chapter 17
768 Words
Alpha Kael POV
The corridor felt too narrow the moment I stepped out. My chest was tight, air moving through my lungs like glass shards. Every step I took away from her room was supposed to feel like victory, like I’d kept my distance, kept control but It didn’t.
I made it halfway down the hall before my wolf shoved against my ribs, claws raking at my insides. Go back. The voice wasn’t words, it was a pull, a demand, a primal snarl that didn’t understand politics or breeding contracts, I ignored it.
The double doors at the end of the hallway opened before I touched them. Two of my guards stepped forward, hands to their chests in salute.
“Alpha—”
“Clear the west wing,” I cut them off, my voice flat.
They hesitated. “Is there a threat?”
I turned my head slowly, giving them a look that could peel skin. “Do as I say.”
They vanished down the hall.
I pushed out into the open balcony at the far end of the wing, gripping the stone rail so hard dust crumbled under my fingers. Below, the courtyard bustled—soldiers training, servants darting between kitchens and stables, life moving like it didn’t care that in one room, a woman had just carved my chest open with words.
My knuckles ached. My wolf still paced.
I was halfway through deciding whether to drown the feeling in whiskey or blood when the sharp clang of alarm bells shattered the air.
Three short strikes. One long.
Intrusion.
My head snapped toward the gates. Figures moved along the treeline beyond the walls, fast, coordinated. Not rogues. Not traders.
“Alpha!” One of the tower sentinels was already shouting. “Unmarked warriors approaching from the east perimeter, armed!”
The air around me changed in an instant. That thin thread of grief in my chest? Gone. Replaced by the heavy weight of authority, the rush of blood that came with command.
“Seal the east gates!” I barked, striding toward the stairs. “Archers to the walls. Shift units, flank from the north and south. No one gets inside without my say.”
By the time I hit the lower courtyard, warriors were shifting mid-run, clothes tearing, bones cracking, fur erupting in bursts of heat and sound. The ground trembled with their combined weight.
I grabbed a passing beta by the collar. “Find Vanessa. Keep her in the main hall with the elders. If this is a distraction, I want them guarded.”
He nodded and sprinted off.
But even as I moved toward the front line, my gaze flicked up—toward her window. Curtains still drawn. No sign she’d even heard the bells.
My gut twisted, If this wasn’t just a random attack… if they were here for her…
“Alpha!” a voice shouted from the ramparts. “They’re not stopping, they’re—”
The rest of the sentence dissolved into a war cry as the first line of enemies broke from the trees, blades flashing.
The scent hit me before the sound did, Blood, Old blood. And under it, wolf, But not my pack.
I ripped my shirt over my head, my skin splitting as my wolf tore free. Pain and power rolled over me in the same breath. In seconds, the world sharpened—sounds too loud, scents too sharp, every heartbeat in a fifty-yard radius pounding against my skull.
They wanted war?
Fine.
I launched forward, my paws hitting the dirt just as the first intruder leapt the wall. His eyes widened when he saw me—then my teeth were in his throat, hot iron flooding my mouth.
The courtyard erupted into chaos—steel against steel, snarls and screams tangling in the air.
But even through the haze of battle, I felt it.
A second presence.,Watching, From her window. Why do I feel like they want Aria, they want my mate.
She was standing there now, curtains open, her hands pressed to the glass.
And for one unguarded second, our eyes met through the smoke and distance.
Her lips moved, just one word. I couldn’t hear it, but I didn’t need to.
Kael.
That single moment, one fragile thread in the middle of blood and war, was enough to rip open every wall I’d built.
Because now, I wasn’t just fighting to protect my pack, I feel she needs protection, I was fighting to protect her and my child.
I was fighting to make damn sure she’d live to hate me another day.
- Writer
