The Alpha Who Waited

Chapter 1

"Get up. Now. Don't turn on the light."

My father's hand was already over my mouth before my eyes opened. I froze, heart slamming, until I recognized the shape of him crouched by my bed in the dark.

"Dad?"

"Quiet." He pulled his hand back. "Pack one bag. Only what you can carry running. We leave in five minutes."

I didn't ask why. I'd learned a long time ago that when my father's voice went that flat and careful, questions cost time we didn't have. I grabbed the duffel from under my bed, the one I kept half packed without ever admitting to myself why, and shoved in clothes, a photo of my mother, the knife Dad gave me on my thirteenth birthday.

Down the hall, I heard Finn's door creak open, then his voice, thick with sleep. "Dad, what's..."

"Bag. Now. Don't ask me twice."

We moved through the house like ghosts. No lights. No sound. My father checked the windows before every door, the way he used to check them when I was little and didn't understand what he was watching for. I understood now. I'd understood for years.

Alpha Vance.

I didn't need anyone to say the name for it to sit heavy in my chest. He'd been circling our family since before I could talk, ever since my mother turned him down and paid for it with everything she had left. Lately he'd started looking at me the way he used to look at her. My father had noticed. That was enough.

We loaded the car in the dark garage, no engine, just pushing it out by hand onto the gravel so the sound wouldn't carry to the house next door. My hands shook as I set the duffel in the trunk.

"Phones," my father said.

Finn hesitated, gripping his like it was the last normal thing in his life. "Dad, all my..."

"They can track it. Every message, every call, every step you've taken with it in your pocket. Give it here."

I handed mine over without a fight. Finn's jaw tightened, but he did the same. My father knelt by the back tire, pulled a rock the size of his fist from the flower bed, and brought it down on both phones until the screens shattered and the little green lights inside them went dark for good.

"That's everything we were," Finn muttered. "Gone. Just like that."

"That's everything he could use to find us," my father corrected. "Get in the car."

I climbed into the back seat, Finn beside me, and my father slid behind the wheel. He didn't start the engine until we'd rolled another quarter mile down the gravel, out of earshot of the house that had been the only home I'd ever known.

The engine caught. Headlights stayed off until we hit the main road.

"Where are we going?" I finally asked.

My father's eyes found mine in the rearview mirror, and for a second I saw something I'd never seen on his face before. Not fear exactly. Something closer to hope, and it scared me more than fear would have.

"Your mother's pack," he said. "Silverpine. Up north, past the ridge line. She was born there before she ever set foot in Ashgrove."

"She never talked about it."

"She had her reasons." His hands tightened on the wheel. "It's the only place Vance doesn't have eyes. The only place with any obligation to take us in."

Finn leaned forward. "You think they'll actually let us stay? We're strangers to them."

"Your mother wasn't a stranger. Her name still means something there. It has to."

I looked out the window at the dark trees blurring past, at the road unspooling ahead of us like something I couldn't see the end of. Somewhere behind us, Ashgrove was waking up to an empty house and three missing phones and no trail to follow. I told myself that was good. I told myself we were finally, finally safe.

Then I saw the headlights.

Far back, just a pair of small lights on the empty road behind us, keeping pace no matter how fast my father pushed the car. My stomach dropped.

"Dad."

"I see them."

"Are they..."

"I don't know." His voice had gone hard, controlled, the voice he used when he was scared and didn't want us to hear it. "Hold on. We're almost to the border."

Finn twisted around in his seat, watching the lights the same way I was, neither of us breathing right. The trees thinned ahead, the road curving toward a stretch of open land I'd never seen before, misted over in gray morning fog.

"That's it," my father said, something like relief cracking his voice for the first time. "That's Silverpine ahead."

The headlights behind us surged closer.

And then, through the fog rolling across the road, I saw a shape step out onto the pavement, massive, dark, blocking our path completely, and my father slammed on the brakes so hard I was thrown against my seatbelt, staring straight into eyes that weren't human at all.