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

Chapter 9 – Signed in Blood

For a heartbeat, no one moves.

The scrap of cloth hangs between Seræn’s fingers like a verdict. Varrow’s twin crescents, hard and black. Our own Duskvale crest seared over it in jagged strokes, as if someone branded one name across another.

Two enemies, wrapped into one taunt.

Behind me, the hallway’s fear shifts flavor. It’s not just about me anymore. It’s bigger. Uglier.

“Where exactly?” Corin’s voice is flat.

“East ridge,” Seræn says. “On the old hunters’ path. Right where Kestrel Patrol went dark. No bodies. No tracks. Just…this, pinned to a tree with a silver spike.”

Silver. They wanted us to know it was for wolves.

Corin takes the cloth. It crinkles faintly as he turns it over, thumb brushing the burned edges. His nostrils flare; I know he’s searching for scent. Even from here I can catch it: char, blood, a chemical tang that matches the sedative on the pups and the accelerant at the barn.

Same signatures, over and over.

“This isn’t Varrow,” I say quietly. “Not just Varrow. They’d never burn our crest alongside theirs. That’s…” I search for the word. “Blasphemy.”

“Then who?” Tessa whispers. Her anger has drained into something like horror. “Who does that?”

“Someone who wants you to stop seeing us as two packs,” I say. “Wants you to see one big, ugly target. ‘Them.’ Whoever bleeds you, it’s not about Duskvale or Varrow winning. It’s about both of you losing.”

Corin’s jaw tightens. He looks up, gaze sweeping the hall, catching every pair of eyes.

“You all see this?” he asks. “You smell it?”

Nods. Murmurs. No one can deny what’s right in front of them.

“This mark isn’t Lysa’s doing,” he says. “Or Varrow alone. It’s someone wearing our faces like masks. Someone who thinks we’re too blind and afraid to tell the difference.”

His focus snags on me, a brief, heavy pause. “They were right once.”

He lets that admission hang there, pointed and raw.

“Not again,” he finishes.

The words land in my chest like a stone and a promise at once.

He turns to Tessa. “Your boys were used as a message. We will answer it. But we will not answer it by eating our own.”

Her gaze flickers between the scorched sigils, my face, and his. Finally, her shoulders sag. She nods once, jerky. “Just…bring them home. All of them.”

“We will,” he says.

Seræn steps closer with the cloth. “I can track the chemical mix on this, cross it with the barn and the pups. Same supplier, same handlers. We’re getting fingerprints, even if they think they’re clean.”

“Do it,” Corin orders. “Ardyn doubles patrols on the ridges. No one moves outside in pairs. Marek, lock down external visitors. No one in or out without my word.”

The hall starts to buzz with purpose instead of panic.

Corin holds the burned scrap out to me.

“Walk me through this,” he says. “From both sides.”

Not as suspect. As specialist.

My fingers close around the cloth. It’s still damp, still reeks of stolen children and calculated cruelty. Under the stink, though, there’s a thread of something else:

A mistake.

A tiny trace of scent that doesn’t belong in either pack.

I meet Corin’s gaze. “Good news,” I say, voice low. “Whoever thinks they’re untouchable?”

I lift the cloth between us, that double-branded insult catching the light.

“They finally left us their first real trail.”