Chapter Two
1230 Words
. The Alpha at the Door
She was on her feet before the door opened.
Not fast, she wasn't sure her legs would give her fast right now but upright, collar straight, hands loose at her sides. Whatever walked through that door was not going to find her sitting.
The man who entered was not what she expected.
She had built a picture from the voice alone. Older, maybe. Heavy with authority the way pack alphas often were, the kind of man who talked and the room went quiet. She was half right.
He was younger than the voice suggested. Tall, dark, the kind of face that had been through something and come out harder on the other side. A scar cut through his left brow old, clean, the kind you got from someone who knew what they were doing. He wore no rank markers. He didn't need to. The way he moved said everything.
He stopped inside the doorway and looked at her.
Not the way the pack had looked at her in the great hall not measuring or waiting or performing. He looked at her the way a man looks when he's been told something is impossible and he is standing in front of the proof. Like he needed one more second to be sure.
It lasted three seconds. Then he pulled his eyes away.
You're injured.
I'm standing.
That's not the same thing.
She said nothing. He moved to the window instead of toward her, which she noted he'd chosen the furthest point in the room. Giving her space. Or giving himself some.
How long were you in Ashfang.
Three years.
And before.
Human settlements. I didn't know what I was.
He turned slightly. Not quite looking at her. How old were you when the mark appeared?
Fourteen. She watched him take that in. I thought I was dying. The healer I found said I was cursed. I covered it and didn't tell anyone for ten years.
He went quiet. His jaw tightened once, then released.
The mark on your neck, he said. I need to see it.
She went still. Why.
Because I need to be sure of what you are before I start making promises I can't take back.
Honest. She had not expected that. Most alphas she'd met spoke in certainties. He sounded like a man who had judged wrongly before.
She opened her collar.
He crossed the room in four steps and she remained where she stood, though her instinct told her to step back. He came so close that she could feel the heat of his body. He quietly looked at the mark for a long time.
Then he stepped back. And for just a second one unguarded second something in his face gave. Not shock. More like a man who has been holding his breath for twenty years and just remembered he could stop.
Twenty years, he said quietly. Like he was talking to himself.
What.
He looked at her. My brother has been looking for someone with that mark for twenty years. He told me what to do if I ever found her. A pause. I thought he was losing his mind.
Who is your brother.
His name is Vorrath.
The name meant nothing to her. She watched his face to see if it should.
He's an Alpha, Draven said. Two territories east. He lost someone at a summit twenty years ago. A child. His eyes stayed on hers. He never stopped looking.
The room was so quiet.
She didn't know what to do with the information, it just was too big for her at this moment. She did not want to ask of her parents because the answer seemed so daunting for her before but too much was already revealed. It has already cost her.
I'm not anyone's lost child, she said.
No, Draven said. You're clearly not. He said it without judgment. Just fact. But Vorrath has the right to know you're alive. That's all I'm saying.
She fastened the collar. What do you want from me.
Nothing. You can leave if you want. The gate's open.
You told the healer I wasn't leaving.
I told her that before I came in here. He looked at her steadily. I was wrong to say it. You go where you choose.
She studied him. Reading him not just his face, his whole body. The tension in his hands, the way he breathed, the small signs that live below words. Most people lied in layers. Some lied so smoothly the layers vanished.
He wasn't lying.
Why were you wrong to say it, she said.
Because someone who felt he had the right to decide where you went and what you did took everything from you. He held her gaze. I will not do that.
She hadn't seen that coming either.
She stood there in a borrowed room in a strange pack's territory with a healer pretending not to listen through the wall, and she thought: this man is either exactly what he seems or the most dangerous thing I've walked into yet.
With her luck it was probably both.
I'll stay, she said. For now.
He nodded and walked to the door. Then stopped.
My brother Zorn will come tomorrow. He won't ask about the mark or Vorrath or any of it. A slight pause. He'll probably ask what you want for breakfast.
Why.
Because that's how he decides if he trusts someone. He watches how they eat.
She didn't know what to answer.
Get some rest, Draven said. And left.
She didn't rest.
She lay on the narrow bed and looked at the ceiling and went through what she had. The clothes on her back Duskfang-issued, plain. The collar. Wounds on her hands that had been cleaned by people she didn't know. No money. No documents. Nothing that placed her anywhere.
And six weeks pregnant, though she hadn't told the healer that.
She hadn't told anyone. She'd known for three days, sure in the way she knew most things, not from evidence but from the thing inside her that picked up signals others missed. She knew. Four heartbeats where there used to be one.
Twins, probably. Maybe more. Her kind ran that way.
She pressed one hand flat against her stomach. Kaedryn's children, she thought. And then, harder: mine.
Whatever happened next Vorrath, Draven, the mark, all of it these four small lives were not going to be instruments or leverage or arrangements. She would burn this territory to the ground before she let that happen.
She was still thinking this when she heard the footsteps again.
Not Draven's. Lighter, quicker, a different rhythm entirely. They stopped outside her door. A pause. Then a knock — not official, almost casual.
I know you're awake, a voice said. I can hear you not sleeping.
She said nothing.
I'm Zorn, the voice continued. I was going to wait until tomorrow but I smelled the healer's soup from the east corridor and it's terrible and I thought you might want something that doesn't taste like punishment.
A beat.
I want to tell you something my brother does not know I am telling you. It can not wait until morning.
She looked at the door.
About the woman who took your blood, Zorn said. And what we found in her room an hour ago.
- Writer
