Chapter 3
2038 Words
Lucian
Snow drifted lazily past my office windows, falling so thickly the trees beyond the glass blurred into soft, white shapes.
My desk, as usual in December, was buried.
Reports from half a dozen packs, lists of winter supplies and event schedules, security logs, seating charts for the Christmas banquet that were somehow more terrifying than any battle. Apparently, if you didn’t seat the right Alphas next to each other, you didn’t get polite small talk—you got a dominance fight right there at the table. I was Alpha King of an entire region, and here I was mediating over centerpiece placement.
A knock sounded on the doorframe.
“Come in,” I called.
Kieran stepped inside, brushing a few snowflakes from his shoulders. Even out of wolf form he was all Beta solidity—strong and broad, short dark blond hair, warm brown eyes taking in the chaos on my desk with badly concealed amusement. The pale scar along his left jaw caught the light when he smirked.
“Festive,” he said. “You planning to build a fort out of those or actually read them?”
“Careful,” I said. “You mock the fort, you get put in charge of it.”
He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, more relaxed than any other wolf would dare to be in the Alpha King’s office.
“Update time,” he said. “Christmas preparations across the packs are on schedule. The New York pack finished setting up the market in their main square—hot cocoa, terrible carols, the works. Maine confirmed their tree lighting for tomorrow night. Pennsylvania is doing that charity thing you like—gifts for the human orphanage on the edge of their territory.”
“Good,” I said, scanning the top report without really reading it. “Any complaints?”
“Just the usual.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Someone thinks their pack isn’t getting enough funding for decorations. Someone thinks their neighbor’s light display is too bright. Someone wants to know if you’re attending their party in person so they can plan seating around your ‘energy.’”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “My energy?”
“You make people nervous,” he said cheerfully. “It’s a whole thing.”
I grunted, but a corner of my mouth twitched.
As Alpha King, I had dozens of packs under my rule. Each pack had its own Alpha, its own territory, traditions, dramas. Above them, there were five major regions across North America, each ruled by a different royal bloodline. Mine sat in the middle of snow and forest, old stone and older wards. I’d been born to it, raised in its halls, trained for the weight that now sat across my shoulders.
On paper, winter should’ve been the calm season—fewer events, shorter days, everyone hibernating in apartments with hot chocolate and streaming queues instead of running around.
In reality, it was one of the busiest times of the year.
“Attendance for the pre-Christmas dinner?” I asked. “Any last-minute changes?”
“All the regional Alphas confirmed,” Kieran said. “Most are bringing partners or spouses. Kitchen’s already planning for all the fuss.”
Every year, two nights before Christmas, I hosted a formal dinner at the palace. Alphas and their partners came in from across the region, dressed in their best, pretending we weren’t all exhausted and slightly feral under the nice clothes. It was tradition. It kept morale up. It reminded everyone that we were part of something bigger than our own pack borders.
It also meant more eyes on me at once than I strictly enjoyed.
“Everything else is smooth,” Kieran said. “Logistics, security, guest rooms. If anything goes wrong now, it’ll be because someone tries to put tinsel on a guard.”
“Last time, he bit it,” I said.
“Last time, he deserved it,” Kieran corrected.
I let the papers fall closed and pushed my chair back. My muscles protested a little; I’d been sitting too long.
“That’s enough admin for tonight,” I said. “If something catches fire, come find me. Otherwise, I’m taking a break. I need a run.”
He nodded once, understanding flickering in his eyes. “I’ll keep the fort from collapsing under the weight of your festive paperwork,” he said. “Try not to terrorize any carolers.”
“No promises.”
He left as quietly as he’d come.
I crossed the office, heading down the corridor toward the back of the palace. Staff and guards nodded as I passed. Someone had strung a garland of evergreen and white lights along the stone archway; the faint scent of pine and cinnamon hung in the air. Voices drifted up from the kitchens below—laughter, clatter, a Christmas song hummed off-key.
It wasn’t a bad life, I reminded myself. Just heavy.
Outside, the cold hit like a clean slap.
The back terrace overlooked the tree line, snow stretching down to the forest in a smooth, unbroken sheet. Lanterns flickered along the walls. The sky was a dark velvet, stars just starting to show between falling flakes.
I walked to the edge of the terrace, down the narrow steps to the snow-packed path that led toward the woods. There, at the shadowed edge where stone met trees, I stopped and began to undress. Coat, shirt, boots, pants. The air bit at my skin, but the chill was a familiar, temporary thing. I folded everything and tucked it into the hollow in the wall we used for exactly this.
Then I stepped forward, closed my eyes, and let go.
The shift took me fast now. Years of fighting it as a boy had turned into years of surrender as a man. Bones snapped and realigned with a familiar, brutal music. Muscles twisted, re-knit, expanded. My spine stretched, my hands curled, claws pushing through where nails had been. Fur rippled over skin in a dark wave.
A breath later, I stood on four paws instead of two feet.
