The Alpha Who Waited

Chapter 5

The gates of Silverpine opened slower than I expected, like the whole pack was holding its breath along with me.

I climbed out of the car on legs that didn't feel steady, the cold morning air doing nothing to clear the strange, humming pull still sitting under my skin. I told myself it was exhaustion. Fear. The kind of adrenaline crash that comes after a night of running for your life. I told myself a lot of things standing in that gateway, and none of them explained why I couldn't stop looking for him.

He stood a few yards off, arms crossed, talking low with a group of warriors who'd gathered at the sound of the gate. Even at a distance, he looked wrong for how big he was, like the ground should have bent a little under that kind of size, that kind of presence. Dark hair. A scar cutting along his jaw that made him look like a man who'd survived something and never quite come back from it whole.

He hadn't looked at me since the border road. I told myself that was fine. I told myself I didn't care.

"Rhea." My father's hand landed on my shoulder, gentle but firm, steering me toward the warmly lit house at the edge of the compound. "Your grandparents are just inside. Come on."

I hadn't seen my grandparents since I was small enough that I barely remembered their faces, just warmth, and the smell of something baking, and a voice that used to sing to me before bed. The door opened before we even reached it, and an older woman with silver streaked hair and sharp, kind eyes pulled me into a hug so sudden and fierce it knocked the breath out of me.

"Look at you," she said, voice cracking. "Look at how much you look like her."

I didn't have to ask who she meant. My mother's face lived in old photographs and in the corners of my own reflection, and apparently in whatever this woman was seeing now, staring at me like I was a ghost she'd been waiting years to see again.

"Grandma Nora," my father said quietly, and she nodded like that confirmed something she already knew.

I let myself be pulled inside, let my grandfather's steady hands settle on my shoulders, let the warmth of the house and the smell of woodsmoke wrap around me like something I hadn't known I was missing. For a little while, sitting at their table with tea I barely tasted, I let myself believe we were actually safe.

But my mind kept drifting back outside. Back to the gate. Back to him.

I found an excuse to step onto the porch later that afternoon, telling myself I needed air, telling myself it had nothing to do with the fact that I could see the training yard from here, where he was working with a group of warriors, moving through drills with an intensity that made everyone around him look slow by comparison.

He glanced up.

Just once. Just for a second. But our eyes caught across that whole distance, and something in my chest pulled tight and warm in a way I had absolutely no name for. He looked away first, jaw tightening, like he was angry at himself for looking at all.

I didn't understand it. I'd never felt anything like it in my life, this strange, magnetic ache that had nothing to do with how handsome he was, though he was, and everything to do with some deeper pull I couldn't explain even to myself. It scared me a little. It scared me more that some part of me didn't want it to stop.

"You're staring," Finn said, appearing beside me with a mug of something hot clutched in both hands.

"I'm not."

"You are. At the Alpha. Which, considering he could probably snap both our necks without trying, might not be the smartest hobby."

"I'm not staring at him." I looked away hard, cheeks burning. "I'm just... tired. That's all."

Finn gave me a look that said he didn't believe a word of it, but he let it go, nudging my shoulder and steering the conversation toward something easier, whether Grandma Nora's cooking was as good as Dad remembered, whether we'd get our own rooms or have to share. Normal things. Safe things.

I tried to focus on his voice instead of the training yard. I tried, and mostly failed, and somewhere in the middle of failing I caught myself wondering what it would feel like if he ever looked at me again the way he had for that one unguarded second, like I was something he wanted and wasn't allowed to have.

The thought had barely finished forming when a horn split the afternoon air, sharp and urgent, cutting through every conversation in the compound at once. Around us, warriors dropped what they were doing and sprinted toward the gate. My grandfather's face went pale in the doorway behind us.

"That's the emergency signal," he said quietly. "Something's wrong."