The Alpha’s Discarded Oracle

THE STRANGER’S PRICE

She should have run.

Every instinct she had, the ones three years of pack life hadn’t managed to kill, screamed at her to run. Strange male. Dark woods. No witnesses.

She stayed.

Partly because her legs were still shaking. Partly because the silver light was still crawling up her forearms like something alive, and she had absolutely no idea how to make it stop.

But mostly because he already knew what she was.

Who are you, she said. Not a question. A demand. She was proud of that too.

He stepped closer and the moonlight caught his face properly for the first time. Younger than his voice suggested, mid-thirties maybe, sharp jaw, eyes the color of old amber. A scar ran from his left temple to his cheekbone like someone had tried to take his eye and missed.

He didn’t smell like a wolf.

My name is Ezra Vane. He stopped a careful distance away, hands visible at his sides. Deliberate. The posture of someone who understood he was frightening and had learned to compensate. I’ve been tracking Oracle signatures for eleven years.

Oracle signatures. She looked at her hands again. The glow was fading slowly. That’s not a real thing.

Three minutes ago you would have said Oracles weren’t real either.

She had no answer for that.

What do you want, she said.

Same thing I always want. He reached into his jacket. She tensed. He produced a small folded map and held it out toward her. To get there first.

She didn’t take it. First before who.

His amber eyes held hers a beat too long.

Before the Blackmoor Alpha finds out what just crossed his border wearing his rejection mark.

Her blood went cold.

Darian. Of course. Even now, two miles gone and legally severed, his shadow reached her.

He doesn’t know what I am, she said. I didn’t even know what I was twenty minutes ago.

He will by morning. Ezra folded the map back into his pocket. Your awakening left a signature. Every wolf within ten miles felt something shift. His trackers are good. They’ll follow the trail to this treeline and they’ll find your blood on the ground. A pause. And then they’ll find you.

Seraphine looked back toward the road. Dark. Empty. Nowhere near safe enough.

Why do you care, she said quietly. What does an Oracle mean to you.

Something moved across his face. Not quite guilt. Closer to weight, the kind a person carried so long they forgot it wasn’t part of their body.

There were four Oracles left alive twelve years ago, he said. I got to three of them too late.

The words landed like stones.

She studied him. The scar. The careful hands. The map he’d been carrying for eleven years of too late.

Where would we go, she said.

Somewhere they won’t look for a rejected Luna. The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Somewhere they’ll have bigger problems than you.

A sound rose in the distance behind her. Low. Rhythmic.

Paws on packed earth. Running.

Seraphine’s head snapped toward the sound and her heart slammed once, hard, against her ribs. The silver light flared back up her hands without her permission, brighter this time, lighting the trees around her like a torch.

Decision time, Ezra said quietly.

The paws were getting louder.

She grabbed the map from his pocket herself.

Move, she said..........

They ran. Behind them something howled.

It wasn’t a wolf she recognized.

It was worse.