Kneel, Alpha: She's Not Forgiving You Yet

WREN The toilet was covered in something I didn't even want to think about, but I got down in my knees and started scrubbing anyway. The hard title floor was killing my knees, and the chemical stench of the bleach was so strong I could practically taste it in the back of my throat. Three years in the Silver Pit, and here I was, on my knees again, cleaning something that wasn't mine, for people who didn't see me. Funny how a motel bathroom could feel exactly like a cell. "You missed a spot." Dale's voice came from the doorway as he pointed towards a direction. I didn't look up. "There's always a spot," I said. He laughed like I'd said something clever. I heard him lean against the frame. "You know," he said, "I finally placed you. Took me a while." His voice dropped carefully. "You're her, the Plague Doctor." My hands stopped moving. "Half the pack world lost someone to that outbreak," he said. "And here you are, scrubbing my toilets, and not one person in this town has any idea." "Get out of my way, Dale." He didn't move. "I could fix that. One word to the wrong person, and this whole town knows exactly who's living above the mechanic shop." The truth is, I had nothing to do with that compound. Someone else built that train, the one that spread through three territories in a single winter, and someone else entirely made sure my name was on the paperwork when the council came looking for a scapegoat. They didn't care about the truth, they just wanted a name. Six weeks ago, I walked out of those gates and into the freezing air with a black bag on my shoulder, and nothing else to my name. I sat on the curb, waiting for a car that never showed. I tried calling Elias, four times. On the fourth call, he rejected outright. I rode a bus to the edge of nowhere with my face pressed to the window, watching my own hollow eyes and scarred jaw reflection stare back at me. Now I live in a cramped room above a mechanic shop. The old landlady stares at my release paper for what felt like eternity before tossing me the keys. “You pay every Friday,” she warned. “No trouble. No men. And if the police show up here because of you, you’re out.” I only got this job because nobody else wanted night shifts in winter, and because people desperate enough don't ask questions. And right now? Dale knew exactly what kind of desperate I was. I stood up, rinsed my hands, and pushed past him without another word. He let me. He always let me, right up until the point where he didn't. By the time I clocked out, snow was coming down sideways. I walked home with my head low, counting the blocks, when a dark mark in the snow caught my eye, causing me to stop. Blood. A lot of it. I told myself it wasn't my business. People bled out in border towns all the time. I took three steps toward home, but then Sable, my wolf, moved. I froze. Two years of silence. Ever since the day Elias's rejection broke whatever bond we shared, it took her voice with it. And she picked tonight, of all nights, to wake up for a stranger. "No," I said out loud. She insisted, not caring what I wanted. So, I turned around. He was face down, half buried, with claw marks across his shoulder and chest. I pressed two fingers to his neck. Nothing, for one long second. Then a pulse, it was faint but there. I cleared the snow off his face, and my hands stopped moving on their own. He was, without question, the most striking man I had ever seen. Which felt like an unfair thing for a half-dead body to be. There were no pack mark on him. No brand, no crest, nothing that tied him to anywhere. For a wolf, that was almost unheard of. A Rogue, then. And Rogues, when someone bothered to come looking for them, were worth money. I reached to check his other arm and my fingers brushed something caught in his claws, a scrap of fabric, torn and frozen with blood. I pulled it free, a fragment of a crest. It was half destroyed, but somehow stitched into the cloth. I had no idea what it was or meant. Whoever had done this to him hadn't been strangers passing through. I shoved the scrap into my pocket and got his arm around my shoulders, hauling him up, cursing the whole way home, dropping him twice in the snow before I stopped trying to be gentle about it. It took an hour to reach my building, another twenty minutes to get him up the stairs. By the time I kicked my door shut behind us, my arms were shaking. I let him fall onto the bed. I stood there, staring down at a stranger bleeding on my sheets, and started doing the math. If someone wanted him back badly enough to leave marks like that, finding him first was worth more than a month of scrubbing toilets. I cleaned what I could reach, cut away the ruined shirt, and wrapped what needed wrapping. By the second night the bleeding had slowed more than it should have for wounds that deep. I told myself I was too tired to think about what that meant. Two days passed. He didn't wake up. I kept working my shifts, kept my mouth shut, kept coming home to check that he was still breathing. Dale cornered me twice more in that time with the same words, same hand on my waist, except now there was a new weight behind it. On the third night, I came home and stopped in the doorway. The bed was empty, and the chair by the heater had been moved. My hand went to the knife strapped under my jeans. "Quiet move, I'd say," a voice said from the corner. I turned. He sat in the chair, one arm held carefully against his ribs, watching me like he hadn't decided yet whether I was a threat. "Who are you?" he asked. "The person who kept you from dying in a snowbank," I said. "You owe me for that." The loud sound of a knock on my door caused me to flinch. "Wren! Open up." My stomach dropped. The stranger was already on his feet, tense, alert despite the wounds. "Closet," I whispered. He didn't move. "Now." I shoved him toward it, shut the door on him, forced my breathing to calm, before opening the front door. Dale swayed in the hallway, reeking of whiskey. "Money's missing from the register. I'm checking your room." He pushed past me before I could answer. "I've been patient," he said, turning back to face me, closing the distance. "Real patient." He laughed. "I'm done pretending, Wren. Especially now that I know what you're really worth to the right people." My back hit the wall as he walked closer. "Dale. Move," I warned. "Or what. I make one call, and every hunter looking for the Plague Doctor knows exactly where to find her." His hand closed on my waist, hard enough to hurt. His eyes flashed red for half a second before he wrestled it back down. I reached for Sable, but she didn't answer. Fine. I'd handle this myself. My fingers found the knife at my hip. Dale leaned in. "You should've listened to me." Before I could finish the thought, he was ripped off me so fast the air moved. I caught myself against the wall. One sharp twist, and his body dropped, his neck bent at an angle it wasn't built for. The room went silent. I looked up. The stranger stood over him, breathing hard with one hand still closed into a fist. He looked at me across the room, and for one long second, I genuinely wondered if I was next.