CHAPTER 3 — THE MAN IN THE RAIN
1739 Words
Branches clawed at Selene’s face as she ran.
No—not ran.
Fled.
There was nothing graceful about the way she crashed through Nightfang’s lower forest, slipping over roots, gasping against the storm, one hand clutching her stomach while the other shoved wet hair from her eyes.
Rain came down in punishing sheets.
Within minutes her dress was plastered to her skin, heavy with mud, wine, and blood.
Blood.
The sight of it still burned in her mind.
She did not dare look down again.
If she looked, it would become real.
If it became real, she would shatter.
So she kept moving.
One stumbling step after another.
The healer’s hut lay somewhere beyond the old willow ridge, but tonight the forest looked unfamiliar, transformed into black shadows and silver flashes of lightning.
Every cramp that twisted through her abdomen made terror bite deeper.
Hold on.
Please hold on.
Her palm pressed harder against her lower belly as if warmth alone could keep the twins anchored.
“You can’t leave me too,” she whispered into the storm, her lips numb. “Please… you can’t.”
The wind swallowed the words.
Kael’s rejection still echoed in her bones.
I reject Selene Vale as my mate.
The sentence had not merely hurt.
It had altered the architecture of her being.
Even now, as she fought through mud and darkness, Selene could feel the hollow place inside her chest where the bond used to hum.
A wound she could not touch but could not escape.
And beneath that agony lurked another pain she had not yet allowed herself to fully face:
Kael had never intended to choose her.
Not once.
Every stolen night.
Every rough kiss.
Every moment she mistook for suppressed longing—
all of it had existed inside a lie she created because hope was easier than truth.
Convenience.
His word returned like acid.
You insolent little fool… did you really think a few nights of convenience gave you the right to stand here?
Selene stumbled over a root and crashed hard to her knees.
Mud splashed.
Pain shot through her shin.
But it was Kael’s voice that knocked the air from her.
Convenience.
She bent forward, hands digging into wet earth.
A broken laugh escaped her throat, almost hysterical.
How stupid.
How unbelievably, catastrophically stupid she had been.
She had built castles out of scraps.
A glance here.
A touch there.
A male returning in darkness because he needed release after battle.
And she—omega servant, motherless fool, lonely enough to mistake possession for affection—had turned it into fate.
Lightning flashed.
For an instant the trees around her glowed silver.
Selene saw herself reflected in a puddle.
Hair wild.
Face streaked with rain and tears.
Dress ruined.
Mud smeared over scraped knees and palms.
She looked exactly what Nightfang had called her.
Pathetic.
Another cramp hit.
This one so sharp she screamed.
Her body folded over itself.
Hot pain clenched low and merciless, dragging panic up her throat.
“No no no…”
Her fingers trembled violently as she touched between her thighs again.
More blood.
Not heavy.
But enough.
Enough to make cold terror explode through every limb.
Selene forced herself upright.
Move.
Move now.
She staggered deeper into the trees.
The healer. Find the healer.
Branches whipped at her bare arms. Thorns tore the thin fabric of her dress. Once she slipped on moss and nearly pitched face-first into a ravine.
Still she kept moving.
Because stopping meant feeling.
Stopping meant hearing Kael’s rejection in the silence.
Stopping meant looking at the blood.
And Selene suspected if she stopped, she might never rise again.
By the time she reached the old willow ridge, she was shaking so badly her teeth chattered.
Not entirely from cold.
The storm had intensified.
Thunder cracked directly overhead, violent enough to make wolves in distant dens howl.
The healer’s hut should have been visible from here.
A dim lantern.
Smoke.
Something.
But through the rain, Selene saw only darkness.
Her heart sank.
No.
No, Elder Healer Brinna often traveled to the upper dens on ceremony nights.
Please don’t let tonight be one of them.
She stumbled down the slope toward where the hut sat nestled between stones.
Empty.
No lantern.
No smoke.
No life.
Selene stopped at the doorway, staring at the black interior as hopelessness rose so fast it nearly made her vomit.
Empty.
Of course.
Of course.
Because the Moon Goddess apparently intended to strip her of every single refuge in one night.
She stepped inside anyway.
The hut smelled of dried herbs and old wood.
Familiar.
Comforting under any other circumstance.
Tonight it felt like a tomb.
Selene reached blindly for the small shelf where Brinna kept candles.
Her fingers shook too hard to strike flint on the first try.
Or the second.
By the third, she was sobbing openly.
A weak flame finally caught.
Yellow light flickered over cramped walls, woven cots, hanging medicinal bundles.
Selene made it two steps before her knees gave out beside the healer’s table.
She dragged herself upward enough to lean against the wood.
Breathing.
Just breathe.
She tried to remember what Brinna had told her when confirming the pregnancy.
No extreme shock.
No severe injury.
No wolf suppressants.
