Alpha's Betrayal, Her Second Chance

Chapter 3 — Terms at the Edge

Frost jeweled the pines and bit the soft places of my palms where the rope rubbed raw. Beneath us, the ravine opened like a black mouth waiting for a name. Albert stood at the cliff's lip with the bored poise of a man whittling time. His knife turned lazy circles; his eyes counted every breath we took as if air were a currency he could tax.

The pack broke the tree line in a rush of steel and breath, wolves behind men like weather gathering. Taylor emerged last and most controlled, not yet shifted, winter running in his veins. He took in the scene once—two ropes, one knife, one smirking rogue—and the temperature of the world seemed to drop to match his gaze.

He moved toward me first.

“Caroline." My name came quiet and steady, a hand held out in a storm. His boots stopped close enough that I could see the nick on his jaw where someone's blade had kissed him earlier. He didn't try to reach for me. He knew the rope would register panic. Instead, he drew a soft breath and let it out slow, like a lesson. “Look at me."

I did. It was impossible not to when his voice smoothed itself low like that, when the brittle cold around us met something warmer and chose to retreat a step.

“Keep your eyes here," he said, softer still. “Stay with me. In through your nose, out through your mouth. That's all you have to do until I have you." His mouth barely moved; his eyes did not leave mine. In the pale light his irises looked like the rind of ice on a river—thin, dangerous, and, for once, trying to hold instead of break. “I will get you down," he said. “You are not falling tonight."

A tremor I hadn't admitted to having steadied under the cadence of his voice. The rope sawed. My lungs obeyed.

Then he turned his head and let the Alpha look out through his face.

“If you nick her," he told Albert without raising his tone, “I will take your hand off at the wrist and feed it to you finger by finger." The words were precise, not theatrical. “You'll breathe long enough for all ten."

Murmurs slid like snakes through the rogues. My husband never shouted when he was most furious; he narrowed. He became the edge of something.

Albert laughed softly, a man entertained by a new flavor of threat. “Charming," he said. “But let's prove you understand leverage." He looped one gloved hand around Joanna's rope and gave it a minimal, instructive tug. The fibers creaked. “Terms."

Taylor didn't so much as glance at Joanna. He gave Albert his eyes and me his presence. “Release my wife to my side," he said. “Then we talk about your delusions."

“Wife first?" Amusement sharpened in Albert's mouth. His gaze tipped to me, then back to Taylor, measuring. “But legends sell at a higher price." His hand toyed with Joanna's rope as if it were a ribbon he could tie around the pack's throat. “And this one—ah, this one has narrative."

Taylor took a single step closer to me—close enough that the heat from his coat reached through the cold. “You're watching the wrong audience," he said. “I'm the buyer. I'm telling you what I'll pay for."

Albert's eyes narrowed, flicking once more between us. He had seen a different play last time; he could feel the script shifting under his feet. “How touching," he purred. “Perhaps your luna's sales pitch undersold herself. She did try so hard to convince me she was irrelevant."

His suspicion slid over me like a blade testing skin. I met it and didn't bleed. “Negotiate with the man holding the purse," I said, because fear would be the first push downward and I had already fallen once. My voice stayed even. The night kept listening.

“Valley. Old mine road. Half your winter stores," Albert recited. “And a letter to the neighboring packs acknowledging my authority on the ridge for one season. Do that, and the legend lives to cry another day." He lifted his knife a thumb's width and let the metal hum against hemp. “Refuse, and gravity concludes our business."

Taylor's jaw tightened—not at the terms; at the knife's flirtation with the rope. “Release Caroline," he repeated, making my name the ground he would stand on, “and I will decide how much of your fantasy to indulge."

“You hear the arrogance?" Albert asked me lightly, as if we were tasting something together. “He bargains in reverse."

“I hear the clock," I said. The wind put winter fingers in my hair. I didn't look away from Taylor. He hadn't asked for it, but he had told me to keep my eyes on him, and the part of me that remembered fusion points and fractures understood that instructions matter when the body is near breaking. “He's counting the beats to act and still look like a god when he does."

