Fated to Three Alpha Brothers

COST OF LEAVING

SUMMER

I didn't tell anyone about the letter for two days.

I wasn't sure why. Part of it was the habit of keeping things close — there was nobody in Crescent Ridge I trusted enough to share something that felt this fragile. But part of it was something more practical: I knew, in the way you know things when you've spent four years learning how a pack works from the outside, that this information would not be received well.

I was right.

On Wednesday, I made the mistake of mentioning it to the only person who'd been consistently kind to me since my parents died — Maya Torres, a mid-rank wolf who sat next to me in AP Literature and occasionally saved me a seat on the bus.

She went pale.

"Hearthstone?" she whispered, like I'd said something dangerous. We were in the back corner of the library, supposedly working on an essay about The Scarlet Letter, which felt cruelly appropriate. "Summer, that's a rival pack."

"I know."

"Alpha Voss —" She stopped herself, glanced around. "He's powerful. Like, really powerful. Crescent Ridge and Hearthstone have had a truce for years, but it's fragile. If you go there —"

"He says he's my godfather."

Her eyes went wide. "What?"

"He says he was friends with my dad. Before —" I paused. "Before everything."

Maya was quiet for a moment, chewing her lip. Then she said, carefully, "Even if that's true — especially if that's true — you need to tell Alpha Hale. If you don't and he finds out, it'll be so much worse."

"I know," I said again.

She grabbed my wrist. "Promise me you won't do anything without talking to him first."

I looked at her hand on my wrist. Maya was kind, but she was also pack, in a way I would never fully be. Her first loyalty was to Crescent Ridge. I didn't blame her for it. I just couldn't promise her what she was asking.

"I'll be careful," I said.

She let go, and her eyes told me she knew that wasn't the same thing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Alpha Hale's office smelled like pine resin and old authority.

He was a big man — most alphas were — with silver threading through his dark hair and the careful, contained energy of someone who had learned to hold enormous power very still. He'd never been cruel to me directly. He'd also never intervened when others were. I existed in his pack the way a splinter exists in a hand — not quite worth the bother of removing, not comfortable to ignore.

He read the letter twice. His expression didn't change.

When he set it down, he folded his hands on the desk and looked at me with flat, measured eyes. "You should have brought this to me immediately."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Do you know what this is?" He tapped the letter. Not a real question. "This is Darren Voss attempting to poach a member of my pack."

"I'm not sure I count as —"

"You live on my territory. You breathe my pack's air. You are a member of this pack." His voice was even, which was somehow worse than anger. "And if you leave for Hearthstone, Summer, you leave as a traitor. Not as someone who transferred. Not as someone who found a better situation. You leave as someone who chose a rival pack over her own." He paused. "You will be disowned. Officially, formally, permanently. No pack will take you after that. Not even Hearthstone, if things between us ever go badly."

I held very still.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"Yes, Alpha."

He picked up the letter and held it out to me. I took it. "I'd recommend you write Mr. Voss a polite decline and leave this alone." He turned back to the papers on his desk — a dismissal as clear as a door closing. "And Summer. The necklace. I'd put it away where no one can see it. Crescent Ridge wolves won't react kindly to you wearing Hearthstone colors."

I tucked the letter under my arm and left.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was so focused on keeping myself composed that I didn't look where I was going.

I turned the corner into the hallway outside the Alpha's office and walked directly into someone's chest.

I stumbled back. A hand shot out and caught my arm — steadying me, or so it seemed for half a second, until I looked up and felt my stomach drop.

Finn Hale looked down at me with that particular smile of his. The one that never quite reached his eyes. He was leaning against the wall like he'd been waiting, like this was a coincidence he'd engineered very carefully.

"Summer Henley." His eyes moved over me slowly — down to the letter tucked under my arm, back up to my face. "Coming out of my father's office?"

"Excuse me," I said, stepping to the side.

He shifted, not blocking me exactly, but making the path narrower. "What were you two talking about?"

"Nothing important."

"Mm. Full of secrets, aren’t you?" He tilted his head, studying me with that unhurried attention that made my skin feel wrong. Then his expression shifted into something lighter, almost friendly. "Friday," he said. "You're coming to homecoming."

"I don't think —"

"I wasn't asking." His voice stayed easy, pleasant even, which made it worse. "You live in this pack. You go to this school. You come to homecoming like everyone else." He let the implication hang in the air — like a member of this pack. Like someone who wants to stay one. "It'd be good to see you there."

"I… I'll think about it," I said, because I'd learned that sometimes a small concession bought you an exit.

It didn't buy me one this time.

He pushed off the wall and took one slow step closer. I held my ground, though every instinct I had was telling me to back up. He was taller than me by nearly a foot, broad where I was slight, and he moved into my space with the casual confidence of someone who'd never once been told no in a way that actually stuck.

"You have pretty hair," he said, almost conversationally.

He reached out and caught a strand of it — a single blonde curl, wound lazily around his finger, his knuckle brushing my shoulder as he did it. He wasn't rough. He didn't have to be. The point wasn't roughness. The point was that he could.

"Finn —"

"Friday," he said again, softer now, close enough that I could smell the expensive cologne he wore and underneath it the hot metallic edge of a wolf who was very used to getting what he wanted. His eyes held mine, and there was something in them I didn't want to look at directly, something that made the letter under my arm feel very thin and insufficient. "Don't make me come looking for you."

"Finn!"

The voice came from down the hallway — one of his friends, two of them, rounding the corner with the loud easy energy of boys who owned every room they walked into. "There you are, man. Coach is looking for you —"

Finn stepped back. Unhurried. Like he'd decided to, not like he'd been interrupted. He let my hair slip from his finger and gave me one last look — that same look, complicated and deliberate — before he turned toward his friends.

"See you around, Summer," he said, without looking back.

I pressed myself against the wall and waited until their voices faded down the hallway.

Then I walked home very quickly and tried to convince myself I wasn't shaking.

- - - To be continued - - -