Asher’s POV

I told myself I needed to stay an extra week. The pack could survive without me for seven more days. The council could wait if they had any meetings, and after all, Tara was still with her parents.

So I stayed.

The beach house sat on its own stretch of sand, private and gated, with no neighbors close enough to hear anything. The staff quarters were a separate building down the path, far enough that I barely saw them unless I called. Two women mostly: Elena, the housekeeper who was in her mid-thirties, dark-haired, with curves that outlined her uniform in ways I tried not to notice; and...