The Alpha Regrets Rejecting Me

Chapter 2: The Stranger in the Woods

I woke up to the smell of smoke and pine.

For a second I didn't move. I just lay there, staring up at a low wooden ceiling I didn't recognize, trying to remember how I got there. My whole body ached like I'd been hit by a truck. My arms felt heavy, like they belonged to someone else.

Then I remembered. The rejection. The pain in my spine. The black marks crawling up my skin. The shadow in the trees.

I sat up too fast and my head spun.

"Easy," a voice said. Low. Rough, like it hadn't been used in a while. "You've been out for two days."

I turned toward the sound and my whole body went still.

There was a man sitting by a small fire a few feet away, watching me with eyes that didn't look fully human. Gold, almost yellow, the kind of color you only see on animals. He was big, broad-shouldered, with dark hair that hung loose around a face that looked like it had seen more winters than any face had a right to. He didn't look old. He looked like something that had stopped counting years a long time ago.

I scrambled back against the wall, my heart hammering.

"Who are you," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Where am I."

"You're safe," he said, like that answered anything. "You collapsed in the woods. I brought you here."

"Where's here."

"My cabin. Deep enough in the territory that nobody from your pack comes looking."

I looked around. It was small, one room, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, furs on the floor, a single window with the shutters closed. No pack markings anywhere. No scent of Moonfang on anything.

"You're not one of us," I said. "You're not pack."

"No," he said simply. "I'm not."

"Then what are you."

He didn't answer right away. He just watched me, the way you'd watch something you weren't sure was going to bolt or bite. Then he said, "My name is Ash. And I think the better question is what are you."

My stomach dropped.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you." He nodded toward my arms.

I looked down and froze. The black marks were still there, fainter now, but visible, curling silver lines under my skin like something sleeping instead of gone. I pulled my sleeves down fast, like that would undo what he'd already seen.

"It's nothing," I said. "It's just— I don't know what it is."

"I do."

I looked up at him.

"You've been carrying something sealed inside you your whole life," Ash said. His voice was calm, but there was weight behind it, like he'd said this kind of thing before and knew exactly how much it would land. "Something old. Older than your pack. Older than the Alpha bloodlines that run it now."

"That's not possible," I said. "I never shifted. I'm not even a real wolf. Everyone knows that."

"Everyone's wrong."

I laughed, but it came out sharp and humorless. "You don't know me. You don't know anything about me."

"I know you should be dead," he said. "Rogues found you in those woods the same night your Alpha rejected you. Four of them. I heard the fight before I saw it."

My blood went cold.

"I don't remember that," I whispered.

"You wouldn't. Whatever woke up inside you took over before your mind could catch up. It protected you. Tore through four grown wolves like they were nothing, and then it put you down so hard you slept for two days straight." He leaned forward slightly. "That's not something an ordinary wolf does. That's not something an ordinary anything does."

I stared at him, waiting for him to laugh, to tell me it was a joke. He didn't.

"You're saying I killed them," I said slowly.

"I'm saying you survived something you shouldn't have survived. What happened to them after that isn't your burden to carry tonight."

I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to make sense of any of it. Two days ago I was the girl nobody wanted. The one everyone whispered about at pack gatherings, the one my own mother could barely look at. Now some stranger in the woods was telling me I'd torn through four wolves without even remembering it, and that something ancient had been asleep inside my body since before I could walk.

"Why me," I said, my voice cracking on the last word. "Why would anyone seal something like that inside a person. What was the point."

Ash was quiet for a long moment.

"Because whoever did it was afraid," he said finally. "Afraid of what you'd become if you grew up knowing what you are."

"Who would do that to a child."

"That," he said, "is what we need to find out."

I wrapped my arms around my knees, suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. "This doesn't make sense. Nobody in my family has power like that. My mother's ordinary. My father left before I was born. There's nothing special about where I come from."

"That's what they wanted you to believe."

Something in the way he said it made my skin prickle. Like he knew more than he was telling me. Like there were pieces of this he wasn't ready to hand over yet.

"You keep saying 'they,'" I said. "Who's 'they'."

He didn't answer that either. Instead he stood, walked to the window, and cracked the shutter open just enough to look out into the dark.

"You should rest," he said. "Whatever's waking up in you is going to keep coming, whether you're ready or not. You survived the first surge because your body panicked and fought back on instinct. Next time, instinct won't be enough. You'll need to actually understand what you're carrying, or it's going to tear you apart from the inside."

"And you're going to teach me that."

"If you'll let me."

I studied him, this stranger with eyes like a wolf and a name that felt older than it should. Two days ago I would have laughed if someone told me my life would end up here — alone in a cabin with a man who talked about ancient bloodlines like they were common knowledge, my own body a stranger to me, four dead wolves I didn't remember killing.

"Fine," I said. "Teach me."

Ash almost smiled. Almost.

"Good," he said. "Because we don't have much time. Whoever attacked you in those woods wasn't hunting on their own. Rogues don't organize like that. Somebody sent them."

I felt my stomach turn over.

"Sent them for what?"

Ash turned from the window and looked at me, and for the first time since I'd woken up, I saw something in his face that looked almost like fear.

"For you," he said. "And if they know what you are now, they won't stop with four wolves next time."

Outside, somewhere far off in the trees, a howl rose up into the night. Not a pack howl. Something wrong, something searching.

Ash went very still.

"They're already here," he said.