The Alpha's Flame

Two

Mira rushed toward me, wide-eyed and bundled in a patched-up shawl. Not bulky like mine; wolves didn’t need as much. Full wolves ran hotter, healed quicker, and usually carried themselves with a quiet steadiness. Mira moved like that most days—calmer than anyone I knew—but tonight her chest rose and fell too fast, panic breaking through the calm.

She dropped beside me with a rush of breath and relief. “I found you! Thank the Moon Goddess. What were you thinking? Arnou and Derek are going to kill you!”

I grinned, still breathless. "Only if they catch me." She didn’t smile and I rolled my eyes. Her sense of humor had never been the sharpest.

We’d been friends for as long as I could remember, two Omegas tied together by chores, bruises, and stolen moments of peace. She was taller by a few inches, lanky from poor meals and restless nights, and too gentle for this place. I once watched an older Omega shove past her in the kitchens, nearly knocking the stew pot from her hands, but she just whispered an apology as if she were the one in the wrong. She blended into the background so easily people forgot she was even there. Sometimes I worried the pack would swallow her whole if I didn’t keep pulling her back.

Her brown hair frizzed at the ends where the snow had melted, and her eyes darted around the trees as if expecting claws to appear from the dark. “Ren,” she said, her voice steadier now, “you can’t keep going after Arnou like this. He’s the Beta’s son.”

“Magnus,” I muttered under my breath.

Mira’s head snapped toward me, eyes wide. “Beta Magnus.”

“Right,” I smirked, “can’t forget the title.”

She gave a long-suffering sigh. “One of these days, they won’t just chase you. And I won’t be fast enough to find you.”

I didn’t answer. Mira’s concern always wrapped around me like a blanket I hadn’t asked for—warm, but heavy, sometimes smothering. Instead, I plucked a damp leaf from her hair and flicked it away.

“You worry too much.”

“And you don’t worry at all.” She wasn’t wrong.

“Come on,” she said finally, rising and brushing the snow off her skirt. “Before they double back.”

Her hand was warm, her palm chilled, the kind of hand that always reached where it shouldn’t, always pulling me back from the edges. I took it.

I took the hand she offered which was warm. She was always reaching for someone she had no business saving.

✦ ✦ ✦

By the time I slipped into the omega quarters, the pack houses had gone dark. We omegas didn’t get much, but at least we had our own stretch of rooms, if you could call them that. Mira had already gone, muttering about morning duty and Elder Mette’s habit of checking beds before sunrise.

Our house—my mother’s and mine—was one of the smallest. One room, a hearth that hadn’t worked in months, a single cot that she insisted I take though her bones were the ones that ached. The walls were patched with cloth where the wood had warped, and a crooked shelf held our few bowls and the sketch of my father I’d never met. I was told he died even before I was born.

The door creaked when I eased it open, and I winced. Inside, the fire smoldered low. My boots tapped against the boards as I stepped in. My mother, Freya, sat on her stool with a shawl slipping from her shoulders, eyes heavy but still awake. A tray with bones, scraps of stew, and two pieces of bread waited beside her.

“You didn’t have to wait up,” I said.

“I always do.”

I ignored the tray, pulled off my boots instead. “We work all day, yet get scraps. How generous.”

“Ren,” she said quietly.

I collapsed onto the cot and stretched out, arms flung wide, legs still burning from the run. The ceiling above me had a crack that split across the wood like a lightning scar. I’d stared at it so often I could trace it from memory.

“I’m starving,” I muttered, eyeing the bread. She nudged the tray towards me with her fingers but I pushed it back. She needed the bread more.

“It’s fine. I’ll just gnaw on a bone. Pretend I’m a real wolf.” She said nothing. Just pressed the tray a little closer and I pushed it back again.

“You know, I keep wondering why you even took the Omega mark,” I said after a while. “You weren’t born into it. And you weren’t mated, either. So what happened? You just wake up one day and decide servitude sounded fun?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line, and the question hung there, unanswered like it always did.

“I’m not doing this with you tonight,” she said finally, rising to her feet.

“That’s your answer for everything, huh?” I muttered. “Don’t ask. Don’t speak. Just bow and keep quiet.”

“You wouldn't understand, Ren.”

I bit back the reply on my tongue. I hated that line so much; what wouldn't I understand and and how would she know when she never told me anything?

Instead, she came over and brushed my hair back with one hand, pressing a kiss to my forehead as if I were still a child. Her touch was warm.

“Sleep well, my little fire,” she whispered. Then she lay down on her mat by the hearth, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders.

I stared at the tray a long while before dragging it into my lap. The bread was hard, the stew nearly cold, but I tore into it anyway, chewing like it had done me wrong.