The Blackfir and Ridgeline packs have spent six generations fighting over a river that neither of them owns. Marisol Reyes, Blackfir's strategist, wrote the arbitration terms she knew both sides would reject. She did not account for the alpha on the other side of the table. Kade Carrow, Ridgeline's alpha, has kept his pack fed and armed for eleven years without asking anyone's permission. He has never been on the losing side of anything. He intends to lose nothing to a Blackfir strategist and her pretty treaty. Then their hands meet over the signing page, and something neither of them asked for moves through both bodies at once. Neither of them says it. The arbitration blows up, Marisol is shot in the crossfire, and Kade takes her across the river to keep her alive - which is technically a war crime, and functionally the closest thing either of them has to a neutral place. Three weeks. Two packs. One river nobody owns. And a proposal they will both have to lose something to sign. A fated mates, enemies to lovers shifter romance about two alphas who could only ever have built the peace together.