The Runaway Alpha's Feral Mate

Chapter Seven

Akira did not sleep.

Cold never bothered her—frost lived in her blood, ice in her bones. She sat with her back against rough stone, watching the sky shift from deep black to the muted gray of approaching dawn. Stars disappeared one by one as if someone was blowing out tiny flames. The forest smelled of pine sap, melting frost, and the distant musk of deer that had passed through hours ago. Familiar scents. Wild scents that reminded her of freedom before the silver cage.

Her gaze drifted to the man-wolf sleeping across from her. Liam. The word felt strange in her mind, human names still awkward after so long using only scent and touch to identify others of her kind. He had insisted on taking first watch, but exhaustion had claimed him sometime past midnight. Now he slept with his head tilted at an uncomfortable angle against the stone wall, face tense even in sleep.

He shivered. Again. The third time in as many minutes.

Akira's head tilted, studying the reaction with clinical interest. Cold never bothered her—she could sleep naked in snowdrifts without discomfort—but ordinary wolves suffered in extreme temperatures. Even werewolves, with their enhanced resistance, needed protection from the bitter Arctic chill. Liam's human clothes—the strange coverings he seemed so attached to—did little to shield against the predawn frost that transformed each breath into small clouds of white mist.

His lips had taken on a blue tinge that triggered a strange protective impulse inside her. Wolf-who-pretends. Alpha-who-hides. Mate. The word still felt foreign after so many winters alone. Twelve thousand years since the Great Ice melted. Twelve thousand years of watching her kind hunted to extinction while she survived in the deepest, coldest places where even wolves feared to tread.

Now this one. This man with wolf-fire inside him that called to her frost.

Akira shifted closer, nostrils flaring as she analyzed his scent. Pine and earth and something distinctly *male*, but underneath that, wrongness. His skin looked too pale, fingers curled tight against cold. Small movements—the twitch of muscles fighting for warmth—betrayed his discomfort even in sleep. Human clothes were useless things. No protection like proper fur.

She reached out, curiosity overcoming caution, and touched one finger to his cheek. His skin felt cooler than it should. Not direwolf-cool like hers, but wrong-cool. Sick-cool. Dangerous-cool for creatures that ran hot.

Akira tilted her head, considering. Her frost powers could protect against enemies, create barriers, even kill if necessary, but she couldn't generate heat. That wasn't direwolf magic. But she had other ways to warm.

The memory of her mother's voice whispered through her mind, teaching lessons from before humans claimed the world: "When pack-mates suffer cold-sickness, the true-form provides warmth. Direwolf fur holds heat like nothing else the Moon created."

Decision made, Akira stood and moved several paces away. She shed the strange human coverings they'd given her at the facility—thin fabric that felt confining and smelled of chemicals. Naked in the predawn light, silver eyes gleaming, she surrendered to the change.

The shift came without effort, as natural as breathing. Bones lengthened and reshaped, muscle expanded, spine curved, silver-white fur erupting across her skin in a wave of tingling sensation. Where most werewolves experienced pain during transformation, direwolves flowed between forms as easily as water changing to ice and back again. Power surged through her limbs as her true form emerged—a wolf standing as tall as a horse, four times larger than natural wolves, with ancient silver-tipped fur that seemed to capture moonlight even in darkness.

With the shift came enhanced senses. She could hear mice burrowing beneath the snow half a mile away, smell the fish swimming in the frozen river beyond the trees, feel the vibrations of a hawk's wings cutting through air overhead. The forest existed as a complex tapestry of life, death, and territory that humans with their dull senses could never comprehend.

Liam didn't wake as she padded toward him, massive paws silent against the snow, even when her breath formed dense frost clouds above his sleeping form. Strange that he trusted enough to sleep so deeply. In the cutting-place, Akira had slept only in tiny fragments, always alert for white-coats with needles and silver knives.

She circled once, twice, massive body moving with surprising grace for its size. Her instincts demanded she check the perimeter, ensure no danger lurked nearby. The forest sat quiet in early dawn, birds not yet singing, predators already returned to their dens. Safe enough for now.

Carefully, Akira lowered her massive body beside the sleeping man, aligning her spine with his side. Heat radiated from her thick fur despite her naturally cool body temperature—an evolutionary adaptation that had allowed direwolves to shelter vulnerable pack members during the harshest blizzards of the ancient world. She curled into a half-moon shape, creating a wall of silver-white fur between Liam and the biting wind.

Her head came to rest near his, close enough to scent his breath—pine and earth and something else, something that called to her blood. Something that whispered mine in the ancient parts of her brain that existed before words. His heat felt strange and pleasant against her fur, like lying beside a sunwarmed stone after a cold hunt.

His shivering stopped almost immediately. The tension in his face relaxed, years of worry momentarily erased. Unconsciously, he shifted closer to her warmth, one hand coming up to tangle in her thick ruff.

The contact sent something like lightning through her, not unpleasant but startling. Her kind rarely touched outside of specific pack rituals—grooming, hunting, pup-rearing. Casual contact wasn't part of direwolf culture. Yet this simple touch awakened something primal, something she'd thought long dead after centuries of isolation.

Pack-touch. Den-touch. Mate-touch.

So long since another creature had touched her with anything but cruelty. The white-coats in the cutting-place had handled her like a thing, not a being, their gloved hands rough and impersonal as they took blood, tissue, eggs. Eight winters of being poked and cut and studied while silver burned through her veins.

