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

Chapter 8 – The Pack’s Eyes

They won’t say my name.

They don’t have to.

The infirmary hallway hums with low voices, fear sharpening every word.

“Varrow scent—”

“Kids dumped right on our border—”

“Someone’s feeding them maps, I’m telling you—”

I stand pressed to the cool wall, hands still damp from scrubbing blood and sedative off my skin. Elrin is inside with the rescued pups; I can hear his soft murmur, the crinkle of blankets.

Out here, the air stinks of panic.

Tessa spots me first. The older boy’s mother. Her eyes are swollen, cheeks raw from crying. She goes very still.

Then she moves.

“You.” She slices through the crowd, Marek barely catching her arm before she hits me. “You were with them, weren’t you? At the barn. At the fire. You know what they smell like.”

I keep my voice level. “Your sons are alive. Elrin says—”

“Don’t you dare say ‘safe’ to me.” Her voice cracks. “They woke up in sacks on the edge of the world. Bound. Drugged. And they smelled like them.”

“Varrow,” someone breathes.

The word hangs, electric.

“I do smell Varrow,” I say. Lying won’t help. “And humans. And something else, something—”

“Funny,” another wolf cuts in, eyes narrow. “Right after we find a Varrow mark on our land. Right after your old friend drops by.” His lip curls. “Convenient.”

Heat crawls up my spine. My wolf bares her teeth, but I hold her back.

“You think I arranged this?” I ask, quiet. “That I let pups be taken just to dump them back here as—what? A calling card?”

“No one said that,” Tessa snaps. “But you’re the only Varrow wolf sleeping under our roof. And now their stink is all over our children.”

Murmurs swell, rising like a tide.

“She disappears after dark—”

“Comes back with stories about ‘helpful’ Varrow—”

“Alpha’s too close to see it—”

The words don’t hit like claws. They hit like stones. Old ones, thrown before.

The crowd shifts. I realize with a cold twist that I am in the center of a loose ring—Tessa in front, others fanned behind her, eyes bright and hungry with fear.

Marek rumbles, stepping forward. “Enough. Stand down.”

No one moves.

“Maybe,” Tessa says, voice shaking, “we should keep our pups away from anything that reeks of Varrow. Just until we’re sure.”

Her meaning is clear. Remove me from the house. From the pups. From everything.

A low, ugly sound ripples through the hall. My heart beats once, hard.

I don’t beg. I don’t explain. I just look at them—all these wolves I’ve trained with, bled with, cooked for—and feel the familiar weight settle on my shoulders.

Traitor is such an easy story.

The air shifts.

Corin’s scent hits first, then his voice, rough as gravel. “What’s going on here?”

He appears at the far end of the corridor, shoulders filling the space, eyes taking in every detail: Tessa’s stance, Marek’s bristling, my stillness.

“Alpha,” Tessa says, jaw trembling. “They smelled Varrow on my boy. On his skin. On his hair. And she—”

Every head turns.

For a heartbeat, the hallway holds its breath.

This is the moment. He can end this with a word.

Or he can nod, just once, and let them tear me apart.

Corin’s gaze locks with mine. I see it all flicker there—the barn, the sigil, Maelin’s note on his desk, two sedated pups on cold ground.

Fear. Duty. Love. None of them loud enough on their own.

His mouth opens—

And a sharp, keening howl rips through the house from outside, slicing the moment clean in half.

Not a patrol call. Not a hunt.

A warning.

Every wolf jerks, instincts snapping toward the door.

Seræn barrels into the corridor, cheeks windburned, eyes blown wide. “Alpha!” she gasps. “You need to see this. Now.”

Corin doesn’t look away from me when he asks, “What is it?”

Seræn’s throat works. She lifts a shaking hand, something clutched in her fist—a scrap of fabric, soaked dark.

“We found this,” she says. “On the east ridge. Where the last patrol vanished.”

She opens her fingers.

It’s a piece of torn shirt, burned at the edges.

And in the center, clear even under the blood and ash, is a mark I know better than my own name.

The Varrow sigil.

Burned right through the fabric.

And underneath it, in smaller, newer strokes, a second symbol scorched over the first—

Duskvale’s crest. Our crest.

Whoever did this isn’t just bleeding us.

They’re signing it.

With both our names.