The Runaway Alpha's Feral Mate

Chapter Nine

Akira did not like waiting.

She paced the ridgeline above Coldfoot, massive paws crushing through the wind-carved crust of snow. Each step left prints larger than dinner plates, rimmed with frost that spiraled outward in delicate fractals. Four hours. Four hours since Liam had walked down that slope with his peculiar human gait—too careful, too considered, like a wolf pretending to be a dog. The absence of him was a physical thing, a hollow space beneath her ribs that ached with each breath.

The setting sun painted the world in shades of violence—crimson bleeding across white, shadows stretching like grasping fingers. The temperature had already dropped ten degrees, and would plummet another thirty before dawn. Good hunting weather for those who knew how to use the cold. Bad weather for a wolf-who-pretended-to-be-man wandering among humans who shot first and asked questions of corpses.

Not mate yet, she reminded herself, though the correction felt hollow. He had crossed the line three nights ago when he'd pressed his body against hers in that abandoned cabin, sharing warmth and breath and promises that tasted of forever. His scent still clung to the jacket hidden beneath the snowdrift—pine smoke and copper pennies and something indefinably him that made her chest constrict with unfamiliar hunger.

A low growl rumbled through her chest, frost crystallizing in the air with each exhale. She shouldn't have let him go alone. Too easy for humans to spot what he was beneath the careful camouflage. Too easy for silver bullets to find soft flesh. Too easy for him to simply... not return.

No. She shook her massive head, ice crystals flying from her fur. He had made a promise, and among her kind—the true kind, the old kind—such promises were binding as blood. She had seen the truth of it in his amber eyes when he'd sworn to return, had tasted it in the urgent press of his mouth against hers before he'd left.

The wind shifted, bringing the settlement's assault of scents. Diesel fuel thick enough to coat her tongue. Grease from the diner mixing with wood smoke from a dozen chimneys. The sour-sweet stench of humans bundled in too many layers, sweating fear into synthetic fabrics. But beneath it all, cutting through the mundane like a blade through silk—

Wolf.

Her ears snapped forward, every muscle going still. Not direwolf. Never direwolf—she was the last, would always be the last until Kova grew into his birthright. These were the lesser ones, the changed ones, the ones who wore their wolf-skin like an ill-fitting coat rather than their truest self.

She counted scents with the methodical precision of a predator cataloging prey. Six distinct markers. An alpha pair, their scents intertwined with the casual intimacy of long partnership. Three younger wolves, their markers still fluctuating with the uncertainty of those who hadn't found their place in the hierarchy. One elder, scent faded but carrying the underlying steel of a former alpha who'd stepped down with grace.

Territory markers dotted the landscape below—pissing contests made literal, boundaries drawn in scent that proclaimed ours, stay out, danger. Except the markers were old, some faded to mere suggestions. Lazy maintenance from a pack grown comfortable in their dominance. No one had challenged them in years, perhaps decades. They'd forgotten what it meant to defend.

Akira's lips pulled back, revealing teeth designed for the killing bite. Soft. They'd all gone soft in this modern world of invisible boundaries and paperwork. In her time—the true time, when the world was ice and hunt and blood—such carelessness meant death. Territory was held by fang and claw, not by the fading memory of authority.

The wind gusted, carrying her scent down the slope like an avalanche. She made no effort to mask it. Let them come. Let them learn what watched from their borders with silver eyes and judgment old as winter itself.

She didn't wait long.

Three shapes materialized from the treeline—two males and one female, moving in the classic hunting V formation she'd seen a thousand times before. They flowed across the snow with predatory grace, confident in their numbers, in their coordination, in their righteous defense of territory.

Then they registered her size, and confidence shattered like ice beneath spring sun.

The lead male—clearly the alpha by the way the others unconsciously oriented around him—stood perhaps three feet at the shoulder. His fur was thick and well-groomed, a mix of gray and brown that would blend perfectly with the local forest. By human standards, by lesser wolf standards, he was massive.

To Akira, he looked like a puppy playing at being dangerous.

She remained motionless as they approached, a mountain of white fur and barely leashed power. Let them come. Let them posture. Let them learn the difference between wolves who changed with the moon and a wolf who had watched the moon itself be born.

The alpha stopped thirty yards away—close enough to read her properly, far enough to run if needed. Smart. His nose worked frantically, trying to categorize what stood before him. She could see the confusion in the set of his ears, the tension in his shoulders. To him, she would smell like wolf but wrong—too old, too cold, touched by magics that predated his entire species.

