressed in the first place. Elias Voss said that a divorced party doesn't need the Codex's binding, that the fire-seal was redundant."

Nora picked up the agreement and held it to her nose to smell it. The ink smell was faint, carrying a hint of mold—the scent of a paper that had sat in a basement drawer for three years. She placed the document back on the table, pressing her fingertip against the signature for a long time, until a faint thumbprint was left on the paper.

"Three years ago, you said the fire-seal was redundant." Nora looked up, her eyes as cold as the ice lake on the back mountains of Deerbridge Town. "Now you want me to use the Stone Circle to protect the entire town, and you tell me the fire-seal is redundant. Logan, is that a divorce agreement you signed, or a contract selling your soul?"

Logan didn't answer. The wind from behind him rushed through the open door, lifting the corner of the agreement on the table and letting it fall back down. Hank stood in the doorway, watching the back of Logan, the stretcher straps in his hand gripped so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

Nora pushed the glass jar back into the depths of the drawer and shut it, the latch giving a dull thud. She turned and walked toward the backyard. As she passed Logan, her steps didn't slow, but her voice carried over to him: "Go back and tell Elias Voss that I don't sell mountain-keeper bloodlines for sale here. If he wants the Stone Circle, let him bring Marcus Rain himself to Deerbridge Town, face the entire town, and settle the score for the boundary violation before we talk."

Logan stood just outside the threshold, motionless. He watched Nora's silhouette disappear through the rain and mist, stepping into the backyard, that saw still clutched in her hand. The agreement lay quietly on the counter, the empty space at the end looking like an old wound that had never fully scarred over.

The wind in the backyard carried the metallic smell of rain. The muddy ground was soft from being trampled. Nora leaned the saw against the water pipe, then bent down to pull out a tarp, draping it over the glass jar that had been soaking for three years. Inside the wooden crate, the jar gave a slight shift, emitting a dull clunking sound. She heard the commotion in the front room—Logan was still standing at the door, not leaving. Hank was pacing back and forth, the floorboards creaking under his weight. It was the kind of wear and tear from an old house left unrepaired; when Nora had founded the company, they couldn't afford renovations, so they'd just made do with what they had.

Nora straightened up. Rainwater dripped from her sleeves, forming small dark circles on the mud. She pulled out her phone. The screen lit up, showing three missed calls, all from Hank. The contact note read: *Old friend, stop playing hero*. She didn't call him back. Instead, she walked to the old oak tree at the back of the house. Deep marks were carved into the trunk—marks she had left when she first went down the mountain alone, three years ago. Back then, she had thought they were claw marks from wild wolves. Later, she learned they were actually marks Logan had left while testing her wind-gale technique.

Hank's voice drifted from the front room, muffled by the glass window: "Logan, either say clearly what you mean now, or wait outside. I make three phone calls, and the town's radio will start buzzing. You won't get away." Logan's response was soft; Nora didn't catch the words, only saw his shadow flicker on the windowpane, then freeze. Nora walked back to the front room. When she pushed the door open, the wind immediately rushed in, making the papers on the table rustle loudly. Logan was standing beside the agreement, neither retreating to the doorway nor advancing closer; he just stood there, the curtain of rain behind him forming a blurred boundary.

Nora took off her soaked jacket and hung it neatly on the back of a chair, her movements sharp and efficient, the mark of years of field work. She picked up a glass from the table and poured a cup of warm water. The base of the cup clicked against the wooden table, a clear, crisp sound. She pushed the cup in front of Logan, saying nothing. Logan didn't touch the cup; his gaze fell upon it, his expression calm. Hank stood behind Nora, his hand resting on the walkie-talkie at his waist. It was company-issued communication equipment, covering all of Deerbridge Town and the surrounding mountainous area. It was silent for now, but ready to call for help at a moment's notice.

Nora sat back down in her chair, tapping her fingers on the table twice, making a soft knock-knock sound. She stared at Logan, her voice steady: "I told you, I don't sell mountain-keeper bloodlines. You came with words, and you came with a price. Now, I want you to tell me: what exactly does the Council of Elders want me to do with the Stone Circle? Protect the town? Stop the bleeding? Or something else?" Logan's throat moved as he swallowed. He looked at the cup of water, as if looking through the surface of the liquid at a dusk from three years ago.

Logan finally spoke, his voice low and hoarse. “The resonance frequency of the stone array is decaying. Last year, a fissure split open in the bedrock on the east side of Deerbrook Town. The rain season’s water seeped in, and the array’s base has come loose. The elders believe that only the bloodline of the Mountain Wardens can recalibrate the frequency and lock the array back into the bedrock.” He paused. “They want you to complete the calibration within three days. Otherwise, once the rain season ends, the array will fail completely, the eastern fissure will widen, and the ley lines running through the entire mountain range will become unstable.”

Nora’s finger stopped on the desk. Unstable ley lines meant landslides around the hilly areas near Deerbrook Town, plunging the town’s residents and the company’s rescue operations into a crisis. She recalled that downpour last year—she had led a team up the eastern mountain path and pulled seventeen people to safety. Back then, the stone array was still functioning properly, the slopes were stable, and only a small crack had appeared. She had temporarily sealed it using an old method for stitching the edges of stone arrays. Now that crack was about to expand.

Nora rose to her feet and walked to the window, watching the rain outside. Water streamed down the glass, stretching the distant streets and the parked fleet of vehicles into distorted lines. The tail lights of the vehicles glowed through the misty rain, a dim yellow light like a cluster of crouching eyes. She turned around to face Logan and Hank.

“Three days isn’t enough for me to do research,” Nora said. “But I need to know the exact location of the calibration. Where the fissure is, which peaks hold the nodes of the stone array.” Logan did not answer immediately. He looked at Hank, who frowned, his gaze sharp.

“Why should I tell you?” Nora’s voice cooled. “You came to demand, not to consult. I am the founder of a wilderness emergency rescue company. My time is billed by the hour, settled in dollars. Your wolf pack customs will have to be converted into a currency I can understand here.” Logan’s eyes shifted. The tight line of his mouth relaxed for a moment, then snapped back into place.

“Currency.” Logan repeated the word, a hint of awkwardness in his voice. He was the Alpha of the wolf pack; he was no stranger to the human system of money, but in this moment, the word felt like a thin needle, pricking a gap in his memory. Three years ago, Nora had talked to him about divorce in exactly the same way. She had said that marriage was not a rope tied to a tree, but a currency held by two people. If the exchange could not yield a fair deal, they should part ways.

Nora watched Logan, her gaze calm. She knew what she was doing. She was not refusing; she was setting the rules. The bloodline of the Mountain Wardens was hers. Her career was hers. Her freedom was hers. If they wanted to trade these things for the stability of the stone array, they would have to pay a price. That price could not be a burden carried by her alone.

“Tell me the location.” Nora said. “I will send people to survey it. With my equipment, my team. I will keep a copy of the survey data for myself. As for the calibration, I will think about it.” Logan nodded, his movement light, as if performing some ancient ritual. He reached into his coat and produced a metal cylinder, placing it on the desk. The cylinder was cold and hard, carrying the chill of metal.

“This is it,”