Taylor's mouth did not move. But for an instant, the left corner cut lower—a tiny tell that anyone who had ever loved him might know. He was angling—calculating distance, weight, the way the rope would sing a warning a half second before it gave.

Albert's smile thinned. “So clever, luna. So calm." Suspicion sharpened from interest to appetite. “You are very sure he'll choose you."

Taylor spoke before I could. “I'm very sure neither of them falls," he said, and this time there was iron under the ice. He slid a glance to his second. “Nolan—two archers into the spruces. Low angle if he lifts that knife more than a finger." He didn't raise his voice. He did not need to. Men who have followed a long time move when that tone appears, because their bodies recognize the math before their minds do.

Arrows whispered into shadow. Steel clicked into place. The ravine opened its black mouth wider as if hungry for the scene to hurry up and feed it.

Albert's knife paused mid‑tease. “Predictable variables," he echoed, amused again. “Control makes such pretty men cruel." He adjusted his grip on Joanna's line—just enough to make the rope complain to the cliff. “Tick‑tock, Alpha."

Taylor took one half-step toward me, a correction any other eye would have missed, and in the same movement let his attention knife back to Albert. “The hand you're using," he said conversationally, “is the first one I cut."

“You'd have to get here," Albert said.

“I already am," Taylor murmured.

The world held its balance on a single breath. The torches hissed and did not flinch. Somewhere a hawk cried the way metal shrieks when bent past patience. I felt every thread of the rope. I felt the coarse rhythm of the bark against my shoulder blade. I felt the clean, spare certainty in Taylor's voice when he said—quiet enough that it was meant mostly for me—“Not you. Not tonight."

Warmth sat in the cold like a secret flame cupped between hands. It shouldn't have steadied me. It did.

Albert watched all of it—the small half-step, the invisible math, the way my body answered the promise despite itself. He liked puzzles. He liked breaking them. “Enough foreplay," he said, impatient again. “Say yes to my list." He nodded at the ravine. “Or I say yes to that."

Taylor's answer was the sound a door makes when it settles into the frame it was built for. “No to your list," he said. “Yes to a different one. You cut either rope and I will carry you down this cliff in pieces. Starting with the hand, like I said. Then the elbow. Then the shoulder. You will beg me for the wrist by the time I'm finished with the rest."

Even rogues who thought themselves fluent in cruelty went still at the calm in him.

“Ah," Albert said softly. “There he is." He c****d his head, studying. “But something's missing. The last time we did this scene, the choice was easy for you. Why change the music?"

“I don't repeat mistakes," Taylor said.

Albert's gaze flicked to me once more, eyes narrowing to slits. The knife hovered along the rope's music. “No," he said slowly. “But someone does." He smiled toward me without warmth. “And yet she speaks as if she's learned."

The old humiliation tugged at my bones, asking to be let in. I did not open the door. I was holding to one thing now—quiet as bone, new as flame.

Taylor drew breath, the kind that comes before a command men won't disobey. The world leaned toward him. He was about to decide the way always did—with winter, with math, with pride.

“Taylor," I said.

It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. His name—my use of it—cut a clean slit in the cold. His eyes found mine, and for one focused, unarmored beat, the Alpha slipped, and the man I had married looked out.

“Answer me something before you move," I said, steady and plain because the only words that mattered now were the ones that admitted the ground we were standing on. “If it comes to it—if the cost of saving me is letting her go—can you give up Joanna?" The night caught the question and held it for him like a bowl. I let the last piece fall in, sharp and bright and merciless as truth. “And can you give up the child she's carrying?"

Everything stopped.

The wind forgot how to move. The torches held their breath. Arrows waited in the dark and did not tremble.

Taylor's face didn't change. Not at first. Then a muscle jumped in his jaw like something under the ice jolting hard against the surface that trapped it. He didn't look at Joanna. He didn't look at Albert. He stared at me, and in his eyes I watched the scale he had built his life on struggle not to crack.

I didn't speak again.

Joanna didn't speak.

The ravine opened its black mouth wider and said nothing at all.

And I held the silence between us as if it were a blade I had finally learned to use.