The Alpha's Dark Solstice Claim

Chapter 2 - Consequences.

Marybeth

I woke to a body that felt unfamiliar a couple of weeks after the festival. Not sore. Not aching in any way that I could point to. Just … altered. As if something inside me had shifted its weight while I slept, rearranging itself without asking permission.

The room was dim, winter light barely leaking around the curtains, and for a long moment I lay still, cataloguing sensations the way my father had taught me to do when instincts flared. Dry mouth. Heavy limbs. A faint, persistent warmth low in my belly that had nothing to do with memory.

I told myself it was the alcohol. The festival had been loud, indulgent, reckless in the way the Truce always encouraged. Humans called it celebrating history. Wolves called it surviving restraint. I rolled onto my side and stared at the wall.

It couldn’t possibly still be the aftereffects of the festival since that was weeks ago. Rowan’s words came back to me with uncomfortable clarity.

“You need to forget this.” It was all I had thought about the past couple of days. I closed my eyes and tried. I tried to summon distance, to flatten the night into something dull and regrettable. But the memory refused to cooperate. It stayed vivid, sharp-edged, alive beneath my skin.

I got dressed slowly, choosing clothes that felt like armour rather than comfort. Outside, Alder Ridge was already shaking off the festival and preparing for Christmas. People walked dogs. Trucks idled.

Someone down the street was scraping frost off a windshield, the sound loud in the quiet morning. Normal. It should have helped. Instead, the unease followed me through the day like a shadow that didn’t quite match my movements.

Food tasted wrong. Coffee made my stomach turn. By afternoon, I had retreated to my room under the pretence of a headache and sat on my bed, knees pulled to my chest, breathing through a wave of nausea that rose and fell without warning.

That was when the thought finally surfaced. Not panic. Not dread. Just recognition. I didn’t cry when I bought the test half an hour later. I didn’t rush. I paid in cash, avoided eye contact, and walked home with the box tucked into my bag like contraband.

The house was empty when I slipped inside, my father still at work, council matters stretching long now that the Truce was over. The bathroom felt too bright. I leaned against the counter while I waited, my pulse steady, my thoughts strangely calm.

When the result appeared, bold and unmistakable, I stared at it until the edges blurred. Positive. The word didn’t echo. It settled. I sat down on the edge of the tub and pressed my palm flat against my stomach, as if that might make this more real, or less.

There was nothing to feel yet. No flutter. No movement. Just the knowledge that my body had already begun rewriting the future. I wasn’t afraid. That realization surprised me more than the test itself.

I was stunned, yes. Quietly reeling. But fear didn’t come. Not yet. Instead, my mind did what it always did when something went wrong. It assessed. I could tell my father. I could tell Rowan. I could leave.

I could stay. None of the options felt solid enough to choose yet. They hovered, unresolved, waiting for something to push me one way or another. I cleaned up carefully, hiding the test in the bottom of my bag, beneath folded sweaters and things I didn’t need to look at right now.

I lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling, replaying the night again, but this time through a different lens. Had it meant anything to him? The question burned. I told myself it didn’t matter. He had been clear.

He had drawn the line himself. And yet … something about the way he had looked at me, the way his control had fractured only when he thought he might lose it entirely, refused to feel meaningless. I needed to see him.

Not to confront. Not to confess. Just to know. I waited until dusk, until the town softened into its evening rhythm. Then I slipped out, taking side streets, avoiding the square. I didn’t go to Blackridge Security directly. That would have been too obvious. Too desperate.

Instead, I hovered at the edges of places he was likely to pass. The diner. The council building. The stretch of road where his trucks usually parked. I told myself I was just looking. What I found felt like a blow.

Blackridge Security was in motion in a way I hadn’t seen before. Trucks lined up neatly, equipment being unloaded, men checking lists and speaking in low, efficient tones. It wasn’t heightened alert. It was preparation.

Formal. Intentional. And there he was. Rowan stood near the building’s entrance, coat buttoned, posture easy but alert. He was speaking to someone at his side … a woman I didn’t recognize at first because she didn’t move like anyone I knew.

She was tall, dark-haired, composed in a way that felt practiced rather than instinctive. She stood beside him, not behind. Close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. When he turned toward her, his attention narrowed in a way I had never seen directed at anyone else.

The shift was subtle. Devastating. My breath caught before I could stop it. I stepped back, heart pounding now, not with panic but with a dawning, unwanted clarity. This wasn’t business. This wasn’t coincidence.

The men around them deferred not just to Rowan, but to her presence beside him. Mate. She was his mate. The word surfaced without permission. I turned away before either of them could look up, my hands trembling as I retreated down the street.

The cold air burned my lungs, sharp and grounding, but it didn’t dull the ache spreading through my chest. By the time I reached the corner, I was already shaking my head. No. You’re assuming. You don’t know anything yet.

But Alder Ridge was not a town that kept secrets well. By the time I reached home, the whispers had teeth. I heard them through walls, through open windows, through conversations that stopped just a fraction too late when I passed.

A name. A smile. A sense of approval that felt communal and final. Seraphina Vale. I didn’t know her, but it quickly became clear that the town did. Or thought it did. Good bloodlines. Good temperament.

A stabilizing influence. A woman who fit neatly beside a man like Rowan Blackridge. By morning, the notices were up. Formal. Clean. Impossible to misread. “Handfasting Ceremony.” I stood in the square and stared at the announcement until the words lost meaning.

So that was it. A handfasting ceremony for an alpha in the town square only happened when they were already mated. It was a way for the wolves to “get married” without actually letting the humans in on our secret.

I realized that the night before the Truce hadn’t been something he needed to forget because it endangered him. It had been something he had already accounted for. A mistake, yes … but one he had always planned to bury beneath duty and expectation.

I had never been part of the future he was building. The realization didn’t shatter me. It clarified. I walked until my feet ached, letting the cold bite into my skin until my thoughts lined up cleanly again. The idea of telling Rowan flickered briefly … weak, distant, already doomed.

If I told him now, it wouldn’t be about choice. It would be about obligation. He would do what he believed was right. He would try to fix it. And in doing so, he would claim it. Claim me, claim my child, fold us into a structure that had never made space for who I was.

I would become leverage. I would become a problem to manage. I would not allow that. As night fell, the town glowed again, banners catching the light, people moving with purpose toward a ceremony that promised stability and order.

Somewhere at the centre of it all, Rowan stood beside the woman he had chosen. I lay on my bed, one hand resting lightly over my stomach, and let the truth settle fully. Whatever I thought we had shared, Rowan Blackridge had already moved on from.

And I would not chase a man who had never planned to stay.