The Alpha Who Let Her Go

The Alpha’s Dream

(Bramwell’s POV

The fire is always the same.

I can smell the resin, the iron, the smoke curling through my lungs.

And then—her voice.

“Please.”

I wake up choking. My sheets are soaked, my throat raw. The air in my chamber feels too thin. The fireplace is dead, but I can still see her burning in my dreams.

Lenora.

My palms press against my face, but it doesn’t stop the tremor in my hands. The nightmares used to come once a month. Now, they visit every night, like punishment that refuses to age.

Someone knocks at the door.

“Alpha,” says a voice — gravel and worry. It’s Daren, my Beta. “You’re awake?”

I don’t answer. He takes that as permission to enter anyway. His boots click softly on the stone floor.

“You were shouting again.”

“I’m fine,” I mutter.

He looks at me not like a soldier looks at his commander, but like a friend who’s seen too much. His gaze drops to my hands. My knuckles are bleeding. I must’ve struck the wall again in my sleep.

“You keep saying that,” he says quietly, “but you’re not.”

“Say what you came to say, Daren.”

He hesitates, then draws a breath. “We had a report from the southern patrol. One of the scouts was mauled near the river. They said a healer found him before dawn. Kept him alive until our men arrived.”

“A healer?” I ask, frowning.

Daren nods. “An outsider. The locals say she lives alone by the river bend. Trades herbs for food. Doesn’t talk much.”

My pulse stutters. “Name?”

“They don’t know. Just… ‘the witch by the bridge,’ some call her.”

I let out a rough laugh that doesn’t sound like me. “And why are you telling me this?”

He studies me for a moment. “Because one of the scouts said something strange. He said the healer had… eyes like frost.”

My hand stops halfway to the goblet of water on my desk.

Eyes like frost.

For a heartbeat, the room goes quiet. Even the fire dares not crackle.

Daren shifts uneasily. “It’s probably nothing. But I thought you should—”

“That’s impossible,” I cut in. “She’s dead.”

He nods, but his tone softens. “We all saw the pyre, yes. But rumors have a way of crawling out of graves.”

“Enough.” The word comes out sharper than I intend.

Daren bows slightly. “Understood, Alpha.”

When he leaves, silence floods back into the room, thick and accusing.

I walk to the window. The moon is low and heavy, bleeding light across the courtyard. Every corner of this fortress reminds me of her the training yard where she once sparred with laughter, the hall where she stood before the council, eyes dry while they condemned her.

I should’ve defended her. I should’ve fought harder.

But I didn’t.

Now her ghost won’t let me sleep.

By nightfall, I’ve stopped pretending the whispers don’t matter.

I saddle my horse without telling anyone and ride toward the river border.

The wind cuts cold against my face. The forest looks different in the dark quieter, heavier, as if holding its breath. The closer I get to the water, the more my wolf stirs inside me.

He’s restless. Alert.

When I dismount, I see them — footprints in the mud. Small. Bare. The rain hasn’t washed them away yet.

“Lenora,” I whisper before I can stop myself.

The river murmurs in reply, but then—

A branch snaps behind me.

I spin, hand on my blade.

“Show yourself.”

For a long moment, there’s only the hiss of rain. Then, a voice:

“You shouldn’t have come here, Alpha.”

The words strike deeper than any arrow.

She steps out from behind a willow tree — slow, deliberate. Her cloak is damp, her hair shorter, her face sharper. But the eyes… those eyes haven’t changed.

Cold. Steady. Alive.

My chest tightens. “You—”

“Dead?” she finishes for me, voice flat. “That’s what you said, isn’t it? That’s what they all believed.”

I can’t move. The world tilts, trying to make sense of her. “How?”

She doesn’t answer. She looks past me, to the trees, to the night itself, as though speaking to it instead of me.

“Funny thing about dying,” she says softly. “It teaches you how little people care once they think you’re gone.”

“Lenora—”

“Don’t,” she snaps. “You lost the right to say my name.”

The rain starts again, fine and cold. Her voice cuts through it, low and steady.

“They chained me like a criminal. You stood there and let them. I kept waiting for you to speak, to stop it, but all you did was sign the paper.”

I flinch. The memory burns too clearly — the council’s judgment, the ink bleeding on parchment, her eyes not leaving mine even as the guards dragged her away.

“I thought it would save you,” I whisper. “They wanted blood. Exile was mercy.”

“Mercy?” She laughs, but it’s not a real laugh. “You call that mercy? You let them throw me to the woods like an animal.”

“I searched for your body.” The words spill out. “For days. Weeks.”

“Then you should’ve found it,” she says. “Because I buried the old me myself.”

We stand there, rain between us, silence heavier than all the words I never said.

Her hand brushes the dagger at her hip — a warning, not a threat. “If you came here to ask forgiveness, don’t. The dead don’t forgive easily.”

My wolf growls under my skin, torn between guilt and longing. “You’re not dead,” I say quietly. “You’re breathing.”

“Barely.”

She turns away, her cloak sweeping through the mud. The river’s reflection swallows her shape as if eager to hide her again.

“Lenora—”

She pauses. Doesn’t look back.

“Go home, Alpha. Ghosts belong to the ones who killed them.”

And then she’s gone — swallowed by the trees and rain.

I stand there until the night fades to ash-gray dawn, the wind carrying her scent long after she’s disappeared.

My hand closes around the river mud — still warm where she stood.

For the first time in two years, I’m not sure if I’m the Alpha of anything at all.