Wolf Next Door

She came to sell her mother's cottage. She wasn't supposed to stay.Nora Callahan arrives in Hallow Creek with a six-week plan, an estate to settle, and no intention of forming attachments. She has been leaving places her whole life. She is very good at it. Hallow Creek will be no different.Then someone stacks firewood on her back porch before she has learned a single name in this town.The firewood is only the beginning.The town is too warm — not in the vague way of small communities being polite, but in the specific way of a place that has been paying attention to her. The hardware store owner knows things he shouldn't. The same families have lived here for four unbroken generations. The contractor Bram doesn't upsell, the woman at the diner knows her order before she gives it, and the man who keeps appearing exactly when something needs fixing is never quite there when she turns to ask how he knew.Callum Harte is the third-generation owner of Harte & Sons Hardware and the alpha of the Hallow Creek pack. He has known since the day she arrived. The bond told him where to look. Everything after that has been his choice — to be present without pressure, useful without explanation, patient across every week she spends assembling her evidence and calling it something smaller than the truth.He can not make her stay. He has promised himself he will not be the reason she goes.Nora has been running from belonging since she was old enough to watch her mother get it wrong. She has learned to keep herself half-packed, pleasantly present, never rooted. What she has not prepared for is a town that keeps looking at her with the specific attention of something that has already decided. What she has not prepared for is a man who checks the boundary before problems develop and drives the road behind her lane every night in the dark.She is starting to notice things that do not add up. She is starting to fill notebooks.She told her estate agent she could be flexible on the timeline. She has not examined why.A slow-burn small town paranormal werewolf romance about the specific courage of staying — about a hidden pack that has been in one place for a hundred and thirty-nine years, an alpha who leads through patience rather than force, and a woman who has been drawing the outline of something for a very long time and is finally ready to put down the line.Complete HEA. No cliffhanger. Approximately 91,000 words.Perfect for fans of Patricia Briggs, Kristen Ashley, and Nalini Singh.