My Alpha Rejected Me… Then Begged Me to Save His Pack

Chapter 14 – Line in the Dirt

The higher we drive, the tighter Corin’s grip gets on the wheel.

Pines close in on either side of the narrow road, branches knitting overhead. The tracker’s signal pulses on Seræn’s app, a tiny blinking dot ahead of us, inching deeper into the hills. Every so often, the connection flickers, then steadies again.

“Signal booster’s doing its best,” Seræn’s voice crackles from the dashboard speaker. “But if she goes into a tunnel or under heavy rock, we might lose her.”

“Then we don’t let her get that far,” Corin mutters.

I watch the screen. “She just turned off. Private road, no signage.”

“Logging track,” Seræn says. “Old. Barely on the map.”

“Of course it is,” I say. “Why use a front door when you can use a forgotten one?”

We creep closer, headlights off now, tires crunching slow over gravel. Up ahead, silver flashes between the trees—her SUV, parked at the end of a rough clearing. Beyond it, a chain‑link gate blends into the shadows, topped with rusted barbed wire and a very new keypad.

The facility we hit before was half a hospital, half a bunker. This looks smaller, meaner. A satellite, not the heart.

“Eyes up,” Corin says. “We go on foot from here.”

We slip out, closing the doors with soft, careful clicks. Night crowds in, thick with the scent of damp earth and old oil. I take a breath, let my wolf stretch in my senses. No immediate heartbeats besides ours. No close human sweat.

“She’s inside already,” I whisper.

“Tracker says yes,” Seræn confirms. “Signal’s stationary about forty meters past the gate, slightly below ground level.”

“Basement or cut‑in bunker,” I murmur. “They love their holes.”

Corin eyes the keypad. “Think you can charm it open?”

“Give me a minute.” I kneel, fingers tracing the metal casing. Standard human model, upgraded with an extra layer of electronic security. Seræn feeds me override codes in my ear; I splice them with the few tricks Maelin insisted I learn “in case we ever need to steal something more interesting than a truck.”

The light flashes red, red, red—

Then green.

The lock thunks.

Corin arches a brow. “Remind me never to leave you alone with my safe.”

“Already broke into your heart,” I murmur.

It’s out before I can stop it. Heat flashes up my neck. His breath stutters.

“Lysa.”

“Move,” I hiss, shoving the gate just enough to slip through. “We’re not here for flirt practice.”

Inside the fence, the air changes. Sterile cleaner. Cold metal. Old fear.

We find a side entrance, unmarked, half‑hidden under an overhang. Another keypad; this one opens easier, riding the code from the gate. A narrow stairwell leads down, lit by strips of harsh white light.

Every step echoes too loud in my ears.

“Seræn, talk to me,” I whisper.

“You’re almost on top of her,” she says. “Fifteen meters. Two levels down. I’m picking up at least three other signals in there, maybe more. Hard to tell with the interference.”

“Armed?” Corin asks.

“Assume yes.”

We reach the bottom of the stairs. A plain metal door waits, slightly ajar. Voices murmur beyond—too muffled to distinguish words, but one of them has that same crisp, unbothered cadence as the woman at the gas station.

Corin glances at me, question in his eyes.

Kick it in, or listen?

“Wait,” I mouth.

I edge up to the gap, letting sound filter through.

“…told you he’d do it,” a male voice is saying, amused. “Alphas are predictable. Squeeze the right nerve, they always pick the same pain.”

“That’s why we cultivate their paranoias,” the woman replies. “Give them easy targets. Foreign mates. Rogue sons. Old grudges. It keeps them from noticing who’s keeping the books.”

My fingers dig into the doorframe.

Corin’s jaw goes stone‑hard beside me.

“Duskvale’s almost ripe,” she continues. “Once we close these last accounts, we walk away clean. The Varrow elder council will tear what’s left of them apart looking for traitors we invented. And our friends in the city will be very happy with their new assets.”

“Pups fetch a higher price than lumber,” the man says, and laughs.

My vision goes red at the edges.

Corin’s hand clamps on my wrist a second before I launch myself through the gap. His grip is iron, but I still jerk forward, breath coming sharp.

“Not yet,” he mouths. His eyes burn with the same fury. “We need faces. Names. Proof.”

He’s right. Logic claws its way back through the haze.

I force myself to breathe. To listen.

Another voice joins them—smooth, amused, horribly familiar.

“Speaking of easy targets,” it drawls. “How long do you think before your alpha realizes who’s been walking his little traitor around on a leash?”

Orren.

My heart stops. Starts again at a gallop.

The woman laughs. “He’ll never see it. That’s the beauty of humiliation. Break a bond, and they spend years convincing themselves they did the right thing. They won’t admit they were wrong until you shove the truth down their throat.”

“And by then,” Orren says, “we’ll be gone. With their pups, their routes, and their enemies’ money.”

Corin’s fingers tremble on my wrist.

He heard all of it.

Every word. Every smug, careful syllable about the bond he broke and the blind spot he made.

For a second, I think he’ll explode through the door and tear Orren apart with his bare hands. Part of me wants him to.

Instead, very slowly, he releases my wrist.

His voice, when it reaches my ear, is low and steady, wrapped around a blade.

“You were right,” he whispers. “About everything.”

Something in my chest cracks.

“Let me go first,” I breathe. “He knows your fury. He doesn’t know mine.”

Corin’s eyes flare. Pride. Pain. A savage kind of love.

We count to three in the silence between sentences.

On “two,” I kick the door wide.