The Alpha Regrets Rejecting Me

Chapter 4: Running

"We need to move," Ash said, already pulling me to my feet. "Now."

"Move where? You said this was hidden. You said nobody would find us here."

"I was wrong." His voice was tight, controlled, but I could hear the edge underneath it. "That was a scout. He wasn't here to capture you tonight. He was here to confirm you're real. Whoever sent him is going to send more, and they won't send just three next time."

The howls kept rising in the dark, closer than before, coming from more than one direction now. My legs still felt unsteady from whatever had happened to me in that fight, but fear has a way of making a body move even when it doesn't want to.

Ash grabbed a pack from just inside the cabin door, slung it over his good shoulder, and started walking fast into the trees, away from the direction the howls were coming from.

"Where are we going," I asked, jogging to keep up.

"North. There's a place I know. Old, hidden, further out than anyone's willing to track without a very good reason." He glanced back at me. "Can you run?"

"I don't have a choice, do I."

"No," he said. "You don't."

We ran.

I don't know how long it lasted. Long enough that my lungs burned and my legs turned to lead and the howls behind us faded in and out, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, like whoever was hunting us was testing the distance, playing with it. Ash moved like the forest belonged to him, weaving between trees and over roots without slowing down, and I did my best to follow without breaking my ankle in the dark.

At some point the trees thinned out and the ground started sloping upward, rocky and uneven, and Ash finally stopped at the mouth of what looked like a narrow cave cut into the side of a hill.

"In here," he said.

I hesitated. "You want me to go into a hole in a mountain with a stranger I met two days ago."

"I want you to survive the night," he said. "You can be suspicious of me tomorrow."

Fair enough. I went in.

The cave was tighter than I expected, but it opened up after a few feet into a small chamber, just big enough for the two of us to sit without touching the walls. Ash pulled a few dried branches from his pack and, after a moment, got a small flame going, careful to keep it low.

"They won't smell smoke from a fire this size," he said, more to himself than to me. "Not over their own scent trail."

I sat with my back against the cold stone, wrapping my arms around myself, still shaking from everything that had happened. The adrenaline was fading now, and in its place was something heavier — exhaustion, fear, and a kind of grief I didn't fully understand yet. Two days ago my biggest problem was being humiliated in front of my entire pack. Now people were hunting me because of something buried inside my own body that I hadn't even known existed.

"Tell me about the others," I said quietly.

Ash didn't look up from the fire right away.

"Not tonight."

"You said there were others like me. People with this bloodline. I want to know what happened to them."

"And I'll tell you," he said. "When you're stronger. When you understand enough about what you are to hear it without it breaking you."

"I think I get to decide what breaks me."

That made him look up.

"Fine," he said after a moment. "There were seven of them. Over the years, I found seven others carrying the same sealed bloodline you carry. I found some of them early enough to protect. I found some of them too late." He paused. "None of them survived long enough to fully wake their power the way you have. The ones who were hunted down before the seal broke were killed quickly, before anyone even knew what they were. The ones who did start to wake up—" He stopped.

"What happened to them."

"They were taken," he said. "Not killed. Taken. And whatever was done to them after that, I never found out, because I never found them again."

The fire crackled between us. I stared at the flames, trying not to think too hard about what "taken" might mean, or why a man who talked about ancient bloodlines like common knowledge would be afraid to guess at the details.

"Why do they want us," I asked. "What's the actual point of hunting people like me?"

"Because your bloodline is older than the current Alpha houses," Ash said. "Older than the whole hierarchy that runs the packs now. There was a time before Alphas ruled by blood and violence, when power came from something deeper, something tied to the first moon instead of whoever won the last fight for territory. Your ancestors were part of that. And the people who built the world as it exists now made sure that kind of power never came back, because it would mean their whole system collapses."

"So someone built an entire world on top of erasing people like me."

"Yes."

I let that settle for a moment. Somewhere outside, faint and distant, I heard another howl, but it sounded farther away now, like whatever had been chasing us had lost the trail, at least for tonight.

"And you've spent your whole life trying to protect the ones who slipped through," I said.

"I've spent longer than you'd believe," Ash said, and there was something old and tired in his voice when he said it. "And I've failed more than I've saved."

"You didn't fail tonight."

"Tonight isn't over," he said. "And it won't be the last time they come for you. You need to understand what you're carrying, and you need to learn to control it, because next time, I might not be fast enough."

I thought about the way the man in the woods had looked at me right before I threw him across the clearing without meaning to. The way my own body had moved without asking permission. The roaring sound in my head that had drowned out everything else.

"Teach me, then," I said. "Whatever you know. However long it takes."

Ash studied me across the fire for a long moment, like he was deciding something.

"There's a place, further north than where we're headed tonight," he said finally. "Old ruins. Some of your bloodline's history is buried there, if you know where to look. It's the safest place I know to start training you properly, away from anyone who might come looking."

"How far."

"Three days on foot, if we're careful."

I nodded, even though every part of my body wanted to lie down right there on the cold stone and sleep for a week.

"There's something else you should know," Ash said, quieter now. "Something you're not going to want to hear."

"After tonight, I don't think there's much left that could surprise me."

"The rejection," he said. "The one your Alpha gave you, in front of your whole pack."

My stomach tightened at the mention of it. "What about it."

"A bond like that doesn't just disappear because he said four words," Ash said. "It doesn't break clean. It festers. And the longer the two of you stay apart, the worse it's going to get, for both of you."

"Good," I said, sharper than I meant to. "Let it get worse for him."

Ash didn't argue with that. He just watched the fire for a while before he spoke again.

"I only mention it," he said, "because wherever he is right now, whatever he's feeling — it's not going to stay quiet. And when word gets back to your pack about what happened here tonight, about what you are, he's going to have to make a choice about what side of this he stands on."

I thought about Kael's face in that field, cold and certain, telling the whole pack I wasn't fit to stand beside him. I thought about the way nobody had spoken up for me, not even my own mother.

"I don't care what he chooses," I said.

But even as I said it, some small, furious part of me wondered if that was actually true.

Outside the cave, the wind shifted, and for just a moment, carried on it, I thought I heard something that sounded almost like my own name, spoken in a voice I recognized.

I froze.

"Ash," I whispered. "Did you hear that?"

He was already reaching for the fire, ready to put it out.

"Someone's close," he said. "And this time, I don't think it's them."