THE ALPHA KNOWS
826 Words
Darian Voss did not sleep.
He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of his study, a glass of whiskey untouched in his hand, and watched the treeline at the edge of his territory like it owed him something.
Colt had called twenty minutes ago.
She’s gone. Crossed the border on foot. Alone.
He should feel nothing. The contract was dissolved. Seraphine was no longer his responsibility, no longer his Luna, no longer anything with his name attached to it. He had Lyra now. Lyra with her pure bloodline and her father’s political alliances and her pretty uncomplicated devotion.
He should feel nothing.
His wolf felt everything.
The animal paced beneath his skin like a caged thing, agitated in a way it had no right to be. He had rejected the bond. He had chosen this. The wolf had no business mourning what he had deliberately cut away.
Something happened at the border.
That was what Colt had said next, voice careful in the way it got when the beta wasn’t sure how his Alpha would receive information.
Something shifted. The trackers felt it. Something woke up out there, Darian, and it was wearing her scent.
He set the whiskey down before he broke the glass.
Lyra appeared in the doorway behind him, silk robe, soft eyes, everything arranged the way it always was. Perfectly. Prettily. He had wanted this so badly six months ago he had convinced himself it was worth any cost.
She crossed the room and touched his arm.
He did not move toward her.
Something woke up.
What could wake up in a rejected contract Luna with no remarkable gifts, no rare bloodline, nothing distinguishing her from a thousand other wolves except three years of quiet competence and a dignity that had made him feel, in the moment of signing, briefly and inconveniently ashamed?
Nothing.
Nothing should have woken up.
Unless everything he thought he knew about her was wrong.
Lyra’s fingers tightened on his arm. She had felt his attention leave the room even if she couldn’t track where it went.
She’s fine, he told himself. She signed. She left. It’s done.
His wolf slammed against the inside of his ribs like a battering ram.
He grabbed his jacket off the chair.
Lyra’s voice followed him. Sharp for the first time, the prettiness cracking just slightly at the edges. Darian. It’s midnight.
I know.
She’s gone. You chose me.
He stopped in the doorway with his back to her.
I know, he said again. Quieter.
He left anyway.........
The border was forty minutes by car and he drove it in twenty-five, window down, wolf rising closer to the surface with every mile. His trackers were already there when he arrived, two of them crouched near the treeline, flashlights cutting through the dark.
He was out of the car before it fully stopped.
Colt met him halfway across the field, jaw set, eyes unreadable.
Talk, Darian said.
She crossed here. On foot, one bag, midnight exactly. Colt paused. She got about two miles in before something happened.
What kind of something.
Another pause. The kind that meant the beta was choosing words carefully.
There’s a patch of ground about two miles northeast. Disturbed. Blood on the soil. Colt met his eyes. And burn marks, Darian. On the trees. Silver burn marks in a pattern I’ve never seen before.
The word moved through him like ice water.
Silver.
There was someone with her, Colt continued. Different scent. Male. Not one of ours. Not any pack I recognize. A beat. He knew she was coming. He was already waiting.
The wolf inside Darian went completely still.
That was worse than the pacing.
The stillness meant hunting.
They ran northeast, Colt said carefully. Whatever was following them, it wasn’t wolf. It was something else. Something that left no scent at all.
Darian crouched over the blood on the ground. Her blood. He knew her scent with a precision that had nothing to do with the dissolved bond and everything to do with three years of sleeping in the same bed, even if he had spent most of those nights pretending she wasn’t there.
Something had terrified her here.
Something had made her bleed.
And a stranger had been waiting in the dark to collect her.
He straightened slowly.
Get me everything you can on Oracle bloodlines, he said.
Colt went very quiet.
You think she’s—
I think I may have made a catastrophic mistake. The words tasted like the whiskey he hadn’t drunk. And I think someone knew about it before I did.
He looked northeast into the dark.
She was out there somewhere. Bleeding. Running. With a man he didn’t know, from something that left no scent.
His wolf was done being still..........
He made one call on the drive back.
By morning, every border in his territory was locked.
He wasn’t looking for a runaway Luna.
He was looking for an Oracle.
His Oracle.
- Writer
