The Alpha's Hidden Queen

WREN (PRESENT DAY).

"Again, Wren. You're dropping your guard every time you throw that punch."

My brother Asher stood with his arms crossed, watching me like he could see every mistake before I made it. Which, annoyingly, he usually could. He'd been the one training me on Fridays for almost two years now, ever since Dad decided Asher needed practice teaching as much as I needed practice fighting. Two birds, one very sore set of knuckles.

I reset my stance and hit the bag again — harder this time, faster, the way Dad taught me. Jab, cross, low kick. My knuckles ached, the bag swinging hard enough on the chain that it groaned, but I didn't stop until Asher finally nodded.

"Better. Sit down before you pass out."

I dropped onto the bench next to the other pups in training, breathing hard, sweat sticking my shirt to my back, my arms shaking from holding good form that long. It was Friday, which meant testing day, which meant everyone in Stonebrook's training yard got to watch each other get pushed right up to the edge of what they could handle, and sometimes a little past it.

Dad had trained me since I could walk. Literally — there's a photo somewhere of me at three years old trying to copy his stance, feet too far apart, fists held all wrong, grinning like it was the best game in the world. He says the world isn't safe enough for anyone to skip learning how to protect themselves, especially not a girl, especially not after what happened to Mom. He doesn't say her name much when he says that part. He just gets quiet for a second, like the words cost him something to get out, and then keeps going like nothing happened.

Most people in the pack still call me weak, though. An omega who can't shift hard enough, can't run fast enough, can't ever measure up to a real warrior's daughter the way Asher measures up to a warrior's son. They say it like they think I can't hear them. I hear everything. I've just gotten very good at pretending I don't.

I heard a shift in the air before I saw him. A shadow fell over me, long and broad against the dirt, and I already knew exactly who it belonged to before I even looked up. There's a particular kind of quiet that falls over a training yard whenever Alpha Drake walks into it — not respect, exactly. Something closer to held breath.

"You fight well, Wren." Alpha Drake lowered himself onto the bench beside me, way too close, his eyes dragging slowly down over my training clothes in a way that made every inch of my skin want to crawl somewhere else entirely. "Very well, for someone so small."

"Thank you, Alpha." I kept my eyes forward, my arms crossed tight over my sports bra, wishing more than anything that I'd worn literally any other outfit today, even though training clothes were the only sensible option for training.

"You look just like your mother." His voice dropped lower, almost soft, which was somehow worse than if he'd shouted it. "She was beautiful too."

My stomach turned hard. Everyone in the pack knew what happened to the women Drake called to his room since his Luna died three years ago. Some of them came back different — quieter, smaller somehow, like something had been taken out of them that didn't grow back. A few of them didn't come back at all, and nobody ever asked too many questions about why, because asking questions about your Alpha tends to end badly in a pack as small and poor as Stonebrook.

Everyone said he'd started going a little insane after he lost her. They said grief did things to a wolf, especially an Alpha wolf, especially one who'd never expected to outlive his mate. I didn't know if that was true, or just a story people told themselves so the man in charge of their entire pack didn't sound quite as frightening as he actually was.

"I hear you're seventeen now." Drake leaned in slightly, and I forced myself not to lean away, because leaning away from an Alpha is its own kind of insult, and I'd learned a long time ago not to give him reasons to remember my name more than he already did. "Almost old enough to find a mate of your own."

"Yes, Alpha." My voice came out steadier than I felt.

"A shame, that." He said it almost to himself, eyes still on me, and something about the way he said it made my skin go cold despite the summer heat baking the training yard dirt beneath us.

Before I could decide whether or how to answer that, Asher was suddenly there, stepping between us like it was the most natural thing in the world, greeting our Alpha with perfect, practiced respect before telling me, in a tone that left no room for argument, that training was done for the day. I didn't argue. I grabbed my bag, mumbled my goodbyes, and walked fast toward the gate without once looking back.

---

That night was Tessa's eighteenth birthday — Tessa, my classmate, the loud, funny girl who sat behind me in every lesson since we were pups and never once let me sit alone at lunch even when nobody else would. Tonight she'd shift for the first time and maybe find her mate in front of the whole pack, the way every wolf eventually does once they cross that line into adulthood.

Everyone loves these nights. The pull between two souls finding each other, the way a person's whole face changes the second they recognize the one who's meant for them — it's the kind of thing the whole pack gathers to watch, almost like a wedding nobody planned in advance. I want that so badly when I turn eighteen myself, in less than a month now. I want to know what it feels like to have someone look at me and see exactly who I am instead of what I'm not.

Asher came with me, hoping his own mate might be somewhere in the crowd, since he'd turned twenty without finding her yet and was starting to get quietly anxious about it, even though he'd never admit that out loud. We watched Tessa shift for the first time — sleek and silver, smaller than I expected but fast, so fast — and watched her find her mate in a boy from the newest training class. Their reunion looked like something out of a dream, the kind of thing that makes the whole crowd go soft and quiet at once, watching two strangers become each other's whole world in front of everybody.

I was so caught up watching them that I didn't notice someone sit down right next to me until he spoke.

"Hey, Wren."

I turned and found Felix, Drake's son, smiling at me, easy and warm in a way that never quite matched the rest of his family.

"Hi, Felix," I said carefully. He wasn't like his father — he was actually decent, actually kind, the kind of person who held doors and remembered birthdays and never once looked at me the way his father did. But being this close to anyone connected to Drake still made my skin prickle, an old habit my body had built without asking my permission.

"I heard you and your family are visiting some relatives soon," he said.

"Yeah. My grandparents." I didn't mention which pack. I didn't know why exactly, except that something in me wanted to hold that detail close, like it mattered more than I understood yet.

"That's good." He nodded slowly, looking out at the crowd instead of at me, like there was something heavier sitting behind his words that he wasn't quite ready to say out loud. Then he stood, gave me one more small, strange smile, and walked off into the crowd without explaining any further.

Hours later, walking home with Asher under a sky absolutely full of stars, I heard footsteps running up fast behind us. We both spun around, ready to fight on instinct — and found Felix, out of breath, chasing us down through the dark.

"I need to talk to you," he said, glancing around like he was checking we were truly alone before he let himself say anything more.

"What is it?" Asher asked, already shifting his weight slightly in front of me, the way he always did when something felt wrong before either of us could say exactly what.

"When you visit the other pack," Felix said, finally looking straight at me, his voice low and urgent in a way I'd never heard from him before, "don't come back. Stay there. Wherever it is, stay there, where you'll actually be safe."

"Safe from what?" I started to ask, my heart already picking up speed, but Asher cut in before I could finish.

"It's handled, Felix."

Felix studied my brother's face for a long second, and something in him seemed to settle, relief washing visibly over his features. "Good. I'm sorry. I've been trying to end this for a long time and I haven't found a way to do it that doesn't make everything worse first. Safe travels, both of you." And he turned and walked away into the dark without another word, leaving me standing there with about a hundred questions and nowhere to put a single one of them.

I barely had time to ask Asher what any of that meant before another shape stepped out from between the trees ahead of us, broad and unmistakable, blocking the path home completely.

Alpha Drake.

"Going somewhere, Wren?" he asked, his voice low and slow, his eyes locked on mine like I was something he already owned, something he was simply deciding when to collect. "You're not leaving this pack. Not until I say you can."