ALPHA KANE

Border town

Six months later, Kane was hauling lumber on a construction site in Dustbridge, a border town too small for any pack to claim and too poor for anyone to care. His hands had calloused over in a way they never had as Alpha. His shoulders ached by midday now, every day, the way a normal man's shoulders were supposed to ache.

"Ashford," the foreman called. "The crew's done for today. Get your pay and clear out."

Kane wiped sweat off his face and walked toward the pay table. He was three steps from the foreman's stand when two men stepped into his path. He recognized them — local enforcers who worked for whoever ran the town's so-called protection racket. Big men, slow movers, the kind he could have dropped in half a second a year ago without breaking stride.

"Heard you got paid today," the bigger one said.

"Heard wrong," Kane said. "Move."

"Protection fee's due. Twenty percent. You know how this works by now."

"I know how it works," Kane said. "I also know I'm not paying for it."

The second man grabbed his arm. Kane shook it off — and that small amount of effort cost him more than it should have. His body wasn't fast anymore. Wasn't strong anymore. He registered the fist coming at his jaw a half-second too late and took the hit clean, stumbling back into the lumber stack.

He'd have ended this in three moves once. Instead he was on the ground, ears ringing, tasting blood.

"Get up," the bigger man said. "Let's try this again, easier this time."

Kane got up. He swung first, this time, putting everything he had into a hit to the throat — and it landed, the man choked and staggered back, but the second enforcer was already on him from the side. A boot caught Kane's ribs and the air went out of him in one sharp burst. He hit the dirt again, curling instinctively around the pain.

"Twenty percent," the man said, crouching down. "Or we come back tomorrow and take it out of your hide instead."

They took his pay from his pocket while he was still trying to breathe, then walked off laughing like men who'd done this a hundred times before. Kane lay there in the dirt for a long minute, staring up at a gray sky, furious in a way that had nowhere to go.

He used to run a pack of thirty wolves. Now two human men with cheap brass knuckles had put him on the ground twice in under a minute.

A boot stepped into his vision. Not an enforcer's boot. Smaller. A woman's.

"You're bleeding from somewhere I can't see yet," she said. "Sit up before you choke on it."

Kane forced himself upright. The woman crouched in front of him with a satchel already open — bandages, a small jar of something that smelled sharp and medicinal, a needle threaded and ready like she'd done this on the walk over. Dark hair pulled back, sleeves rolled to the elbow, hands that moved with the kind of confidence that came from practice, not nerves.

"Mira," she said, before he asked. "I run the clinic two streets over. You're new."

"Kane."

"I know who you are," Mira said, tilting his chin to inspect the cut along his cheekbone. "The whole town knows the man who won't pay the fee and gets the same beating every week for it."

"Every week?"

"Third time this month, by my count." She threaded the needle through skin without warning, and Kane held still through it on reflex — pain control was at least one thing his old life had taught him that still worked. "You fight like someone who used to be good at it. You're just slow now. And you lead with your shoulder instead of your hip, which tells me you're used to a different kind of strength backing up that swing."

"You analyze all your patients this closely?"

"Only the ones who keep coming back with the same injuries," Mira said. "Most people learn. You haven't."

"I don't have much choice."

"You have the choice to not fight men twice your size with nothing but your hands," Mira said, tying off the stitch and sitting back to look at him properly for the first time. "Whatever you used to be, you're not it anymore. You fight like you haven't accepted that yet."

Kane didn't answer. There wasn't an answer that didn't sound like an excuse.

"You'll get yourself killed," Mira said, standing and closing her satchel. "Not today. But soon, if you keep swinging at fights you can't win."

"Maybe I'd rather die swinging than die paying."

"That's a nice thing to say," Mira said. "It won't keep you alive."

She turned to leave, then paused, glancing back at him with something that wasn't quite sympathy — more like professional interest, the look of someone cataloguing a problem she hadn't decided whether to keep helping with.

"The clinic's two streets over if you split that stitch open," she said. "Try not to."

Kane watched her go, then sat in the dirt a while longer, getting his breath back, running his tongue over a split lip that was already swelling. Six months of this. Six months of being slow, being weak, being a man other men could put on the ground without effort. He still listened for the pack-hum sometimes, late at night, out of habit more than hope. It never answered.

He was about to push himself up when he heard it — wagon wheels, a lot of them, moving fast down the main road into town. He turned in time to see the first wagon round the corner, packed with people, children crying, a woman with a bloodied bandage wrapped around her arm shouting for someone to clear the road.

More wagons followed. A dozen at least, then more behind that, refugees pouring into Dustbridge like the town had suddenly become the only safe place left standing.

Kane got to his feet slowly, ribs aching, watching the chaos spread through the street.

"Pack war," someone near him said, voice tight with fear. "Vask's forces hit the Calder pack territory this morning. Burned half of it. They're coming this way next."

Kane felt something shift in his chest — not the bond, not yet, but something close to it. A direction. A reason to stand up that didn't have anything to do with unpaid wages or a protection fee he refused to hand over.

The war had finally arrived at his door.