The Alpha's Forbidden Claim

The Gate

I didn't sleep.

Not because of the photograph, though the photograph didn't help. Mostly because every time I closed my eyes I heard the howl again, that low sustained sound that had come from somewhere past the alley, close enough to feel in my back teeth. I lay on the mattress with the photograph on the nightstand face down and counted the sounds of the building settling until my alarm went off at six.

Then I got up, put the photograph in my jacket's inside pocket, and went to find Caden Voss.

I had two options. I could keep my head down, work my shifts, wait for Marcus to secure an exit route, and hope that whoever had put that photograph in my room decided to be patient.

Or I could walk into the wolf's den myself, on my own terms, before someone walked me in on theirs.

Three years of running had taught me one thing worth keeping. The moment you stop choosing is the moment other people start choosing for you.

I chose.

The Blackridge Pack house sat a mile outside of town where the road curved north and the tree line closed in on both sides like the forest had opinions about who was allowed through. Stone building, two stories, older than anything else in Millhaven, with a wall around the grounds that was decorative in the way that things are decorative when they don't need to look functional because they actually are.

A man was at the gate before I had finished parking.

Big. Pack, my instincts said, before my brain had anything to add. The particular way he carried himself, balanced and still, like a person who had never once in their life been unsure of whether they could handle what was in front of them.

He looked at me the way you look at something that should not be where it is.

"This is private property," he said.

"I know." I kept my hands visible. Another old habit. "I need to speak with Caden Voss."

"The Alpha doesn't take walk-in appointments."

"Tell him it's about the photograph someone left in my room last night." I watched his expression. Nothing moved on his face but something moved behind his eyes. "Tell him it has writing on it. Six words. I think he'll want to know what they say."

A silence.

He looked at me for a long moment, then took two steps back without turning away from me and spoke into a radio on his shoulder too quietly for me to hear. Another silence. Longer this time.

Then he stepped aside.

"Follow the path," he said. "Don't go anywhere you're not taken."

The grounds were quieter than I expected. A few people moving between buildings, all of them clocking me with the same assessment in their eyes. Not hostile. Measuring. The way a group of people look at an unknown variable when they have been trained to treat unknown variables seriously.

I followed the path to the front door.

A woman opened it before I knocked.

Fifties, maybe. Silver-streaked hair pulled back, sharp eyes that had probably been cataloguing problems since before I was born. She was not surprised to see me. That was the first thing I noticed. Not a flicker of it. She looked at me the way you look at something you have been expecting and are now simply confirming has arrived.

"Sera Calloway," she said.

Not a question.

My stomach dropped two floors.

"You know my name," I said.

"Come inside."

She turned and walked back into the house without waiting to see if I would follow. I followed because the alternative was standing on the doorstep and the man at the gate was still watching from behind me.

The inside of the pack house was warmer than expected. Wood floors, high ceilings, the smell of coffee and something cooking and underneath both of those things that same faint earthiness I had first noticed at The Hollow. Like the pack itself had a scent that lived in the walls.

She led me to a room off the main hallway. Sitting room. Two chairs facing each other across a low table. A window looking out at the tree line. She sat in one chair like she owned the building and everything inside it.

Which, I was beginning to understand, she probably did.

"My name is Mara Voss," she said. "I am Caden's aunt and a senior elder of this pack." She folded her hands in her lap. "And you are Derek Calloway's daughter. You have been in Millhaven for sixteen days. You have been working at The Hollow. And you spoke to my nephew last night for approximately eight minutes before he told you to leave."

The room felt very still.

"How long have you known I was here?" I said.

"Since day three." She watched my face with the steady patience of someone who had been reading people for decades and found most of them predictable. "We monitor who comes into Blackridge territory, Miss Calloway. Particularly people with particular surnames."

Three days. I had been here sixteen days and they had known for thirteen of them.

Every careful thing I had done, every kept-to-myself, every eyes-down-and-blend-in, had been happening inside a territory that already knew my name.

"Caden doesn't know," I said. Not a question. If Caden had known on day three, our conversation at The Hollow would have looked very different.

Something shifted in Mara's expression. Small and controlled but real.

"No," she said. "Caden doesn't know."

"Why not?"

She looked at me for a moment before answering, the kind of look that is deciding how much truth a situation requires.

"Because my nephew has enough to carry," she said quietly. "And because I wanted to speak to you first." She tilted her head very slightly. "You came here this morning. To us. Before we came to you." A pause. "Why?"

I reached into my jacket and took out the photograph.

Set it on the table between us, face up.

Mara looked at it. At my father's face. At the six words in red ink in the corner.

Something happened behind her eyes that she did not manage to keep entirely off her face. Not surprise. Something older than surprise. Something that looked like a woman discovering that a thing she had suspected for a long time had just been confirmed in the worst possible way.

"Mara." Caden's voice came from the doorway behind me.

I did not turn around immediately. I watched Mara's face instead, because Mara's face was telling me more than any voice could.

She was not surprised that he was here.

She had sent for him when the man at the gate called it in.

She had wanted him in this room, with me, with the photograph on the table between us, all three of us looking at the same thing at the same time.

The question was why.

I turned around.

Caden stood in the doorway with his jacket still on and snow on his shoulders and his eyes already on the photograph and an expression on his face that I had no word for. Not anger. Not grief. Something that lived in the space between those two things, where a person goes when a wound they thought they had sealed starts bleeding again.

"Where did you get that," he said.

His voice was very quiet.

The kind of quiet that was not calm.

"Someone left it in my room last night," I said. "While I was working my shift."

His eyes came up to mine.

And in the three seconds before he said anything else I understood with complete certainty that whatever he had felt at The Hollow the previous night, whatever he had been managing with his stillness and his careful control, was not managed anymore.

"Your door was locked," he said.

"Yes."

"And they got in anyway."

"Yes."

He looked back at the photograph. At the six words. His jaw was set so hard I could see the muscle in it working.

"He is alive," he read aloud. Flat. Final. Like he was reading a verdict. "We have him."

The room held its breath.

"Who sent this to you," he said.

"I don't know yet."

"But you have a guess."

I looked at him across the low table and the photograph and three years of history neither of us had asked for and said the only honest thing I had.

"Yes," I said. "And you're not going to like it."