The Alpha's Hidden Queen

WREN

Nobody moved for a second. Asher's whole body went rigid beside me, and I felt my heart slam against my ribs so hard I was sure both of them could hear it.

"Alpha." Asher's voice came out steady, but I could feel the tension rolling off him in waves, the kind that meant he was already deciding which direction to push me if this went wrong. "We're just walking home."

"I heard you're leaving Stonebrook." Drake stepped closer, ignoring Asher completely, his eyes still locked on me with a kind of focus that made the whole forest feel smaller around us. "I don't remember approving that."

"It's just a family visit," I said, forcing my voice to stay even, even though every single instinct in me was screaming to run. "We'll be back."

"Will you." It wasn't a question. Drake said it the way you'd say something you'd already decided wasn't true, like my answer didn't actually matter, like he was simply waiting to see what I'd say so he could enjoy not believing it.

"Hm." His mouth curved into something that wasn't a smile, not really, more like the shape a smile leaves behind once all the warmth has drained out of it. "Make sure it stays just that. A visit." He reached out and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear before I could pull away, his fingers cold against my skin, and I felt sick all the way down to my stomach in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with how violated I felt by something as small as a single touch. "I'd hate for something to happen while you're gone. To you, or to anyone you care about."

The threat landed exactly where he wanted it to. I thought of Dad. I thought of Asher. I thought of how easily an Alpha could make something look like an accident in a pack this small, where nobody asked too many questions about anything that happened on his orders.

"Understood, Alpha," I managed.

Then he turned and walked off into the dark like nothing had happened at all, like he hadn't just put his hands on me and threatened my whole family in the same breath, like this was simply an ordinary conversation between an Alpha and a pack member who happened to cross his path.

Asher grabbed my hand the second Drake disappeared into the trees, and he didn't let go, not once, the entire walk home. His grip was tight enough to ache a little, but I didn't ask him to loosen it. I think we both needed it.

Dad was already asleep when we got home, so we didn't tell him that night. I lay in bed for hours afterward, staring at the ceiling, replaying Drake's voice over and over, the cold drag of his fingers against my hair, the way he'd said *anyone you care about* like he already had a list. I didn't sleep until almost dawn, and even then it wasn't real sleep, just the kind of half-awake exhaustion where every sound outside my window made me flinch.

---

I woke up the next morning to a too-quiet house. Dad always has us up running before sunrise, rain or shine, no excuses — but it was already nine, and the house was completely still, no thump of boots on the stairs, no smell of breakfast cooking, nothing. I pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie and crept down the stairs slowly, stopping halfway when I heard Dad and Asher talking low in the kitchen, their voices pitched the way people's voices get when they don't want to be overheard.

"She knows something's wrong, Dad."

"What happened?"

"Drake stopped us last night. Told her she's not leaving. Touched her hair." Asher's voice was tight with anger, tighter than I'd heard it in a long time. "I don't think he's going to let this go quietly. I think he's done waiting."

A long silence stretched out after that. Then Dad spoke, and his voice had a kind of forced calm that scared me far more than yelling ever could have — the calm of someone who has already decided exactly what he has to do and is simply working out the order of operations.

"We leave tonight. Not tomorrow morning. Tonight."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. I sat down hard on the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands, my mind racing through everything I'd just heard, trying to make all the pieces fit into something that made sense. *Tonight.* Whatever was happening, it was bigger and faster than I'd let myself realize, bigger than a creepy old Alpha making a teenage girl uncomfortable in a training yard. This was something my own father was scared enough to upend our entire lives over with less than a day's warning.

I forced myself to walk into the kitchen like I hadn't heard a single word of it, plastering something close to a normal expression onto my face.

"Morning, Muffin." Dad slid a plate toward me, his face carefully smooth, carefully calm, the same mask I'd just watched him drop a moment ago through the kitchen doorway. "Sleep okay?"

"Fine," I lied. "Are we still leaving tomorrow?"

Something flickered across his face — surprise, maybe, that I'd even thought to ask, or maybe just the effort of deciding how much truth to give me. "Change of plans. We're leaving tonight instead. Pack anything you can't live without. We won't be coming back here for a long time. Maybe not at all."

He said that last part so quietly I almost missed it. *Maybe not at all.* I felt the weight of those four words settle somewhere behind my ribs, right next to the fear, right next to the questions I already knew better than to ask out loud.

"Okay, Dad," I said instead, and he gave me a small, tired smile, like he was grateful I wasn't going to make this harder than it already was.

I didn't argue. I went straight upstairs and stuffed my biggest bag full of clothes, folding things fast and a little messily, not caring whether anything matched. Then I packed my smaller bag with the few things I had left of Mom — her silver bracelet, worn thin at the clasp from however many years she'd worn it before me; an old photo of her laughing at something just out of frame, her head tipped back, her whole face lit up in a way I only ever saw in pictures; and a leather journal she used to write in, its cover soft and cracked with age, that I'd carried with me through three different moves and never once been able to bring myself to open.

I sat on my bed for a long moment with that journal in my lap, running my thumb along the worn edge of the cover. Part of me wanted to open it right then, finally, after years of telling myself I wasn't ready. But Dad's voice calling up the stairs broke the moment, and I tucked it carefully into the bottom of my bag instead, underneath everything else, like burying it deeper would somehow keep it safer.

By the time the sun went down, all three of us stood by the front door with our bags slung over our shoulders, and Dad's eyes kept flicking toward the windows every few seconds, like he was waiting for something specific to happen, or not happen. The house felt strange around me already, like it had stopped being ours the moment we decided to leave it.

We almost made it.

We were halfway down the back trail behind our house, moving fast and silent through the trees the way Dad had drilled into both of us since we were small, when the howls started behind us — one, then three, then five, then more, all closing in fast from the direction of the pack house, voices I half-recognized rising up into the night air.

"Run," Dad said, and for the first time in my entire life, I heard real fear crack through his voice, raw and unhidden. "Don't stop until we're across the border. No matter what you hear behind you. No matter what."