The silence stretched between them, taut as a bowstring. His companions spread wider, trying to flank her, but their movements were hesitant. Instinct warred with training. Everything about her screamed apex predator, but their human-influenced minds couldn't quite accept what their bodies knew.

Finally, the alpha shifted.

The transformation was painful to watch—bones breaking and reforming, fur receding in patches, the wolf fighting the man for dominance of flesh. It took him nearly thirty seconds to complete what Akira could do in a heartbeat. When it was done, a bearded man stood in the snow, his breath coming in harsh pants that clouded the air. He was handsome in the way of his kind—all rugged masculinity and careful wildness. Muscle corded his chest and arms, and he seemed unbothered by the cold despite wearing only the pants he'd pulled from a cache behind a nearby rock.

"You're trespassing." His voice carried the rumble of alpha command, the expectation of immediate obedience that had probably served him well with his small pack. "This territory belongs to the Northern Lights pack."

Akira tilted her massive head, studying him with the detached interest of a scientist examining a particularly amusing specimen. Territory. As if lines drawn on human maps and marked with piss could contain something like her. As if the mountains cared who claimed them. As if the wind asked permission before it blew.

"Identify yourself." A harder edge now, uncertainty bleeding through attempted dominance. "What pack do you represent?"

An interesting question. What pack indeed? The pack of ghosts, perhaps. The pack of memories frozen in permafrost. The pack of all the direwolves who would never run again because humans had learned to forge silver into bullets and poison into bait.

But those were thoughts for the long dark, not for this moment of necessary theater. She wanted information these wolves might possess. Wanted to know if they'd heard whispers of Eclipse, of the facility that ate Otherkind and spat out broken shells. And sometimes, the best way to make others talk was to let them think themselves in control.

She lowered her body toward the snow—not quite submission, but the suggestion of it. Her belly fur brushed the ground, and she let a small whine escape her throat. The posture felt like wearing another creature's skin, every instinct screaming against the pretense, but she held it.

The effect was immediate. The alpha's shoulders straightened, chest puffing out with renewed confidence. The other two wolves crept closer, tails lifting from their defensive tuck.

"That's right." Satisfaction colored his tone now. "Know your place, outsider. Now shift and explain yourself properly."

The female wolf made a soft sound—agreement or encouragement. The younger male was bolder, circling to her left with the cocky assurance of youth. They thought her cowed. Thought her weak. Thought themselves the victors in this small dominance game.

Akira added a tremble to her massive form, letting them see what they expected—a lone wolf, overwhelmed by the presence of a pack, submitting to avoid conflict. The alpha approached with swaggering steps, close enough now that she could smell the breakfast on his breath (eggs and coffee and something synthetic that humans called bacon but tasted nothing like real meat).

"I don't know what kind of freak wolf you are," he said, gesturing broadly at her size, "but you're on Northern Lights territory now. Which means you answer to me, Magnus Blackfur, Alpha of—"

She moved.

One moment she was prostrate in feigned submission. The next, she stood at her full height, head raised, meeting his gaze with eyes that had watched glaciers carve valleys. The challenge was unmistakable, undeniable, absolute.

Magnus stumbled backward, words dying in his throat. His human form looked pathetically fragile now, pink skin puckered with gooseflesh, hands half-raised as if to ward off what stood before him.

Akira pressed one massive paw into the snow. Power flowed through the contact, her connection to the ancient cold that lived in the world's bones. Frost exploded outward in a perfect circle, each crystal catching the dying light like scattered diamonds. The temperature plummeted twenty degrees in the space of a heartbeat.

"What the hell...?" Magnus's voice had climbed an octave, alpha bass replaced by very human fear.

She took one measured step forward. All three wolves scrambled backward, the two still in wolf form whining high in their throats. Their earlier confidence evaporated like morning mist, replaced by the bone-deep recognition of a predator so far above them on the food chain that they might as well be rabbits.

Perfect.

A howl rose from the direction of the settlement—not the wild cry of a hunt or the mournful call of loneliness, but the specific modulation that meant information. A signal. Magnus c****d his head, listening to the message carried on the wind, then turned back to her with new wariness.

"Our sentry says there's a stranger in town asking about charter flights north." He studied her carefully, looking for a reaction. "Tall guy, dark hair, moves like one of us but smells like he's trying to hide it. Ring any bells?"

