Chapter 136

Melanie’s POV

Asher and I made our Great Fashionable Re-Entry in under two minutes—seriously, less time than it takes me to pick an Instagram filter—and slipped back into the circle of pack members without so much as a dramatic drumroll. A few raised eyebrows, a couple of cheeky smirks, but nobody dared call us out on our vanishing act. If telepathy existed, they’d all be thinking, “Got it, these two are officially #RelationshipGoals,” so why bother with an announcement?

Dinner buzzed along faster than Jared could flip through recipe apps—he whipped up enough food to feed a small army in record time, and we all chowed down like we hadn’t eaten in days. The ladies of the pack were all charm and inside-joke levels of welcoming, and the guys cracked jokes that didn’t make me want to run for the hills. Win-win.

My MVP of the night? Summer. Sharp-tongued, no filter, and only slightly terrifying in the “tell-it-like-it-is” department. She and I bonded over savage