Twins are delicate in early formation, child.
Selene gave a strangled laugh.
Wonderful.
Tonight she had achieved all three.
She looked around frantically for herbs.
Moonleaf for cramping.
Redroot tonic.
Anything.
Her vision blurred too badly to focus.
She wiped tears angrily from her face.
Think.
Brinna kept moonleaf—
A crash outside made her jerk.
Selene froze.
Wind?
No.
Footsteps.
Heavy.
Measured.
Not the frantic scramble of a servant.
Not Brinna’s light shuffle.
A wolf.
A powerful one.
Her pulse lurched.
Had Kael sent warriors after her?
To throw her farther?
To silence her before rumors spread?
Panic surged.
Selene snatched the nearest object from the table—a small bronze herb knife laughably useless against an Alpha—and backed toward the wall.
The footsteps stopped outside the door.
For one suspended second, the storm itself seemed to inhale.
Then the door opened.
Cold rain gusted in.
A figure filled the threshold.
Tall enough to blot half the lightning behind him.
Broad shoulders draped in a black coat already soaked dark.
Hair slicked by rain.
Presence—
Moon Goddess.
Presence like the forest itself had bowed to let him pass.
Selene’s hand tightened around the knife.
The man stepped inside and closed the door with one deliberate motion.
Candlelight hit his face.
Strong mouth.
A severe jaw lined with faint stubble.
Eyes the same molten gold as Kael’s—
yet older.
Harder.
Ancient in a way youth could never imitate.
Selene’s breath vanished.
She knew that face.
Every wolf in the northern territories knew that face.
Portraits hung in council rooms. Stories were told in low voices around fires. Mothers frightened reckless pups with his name.
Alaric Draven.
Former Supreme Alpha.
Kael’s father.
Selene flattened against the wall.
Of all the wolves the Moon could send tonight…
why him?
Alaric’s gaze moved over her once.
Not leering.
Not startled.
Assessing.
Taking in the torn dress, mud, scraped palms, blood at the hem.
His expression did not visibly change.
Yet the room somehow grew more tense.
“What are you doing here?” Selene whispered.
Her voice sounded thin.
Ridiculously thin.
Alaric removed his wet gloves finger by finger.
“I could ask you the same.”
His voice was deep, controlled, carrying no wasted inflection.
It made Kael’s coldness feel immature by comparison.
Selene swallowed.
“I asked first.”
One dark brow lifted slightly.
Interesting, that tiny movement seemed to say.
Even broken, she still had enough stubbornness to question him.
Alaric set the gloves on Brinna’s table.
“Brinna sent word to upper territory this afternoon requesting a rare tincture,” he said. “I came to deliver it.”
He lifted a leather pouch in one hand.
Selene stared.
So he had arrived by coincidence.
Or fate had developed a twisted sense of humor.
Her knees wobbled.
The adrenaline keeping her upright began to leak away.
Alaric noticed instantly.
His eyes dropped to the hand she kept clamped over her abdomen.
Then to the blood on her dress.
When he looked back at her, something in his stare sharpened.
“You’re injured.”
“I’m fine.”
A lie so stupid neither of them respected it.
Alaric took one step forward.
Selene jerked back, knife lifting.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
His gaze flicked to the tiny blade.
For the first time, the corner of his mouth moved.
Not a smile.
Something drier.
“You plan to defend yourself from me with a herb knife?”
Selene’s cheeks burned despite the terror.
“I don’t know why you’re here.”
That almost-smile vanished.
“Clearly.”
Lightning flashed outside.
For a heartbeat the room blazed silver.
Alaric’s eyes returned to her stomach.
Then to her face.
His next question came quietly.
“Did my son do this?”
Selene’s throat closed.
My son.
The phrase made everything worse somehow.
Because hearing Kael reduced to a relationship title—someone’s child, not just her destroyer—suddenly reminded her that wolves existed who had known him before he became this ruthless stranger.
That someone had raised him.
That someone standing in front of her shared his blood.
Humiliation surged anew.
Selene lifted her chin with what remained of dignity.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
Alaric was silent for a long moment.
Then he said, “You’re bleeding.”
Selene’s eyes stung.
“Yes.”
Another pause.
And then, to her complete horror, Alaric took one more step and inhaled.
Deeply.
Like an Alpha scenting the truth beneath words.
His entire body went still.
Not mildly.
Violently still.
The candle flame flickered.
Selene felt the shift before she understood it.
Something primal in the room had awakened.
Alaric’s eyes snapped to hers.
Not cold now.
Not detached.
Piercing.
Impossible.
“What,” he said very softly, “are you carrying?”
Selene’s fingers tightened protectively over her belly.
Fear shot through her.
Not because of the question.
Because of the way he asked it.
As if he had scented something no one else was supposed to know.
As if the storm itself had just delivered her from one Draven male…
straight into the path of another.
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