Liam. His name was a pulse in her blood, a tightening in her chest. He hadn't run. Hadn't abandoned her to face the journey alone. Was down there among the humans, keeping his promise, finding them passage to their son.

She kept her expression neutral, but something must have shown because Magnus's eyes sharpened with interest.

"Because here's what's interesting," he continued, confidence trickling back now that he had information she might want. "He's at Northern Skies Observatory, talking to Mary Kingfisher. And everyone knows Mary only helps Otherkind in trouble."

The female wolf chose that moment to shift, the transformation marginally smoother than her alpha's but still painful to witness. What emerged was a compact woman with short brown hair shot through with premature silver, her body all lean muscle and coiled readiness. She quickly donned a parka that had been stashed near the same rock where Magnus had found his pants—clearly, this was a regular meeting spot for the pack.

"We're not your enemies." Her voice was softer than Magnus's, carrying the particular tone of someone used to mediating between aggressive personalities. A beta, then. The pack's peace-keeper. "We protect this region. All Otherkind passing through answer to Magnus, but those with legitimate business are granted safe passage."

Akira considered her options with the ruthless calculation of a predator who'd survived twelve thousand winters. These wolves had information. They knew the human Mary who might help with travel. They seemed to have a network, connections, knowledge of the modern world that she, for all her power, lacked.

Pride warred with pragmatism. The direwolf way was solitary strength, needing no one, asking for nothing. But the world had changed while she'd been caged. Had grown complex with satellites and cameras and a thousand ways to track those who didn't belong. Perhaps some adaptation was required.

Besides, Liam would want her to try diplomacy before violence. The thought of him—his careful way of explaining human customs, his patience with her confusion about their inexplicable rules—made something soft and warm uncurl in her chest.

She shifted.

The transformation was instant, effortless—one moment a mountain of fur and fang, the next a woman standing naked in the snow. Frost swirled around her bare feet, never quite touching her skin, as if the cold itself recognized her as kin.

Both Magnus and the female stumbled backward, fresh shock painting their faces. Even among Otherkind, her human form was unsettling—too tall, too perfectly still, eyes that reflected light like a nocturnal predator. Everything about her whispered other, ancient, dangerous.

"Need jacket." She pointed to the snowdrift where she'd hidden Liam's garment, her voice carrying the distinctive accent of someone who'd learned human language as an afterthought. "Then talk."

The female—the beta—recovered first, hurrying to retrieve the jacket with quick, efficient movements. She approached carefully, extending the garment at arm's length like an offering to something that might bite.

Akira shrugged into the jacket, which fell to mid-thigh on her tall frame. The fabric still carried Liam's scent, and she had to resist the urge to bury her nose in the collar. Human modesty made no logical sense—skin was skin, flesh was flesh, and the cold couldn't touch her regardless. But Liam had been so distinctly uncomfortable with her nudity, color climbing his cheeks every time she'd shifted, that she'd decided to adopt this particular custom.

The memory of his flustered attempts to look anywhere but at her while simultaneously being unable to look away sent an unexpected pulse of heat through her belly. Strange, how this one human-shaped wolf could affect her when twelve thousand years of existence had left her untouched by such needs.

"You... what are you?" The female's voice held the breathless quality of someone confronting a legend made flesh.

"Direwolf." The word fell into the arctic silence like a stone into still water, sending ripples of implication outward.

Magnus shook his head immediately, denial written in every line of his body. "Direwolves are extinct. They were hunted to—"

"Not all dead." She cut him off with a gesture, frost trailing from her fingertips. "Last one. Me."

The third wolf had shifted during the exchange, revealing a young male with the gangly look of someone not quite finished growing into their body. His face was all angles and eagerness, dark hair falling into eyes that stared at her with undisguised awe.

"The ice wolves from the old stories?" His voice cracked with excitement. "The ones who could freeze entire lakes with a howl? Who hunted mammoth across the glaciers?"

Finally. Someone who remembered, even if the memories were twisted into legend. Akira inclined her head slightly, pleased that at least some knowledge survived among these modern wolves.

"My mate in town." She pointed toward the settlement, where lights were beginning to flicker on against the approaching dark. "Finding fly-machine. Go north."

"Your mate is the one talking to Mary." Understanding dawned across Magnus's features, followed quickly by calculation. "You're running from something."

Her lips pulled back from teeth that remained too sharp for her human form. "Not running. Hunting."

