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

Chapter 2 – The Scent of Old Blood

By midday the fire is nothing but wet, black bones jutting from the earth. Ash hangs in the air like a second fog. Wolves pick through the wreckage for anything salvageable; most of it is gone.

I stand at the edge of the ruins, arms wrapped around myself more to keep from shaking than from cold. My palms are blistered under the bandages Elrin wrapped earlier. Every time I flex my fingers, they throb.

“Stay still,” he muttered when he finished. “You burn them again tonight, I’m taping your hands to your sides.”

As if standing still has ever been an option in this pack.

“Lysa.” Corin’s voice draws me back. “With me.”

He doesn’t wait to see if I follow, just strides toward what used to be the south wall. I bite down on a sigh and go after him, boots sinking into the wet ash.

The ground here is less churned; the reinforcement beams held longer before they fell. Charred timbers lie like broken ribs. Corin crouches near one blackened section, gloved fingers brushing something that isn’t wood or metal.

“Look,” he says.

At first I think it’s just a darker smear against the soot. Then my wolf catches the faintest whiff beneath the burnt stink: older smoke, iron, and something that punches straight through my chest.

A symbol is scorched into the stone foundation, lines burned in deliberate strokes before the barn fully caught. Two interlocking crescents, one crossed with a vertical s***h.

I haven’t seen that mark in three years.

My lungs forget how to work. “That’s… that’s not possible.”

Corin’s eyes lift to mine, sharp, searching. “Recognize it?”

I swallow, mouth suddenly dry. “It’s a Varrow sigil. Old war mark. My family’s pack used it before the treaty.”

“Your family’s pack,” he repeats, slow and careful, as if tasting the words. “So someone from Varrow burned my barn and left their calling card.”

“It might not have been them.” My voice comes out too fast. “Anyone could copy a mark. Humans with the right intel, a wolf who wants us to think—”

“But you’re sure that’s the right symbol.” No accusation yet. Just that steady, weighing gaze that used to make me feel safe. Now it feels like a scale.

“Yes.” There’s no point lying about that. “But that doesn’t mean it was my mother, or Rian, or anyone under their direct orders. Old sigils get traded, sold, stolen—”

“Someone chose this one,” he cuts in. “Chose your mark, Lysa.”

It’s not my mark. It never was. I left that life, that blood, the day I walked into Duskvale and swore I was done being a Varrow wolf.

My heart doesn’t care about specifics. It’s pounding hard enough that I feel it in my burned hands.

“I told you my mother fought in the last border war,” I say, forcing my voice to steady. “She liked… symbolism. If she wanted to rattle you, she’d use something like this. But that still doesn’t tell us if it’s actually her or someone just trying to drag old ghosts into this.”

Corin straightens slowly, taller than me even when I’m not exhausted and smelling like burnt hair. His expression is carved stone, only the tension in his jaw betraying how tightly he’s holding himself together.

“We’ve had three leaks in as many weeks,” he says. “Ambushed patrols, sabotaged supply runs, now a fire on the edge of our territory. Every time, the enemy is exactly where we’re weakest. That’s not luck.”

“I know,” I murmur. I’ve been stitching the same invisible pattern in my head, threading incidents together while everyone else just fought the flames.

He keeps going, low and calm. “The only ones who know our full patrol rotations and storage layouts are my inner circle…and you.”

The words land like cold water down my spine.

I make myself meet his eyes. “You think I burned your barn?” My voice is level; I’m perversely proud of that. “That I stuffed your pups under my arm with one hand and lit the match with the other?”

His nostrils flare. “If I thought that, you wouldn’t be standing here.”

A small, stupid part of me is relieved. The rest is just tired.

“But I can’t ignore what’s in front of me,” he adds. “A Varrow war mark in my ruins, and the only Varrow-born wolf in Duskvale standing three feet away from it.”

There it is—the thing I’ve felt pressing at my back since I first stepped past this border. The unspoken: you are useful, you are wanted, you are loved… until your blood becomes too loud to ignore.

I wrap my arms tighter around myself. “So what do you want from me, Corin? An apology for a symbol I didn’t burn? A promise that I’m not sending letters to my mother at night?”

“I want answers.” There’s a raw edge to his tone now, the alpha mask thinning enough for the male underneath to show through. “You told me when you came here that your ties to Varrow were cut.”

“They are.” Mostly. As much as blood ever lets you cut it. “I haven’t spoken to my mother since I chose your pack. I haven’t stepped on Varrow soil. I haven’t—”

“Then why,” he murmurs, stepping closer, “does her mark sit on my land like a threat?”

Heat spikes behind my eyes, sharp and humiliating. I blink it back.

“Maybe because someone wants you to look at me,” I say. “Instead of at whoever inside your perfect circle is actually bleeding you.”

His jaw works. For a second, the old Corin is there—the one who took my face in his hands and said, I trust you, even when my whole pack doesn’t.

Then the alpha shutters drop.

“We’ll be looking at everyone,” he says. “Including you.”

The ash crunches under his boots as he turns away, calling for Ardyn, for Seræn, for a full review of all patrol intel. Orders. Structure. Control.

I stay where I am, staring at the burned-in mark of a past I thought I’d outrun.

Someone dragged Varrow’s ghosts onto Duskvale soil tonight.

And whether I’m innocent or not, I can feel the pack’s eyes already shifting toward me, drawn by the scent of old blood and an enemy who knows exactly which scar to press.