Even before capture, she had spent centuries alone, the last of her bloodline hiding in the farthest north while lesser wolves and humans claimed the warmer lands. Her pack—once three hundred strong—had dwindled to nothing, picked off by hunters with silver weapons or seduced into breeding with lesser wolves until the direwolf bloodline thinned to nothing.

All gone now. All except her. And Kova, the cub she'd never seen.

The sleeping man-wolf mumbled something, face pressing deeper into her fur. Akira's ear flicked forward, catching the word.

"Victoria."

Not her name.

The dead mate. The one who died with unborn cub. Akira had smelled the old grief on him from first meeting, like ash buried under snow. She did not feel jealous—such emotions belonged to lesser creatures with shorter lives and smaller concerns. The past was past. Dead stayed dead. Only survival mattered. Only finding her cub mattered.

Kova.

Her heart clenched at the thought of her son. Cub she'd never held. Never scented. Never taught the old ways, the frost-songs, the moon-dances that direwolves had performed since the First Winter. Would he know her when they found him? Would he recognize the blood-call that connected mother to offspring? Would he accept her as mother after so long apart?

The white-coats had taken her eggs during the worst days of captivity, when silver poison ran so strong in her veins she could barely maintain consciousness. They'd fertilized them with seed from many alphas, creating cubs in glass dishes instead of warm bodies. Many had failed, the files said. Only Kova had survived to birth.

Her cub. Her blood. The future of direwolves.

In her darkest moments in the silver cage, only thoughts of Kova had kept her fighting. On nights when pain threatened to break her mind, she'd whispered frost-songs to a cub she'd never met, telling him the old stories, naming him properly in the ice-speech: Kovageirr, strong-spirited one.

The man-wolf—Liam—had promised to help find him. His eyes had flashed alpha-gold when he saw the cub's prison file, rage-scent rolling off him like storm clouds. That, more than anything, made Akira almost trust him. Not his words, which came too easy like all two-legs words. His rage. His wolf-anger at cub-harm.

She'd watched him as they traveled through the night. The way he moved—like wolf pretending to be man so long he'd forgotten how to be wolf. The way he kept to calculated paths instead of following instinct. The way his eyes sometimes flashed gold when he thought she didn't see, wolf-nature surfacing despite his rigid control. The way his scent changed when they touched, heat rising beneath his skin like summer lightning before storms.

Mate-scent. True-match. Her kind mated for life, one perfect match in all the long years of living. If mate died, most direwolves followed soon after, frost-power turning inward to stop the heart. But Akira had never found her match in twelve thousand winters of searching. Had begun to believe the Moon had forgotten her, leaving her to walk alone until the last ice melted from the world.

Then silver cage and pain and darkness—and him. Walking into her prison with wolf-scent hidden beneath human stink. Alpha power dampened but not destroyed.

The man shifted in his sleep, turning to press more fully against her warmth. His face looked peaceful now, the hard lines of worry smoothed away. Younger, almost. His hand remained tangled in her fur, grip gentle even in sleep.

The touch stirred memories buried beneath years of pain and isolation. Her mother grooming frost from her fur after her first hunt. Her father teaching her to track through blizzards by scent alone. Her littermates play-fighting in fresh snow, their tiny frost-powers making miniature ice sculptures that glittered in winter sun.

All gone now. All dust and memory.

Akira lowered her massive head to rest on her paws, silver eyes watching the forest for threats. Morning birds had begun their first cautious calls, testing the silence. A fox crossed the clearing fifty yards away, pausing to scent the air before darting away, instinct warning it of the predator hidden beneath the overhang.

Sleep tugged at her too—frost-work against the flying machines and cars had drained her more than she showed. The long journey through the night, led by wild wolves across difficult terrain, had taxed even her formidable endurance. But sleep meant vulnerability. Too dangerous with humans hunting.

The woods remained quiet, though, and the man-wolf's steady heartbeat against her side felt oddly comforting. His scent had changed as his body warmed, the wrongness fading, replaced by healthy wolf-warmth that pleased some ancient part of her brain. Perhaps small rest wouldn't hurt. Just enough to restore power for journey ahead. Hard travel still to come, and danger at journey's end.

She would need full strength to free her cub.

As dawn light strengthened through the trees, painting the snow in pale gold and rose, Akira allowed her eyes to close halfway, remaining alert but resting. The man-wolf's breathing matched with hers, slow and deep. His body had turned completely into her fur now, seeking maximum warmth, his face buried in her ruff, one arm draped across her massive shoulder.

Strange how right it felt, this closeness to another after so long alone. Pack-sense, perhaps. Or mate-bond awakening despite all resistance. The Moon chose as it would, regardless of what wolves might want.

Akira rumbled deep in her chest—not quite a growl, not quite a purr, but something between that conveyed contentment. For this brief moment, in this quiet forest with enemies temporarily outmaneuvered, she allowed herself to imagine a future beyond endless running. A den, safe and warm, with frost patterns decorating stone walls. A cub growing strong under her guidance, learning the old ways, the frost-songs, the ice-speech that must not be forgotten. A mate with gold-flecked eyes who might learn the direwolf traditions to pass on to the next generation.

Dangerous thoughts. Hope-thoughts that led to carelessness. The white-coats had taught her the price of hope during eight winters of captivity.

And yet the thoughts came anyway, persistent as spring after the longest winter.

The man-wolf mumbled again in his sleep, hand tightening briefly in her fur before relaxing. This time, the word was different.

"Akira."

Her name. Not the dead mate's.

Something shifted in her chest—ice cracking after too long frozen. The sensation wasn't entirely pleasant, but neither was it unwelcome.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the Moon had not forgotten her after all.