The world sharpened instantly. Colors bled richer, sounds grew clearer, but it was scent that hit hardest. Snow. Pine. Stone. Wolf. A hundred layered smells I knew better than most people knew their own faces.
Werewolves ran larger than natural wolves. As Alpha King, I was larger still. My shadow threw long and broad over the snow, black on white. My coat was pure midnight, swallowing light, thick enough to laugh at the winter cold.
My wolf stretched inside me, pleased, shaking out our coat. In this form, the weight of the crown shifted—not gone, but easier to carry.
I pushed off into a run.
The forest welcomed me, swallowing the palace lights behind thick trunks. Snow crunched under my paws, cold air filled my lungs, muscles burning in a good way as I wove between trees. Branches brushed my back and shoulders; flakes melted on my nose. This was the part of the job I never resented. Not the paperwork, not the politics. Just this: running my land, feeling every inch under my paws.
I didn’t go far at first, just looping the inner edges of our territory, letting my mind blur into instinct and motion.
Then, like someone snapped a wire taut inside my chest, I smelled it.
First: blood. Sharp and coppery, faint on the wind but wrong enough to make every hair along my spine stand up.
Second, braided through it: something else.
Sweet, soft, floral. Not cloying, not fake like perfume. Warm and alive, cutting through exhaust and cold.
My wolf froze inside me, attention snapping to that thread.
MATE, he roared, the word exploding through my mind like a thunderclap.
The world narrowed to a point.
What?
For half a heartbeat, I thought I’d misheard. I was Alpha King, not some unshifted pup sniffing fantasies out of nothing. My life was war and treaties and bloodlines. The Mate bond was a story I’d heard my entire life and carefully never counted on.
MATE, my wolf repeated, certainty vibrating through every bone. OURS. MATE IS IN DANGER.
The blood-scent thickened, anchored now to the floral thread. It was moving—no, not moving. It had moved. The wind shifted, carrying more of it.
I didn’t waste time arguing with the one part of me that had never lied.
I ran.
Everything else fell away. I dug into the snow, muscles bunching, and sprinted harder than I had in years. Trees blurred, snow whipping past in white streaks. I felt, distantly, Kieran’s confusion ping across the link, but I shut him out and followed the scent.
It led me straight to the edge of my lands.
Past the last trees, the air changed. The hum of our magic faded, replaced by the dull, flat quiet of human territory. A road cut through the dark ahead, slick with ice, lined with a broken fence. And in the ditch beside it, half-buried in snow and steam, was the wrecked SUV. It lay on its roof, wheels still spinning weakly. Glass glittered everywhere. The front end was crumpled like paper. Smoke curled from the engine, sour and hot.
The blood-scent hit me full in the face.
I lunged down the slope, claws tearing into the icy bank. As I drew closer, I saw her.
A young woman hung upside down in the driver’s seat, trapped by the belt. Blood streaked her hair, smeared across her forehead. Her eyes were glassy with pain and fear, lashes clumped with melted snow.
Green eyes.
My wolf slammed against my ribs, snarling at the seatbelt like it was a living thing.
She saw me and went still.
Terror flooded the air, sharp and raw. Of course it did. From her perspective, she was alone in a mangled car, and a giant black wolf had just appeared out of the dark. She whispered something, voice wrecked, begging me to leave. To go. To not hurt her.
Leaving wasn’t an option.
I pressed my shoulder against the door and shoved. The frame groaned. The car shifted a fraction. The angle was wrong. The metal had folded under the impact, locking the door in place. I tried again, harder, claws scrabbling against ice-coated steel.
Nothing.
Frustration snapped through me. The smoke was getting thicker. Her cough tore at my ears. Every second that passed dug a hook deeper into my spine. In wolf form, I was strength and speed, but I didn’t have leverage where I needed it. Not like this.
I backed away, sucking in cold air, and let go of the shape holding me together. Bones broke and realigned. Fur burned back into skin. Pain flared and faded. I rose onto two feet in the snow, skin bare to the wind, dripping meltwater and blood.
Human again.
I stepped back to the car, ducking under the crumpled edge of the roof. The heat from the engine licked at my side; smoke stung my eyes. She stared at me like her brain had just decided it had taken enough for one night.
“f**k,” I muttered, more at the damage than at her expression.
Up close, she smelled like blood and fear and that underlying floral note that made my wolf pace circles in my chest. Her pulse skittered under her skin, visible at her throat.
I hooked my fingers under what was left of the door, grabbed the twisted metal near the hinge, and pulled. Muscles strained. Metal screamed. The frame gave inch by inch before finally ripping free with a spray of paint chips. I tossed it aside and bent into the wreck, closing a hand carefully around her arm to steady her.
Her eyes met mine again. Even shaken, they were bright. Defiant.
“I need you to stay awake a little longer,” I said, letting my voice go low and steady, grounding. “Can you do that?”
“I don’t… know if you’re real,” she rasped.
One corner of my mouth twitched despite everything. “Real enough to get you out.”
- Writer
