Outrunning The Alpha

Chapter 2

Lyra

Those words just shattered what little was left of my life.

I stared at him, my mind spinning. How could he do this? How could he stand there with absolutely no remorse?

We had promised each other everything. Now, he looked at me like I was a stranger. Like I was nothing.

The stadium settled into a heavy, suffocating silence.

Just as expected, seventy thousand pairs of eyes stared down at me. Above, high-definition broadcast drones hovered like vultures, streaming my humiliation to the entire world.

On the center podium, Julian didn't even flinch. He raised his right hand, the silver signet ring of the Silver Fang Alpha lineage catching the harsh white floodlights. A sharp, violent pulse of pack magic flared from the metal, surging across the track like a physical shockwave.

Inside my chest, the faint, dormant thread of the fated mate bond snapped.

I gasped, my hands instantly clutching my chest. It felt like hot iron hooks were being ripped straight out of my lungs. The pain was so intense that my vision went black at the edges.

I fell to my knees on the wet track, my fingers digging into my skin through my shirt. I forced my eyes up, my gaze locking onto Julian through the haze of agony. I wanted him to see what he was doing to me. I wanted to see even a flicker of regret in his eyes.

Nothing. His face remained a cold, emotionless mask. He didn't care at all.

As I struggled to breathe, my eyes swept toward the VIP box directly above the finish line.

My family stood behind the glass. My father had his arms crossed, his expression carved from stone. My brother was looking away, deliberately, pointedly, at the scoreboard. At anything that wasn't me.

Not a single one of them moved. Not a single one of them raised a voice in my defense.

A terrible, cold betrayal washed over me. To the Crescent line, a family known for producing elite, lightning-fast runners, I had always been the defective stain on their pedigree. Seeing me publicly discarded and stripped of my name wasn't a tragedy to them. It was a relief. The final, long-overdue removal of an embarrassment.

Beside Julian, Taryn Vane stepped closer. She wrapped her hand over his arm and leaned over to whisper something in his ear. Her eyes flashed with a wicked, triumphant dark blue light. Julian gave a stiff nod, then turned back to the broadcast drones, completely shutting me out.

"Guards," Julian commanded, his voice carried by the stadium speakers with chilling indifference. "Escort the outcast off the grounds. She has one hour to cross the Silver Fang border."

Before I could even process what was happening, two massive guards of the Silver Fang walked toward me.

I couldn't even resist. What was there to do? My mate had broken me. My family had abandoned me.

The guards grabbed my arms, dragging me forward like I meant absolutely nothing. I didn't cry. Crying would make me look defeated, and I was done playing that part. But as they pulled me along, the only face I could see among the crowd was Julian. He had already turned back to his conversation with Taryn, smiling and laughing.

How dare he!

A wave of pure, white-hot fury crashed through my heartbreak.

With a sudden burst of strength, I yanked my hands away from the guards' grip.

"Don't touch me," I snapped, my voice shaking but loud enough for them to hear. "Don't even bother. I'm walking out of here on my own. And I am never coming back."

The guards sneered, but they didn't grab me again. They just marched close behind me, shoving me through the exit gates. They threw me out into the dirt beyond the boundary line as if I were garbage.

"Taryn said you shouldn't leave thinking you're still important around here," the larger guard growled, cracking his thick knuckles.

I stared at him, my stomach twisting.

So even after Julian had rejected me, Taryn still wasn't satisfied.

I hit the rough ground hard. The heavy iron gates groaned as they swung shut behind me, sealing with a loud, absolute clang.

I lay there in the dirt, completely alone. The people who were meant to love and protect me had turned against me. The pain of their rejection felt heavier than any physical blow.

A single hot tear escaped my eye, rolling down my muddy cheek. I quickly wiped it away with a trembling hand. I didn't want to cry. Not even in front of these filthy dogs who were watching from the guard tower. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction they wanted.

It was raining heavily now. The icy downpour washed the mud and drying blood from my skin, chilling me to the bone within minutes. I had no money, no pack, no family, and nowhere left to go. I was a broken, wolf-less shifter tossed into the wilderness with a timer ticking down before the pack's border patrols were legally permitted to hunt me.

There was only one direction left.

I turned my back on the iron gates and began to limp toward the jagged black peaks rising in the distance: Obsidian Ridge.

The ridge was a restricted, deadly expanse of sharp volcanic rock and dense timber. Shifters avoided it because the territory's raw magnetic fields interfered with their internal wolf senses. Humans avoided it because the wild predators that inhabited the ridge didn't care about human laws.

It was a graveyard for the forgotten. A perfect place to die.

I dragged my feet through the mud, sobbing quietly as a terrible pain flared in my side with every single step. My broken ribs rubbed together, and my muscles felt like they were tearing off the bone.

Somewhere in the second mile, my mind betrayed me and dragged up a memory I didn't want. Julian, sixteen years old, sitting beside me on the edge of this same forest after I'd come in last in a pack trial, again. You don't need a wolf to be good at something, he'd told me, dead serious, like it was the most obvious fact in the world. I'd believed him. I'd built years of hope on four words from a boy who apparently never meant them.

That boy didn't exist anymore.

Or maybe I had simply been foolish enough to believe he ever did.

If I was going to fall, it would be because I had gone as far as my body could physically carry me, not because I gave up first.

Nearly two hours passed before my legs finally betrayed me.

High on an exposed, rocky cliffside, my knees buckled. I crashed hard onto the sharp obsidian stone, rolling onto my back.

I lay there, staring up at the storm clouds tearing across the night sky. I couldn't move a finger. My body was freezing, locking up entirely at the mountain altitude.

Is this where it ends? The dark thought crept in. Dying in the dirt, just like they wanted?

But I don't want to die here. I want to make them all pay for what they did. I need to find a way to make them regret ever treating me this way.

I gritted my teeth, forcing my trembling hands against the stone. I tried to stand, pushing my weight onto my feet, when suddenly a violent spasm shook my entire frame.

What was happening?