The distinction mattered. Running was prey behavior, the desperate flight of the weak. Hunting was what direwolves did—patient, inexorable, certain as winter's arrival.

"Humans take cub." The words scraped her throat like broken glass. Even after seven months of freedom, speaking it aloud made it real in ways that thinking it didn't. "Going to get back."

The atmosphere shifted instantly. Where before there had been wariness and territorial posturing, now something deeper emerged. The female's hand moved unconsciously to her own belly. Magnus's face went hard as granite. Even the young male lost his star-struck expression, replaced by something older and angrier.

Every Otherkind knew this particular pain. The stolen children. The empty dens. The howls that went unanswered.

"The government took your child?" The female's voice had gentled, carrying the specific tone of someone who'd counseled grieving pack members through similar losses.

"Yes." Akira placed her hand over her heart, where the ache lived constant as her heartbeat. "Make in glass. Never see. Never hold."

The words were inadequate to describe the reality—waking in a sterile cell to find her belly empty, the chemical taste of sedatives on her tongue, the knowledge that they'd taken what was most precious while she lay helpless as a pup. Watching through reinforced glass as they grew her son in artificial wombs, as they tested and measured and recorded every aspect of his development like he was an experiment rather than a child.

"But feel here." She pressed her fist harder against her sternum, feeling the ghost-thread that connected her to Kova across all the miles and walls and wrongness. "Know alive. Know waiting."

The three werewolves exchanged glances, some silent communication passing between them in the way of pack.

"I'm Sylvia," the female said finally, offering a name like a gift. "Beta of Northern Lights. The young one is Rafe." She gestured to the gangly male, who bobbed his head in acknowledgment. "If humans took your cub, we want to help. All Otherkind stand together against government hunters."

Magnus looked less convinced, alpha pride warring with something deeper and more painful. But he didn't contradict his beta, which told its own story.

"What facility?" His voice had gone rough, as if the words hurt to speak.

"Eclipse."

The name dropped like a stone through ice, sending cracks spidering outward. All three wolves went rigid, the kind of stillness that spoke of prey recognizing a predator too large to fight, too fast to flee.

"No one comes back from Eclipse." Rafe's voice had dropped to barely above a whisper, all his earlier enthusiasm evaporating. "It's where they send the ones they want to... to experiment on."

"I come back." The certainty in her voice was absolute, carved from bedrock and permafrost. "Take cub. Kill any who try stop."

She said it the way someone might say the sun would rise or water would flow downhill—not a boast or a threat, but a simple statement of inevitable fact. The casual certainty seemed to unnerve them more than any display of power.

Magnus studied her with the focus of someone recalculating everything they thought they knew. "You really believe you can break into Eclipse Facility. The most secure government installation in Alaska. The place they send Otherkind who are too dangerous for regular containment."

"Yes."

"Why?"

The question seemed genuinely curious rather than challenging. Akira tilted her head, considering how to explain concepts these lesser wolves might understand. How to describe the drive that had kept her sane through seven months in a cage, that had given her the strength to wait for the perfect moment to escape, that burned in her bones hotter than her connection to winter itself.

"Mother finding cub," she said finally. "Strongest force in world. Stronger than walls. Stronger than silver. Stronger than fear."

She touched her chest again, feeling the steady beat of her heart and, beneath it, that other rhythm—faint but unmistakable. Kova's heartbeat, echoing hers across the impossible distance.

"And direwolf strongest wolf." She gestured to herself, frost spiraling from the movement. "Last direwolf. Twelve thousand winters alive. Many battles. Many hunts. Many enemies become prey. Eclipse just new enemy. Will fall like all others."

The casual mention of her age hit them like a physical blow. Sylvia's mouth fell open. Rafe made a sound like he'd been punched. Even Magnus took an involuntary step backward.

"Twelve thousand years?" Sylvia breathed. "You've seen... the ice ages. The rise of humans. The fall of the old ways."

"Yes. Remember when wolves rule. When humans small tribes, hiding in caves, fearing dark. When moon sang louder and magic breathed in every stone." The memories rose unbidden—vast herds of mammoth moving like living mountains across endless white, the aurora painting stories across skies unpolluted by artificial light, her pack singing harmonies that could crack glaciers. "All gone now. All dead. Except me."

Before anyone could respond to this glimpse of deep history, her head snapped toward the trail. Every sense sharpened to painful clarity as a familiar scent reached her on the wind.

Liam.