Too Late, Alpha: I Am Now Untouchable

The Untamed Alpha

Maddox’s POV

The scent of cheap gin and decay still clung to the lining of my jacket, a reminder of the vermin I had tracked into Sable’s back hallway. My wolf clawed at the walls of my chest, irritated by the stench of the city and the utter incompetence of the trash I had hired to watch my bloodline.

Jenny would not survive the night in Midnight Eclipse territory. I had already stripped her of her pack credentials before the car cleared the venue's parking lot.

Beside me in the leather interior of the SUV, Ryan was small, a quiet boy engulfed by a sweater that belonged to a prince. His hands were clean and his pulse steady, but the lingering trace of a strange omega's scent clung to him—crisp, like winter air and varnished wood, hovering over his skin.

Maeve.

The woman handled Curtis like an apex predator stripping meat from a carcass, never raising her voice, never flinching at the weight of a Beta's pathetic posturing. She was an Omega who carried herself with the steel of a warlord.

"She has pretty eyes," Ryan murmured, his voice cutting through the heavy hum of the engine. He was staring out the tinted window at the passing neon grid of Houston. "And she didn't look at me like I was a chore."

I didn't answer. I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, my jaw locked so tight that it made my muscles twitch. "She is a stranger, Ryan. You do not talk to strangers in a den full of jackals."

"She wasn't a stranger. She knew about the herbs," he insisted, turning his small face toward me, his dark eyes wide with an absolute, terrifying clarity. "She looks like what a mother is supposed to be."

The word hit like a silver blade to the ribs.

The air inside the vehicle instantly thickened, my aura flaring in a violent, protective surge that made the driver’s shoulders drop three inches in submission. The memory fractured before my eyes—bloody leather, the smell of burning copper, and the cold, lifeless hands of my brother and sister-in-law pulled from the wreckage of a border skirmish three years ago. They had left me with a pack to govern, an empire to expand, and an orphaned pup who looked too much like the dead.

The grief wasn't a sadness; it was a physical weight, a boulder crushing my lungs until every breath felt like swallowing glass.

Ryan flinched, his small nose twitching as he caught the sudden, bitter shift in my scent. He was sharp—too sharp for a five-year-old. He knew the boundaries of my temper, knew exactly when the beast inside me was testing the chains.

"Grandma gave me a mission anyway," Ryan said quickly, his tone shifting into the forced brightness of a child trying to outrun a storm. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his toy car, spinning the wheels with a click. "She said I have to find the next Luna before the solstice. She said you’re too old to be sitting in that big house alone, and that a pack without a female Alpha is just a hunting party."

My eyes narrowed into slits. "Your grandmother needs to limit her counsel to the pack elders."

"I told her I want Maeve," Ryan muttered, his voice dropping into a stubborn register that mirrored my own. "She didn't drop me in a booth for a boy. She stayed. I want her to be my mom."

"Enough," I growled, the sound vibrating from the deep column of my throat, raw and absolute. The glass of the partition rattled. "You do not choose a Luna based on a ten-minute encounter in a corridor, Ryan. She is the ex-wife of a Frost Rainbow Alpha—she carries their mud on her heels. You will not speak of this again. You will not think it."

Ryan’s mouth snapped shut into a hard, defensive line. His eyes filled with a sudden, hot anger that belonged to my brother. He didn't cry. Vances didn't weep; they burned.

The moment the SUV pulled into the gates of the Vance estate, the boy didn't wait for the driver to clear the door. He threw himself out into the gravel, his small boots crunching against the stone as he tore past the heavy oak entrance and disappeared into the cavernous dark of the east wing.

I didn't follow him. A pup needed to learn that the world did not bend to a tantrum.

Two hours later, I was in the study, the silence of the house pressing against my temples like a vice. My skin felt tight, the phantom itch of chronic insomnia settling behind my eyes. For four hundred days, sleep had been an asset I couldn't afford, a luxury denied to a wolf who kept his eyes open to keep his territory from bleeding.

The door clicked open without a knock.

Thomas, my Beta, stood on the threshold, his face grim beneath the halogen lights. "Alpha. The boy is gone."

I didn't move from the desk. My hands remained flat against the mahogany. "Explain."

"He slipped through the kitchen pantry window twenty minutes ago. The perimeter sensors picked up his tag moving south toward the city lines." Thomas hesitated, his throat moving as he swallowed my rising pressure. "He took his savings tracker. He's looking for the omega's studio."

A dark, lethal irritation coiled in my gut. The boy had his father's stubbornness and none of his caution.

"Do not retrieve him," I commanded, my voice flat, deadly. "If he wants to test the city streets alone, let him feel the cold. Follow him from the shadows. Keep the street vermin from touching him, but let him reach her door. I want to see if the woman’s vigilance is as sharp when there isn't an audience watching."

"Understood, Alpha." Thomas bowed his head and backed out, closing the door until the latch clicked.

Alone in the dark office, the silence returned, louder this time. The pressure behind my eyes grew heavy, a dull ache that promised another night of staring at the ceiling until the dawn broke the horizon.

I reached for my phone, my fingers moving coldly. I opened an audio file, an old, unlabeled recording from a European competition eight years ago.

The first note struck the dark room.

A violin. The Ashford Stradivarius.

The music didn't drift; it commanded. It was an intricate, flawless execution of a Bach sonata; the bow striking the strings like a razor parting silk. There was no sentimentality in the pitch, only a savage, beautiful discipline that held the chaotic noise of my mind at bay. It was the only sound in the world that could quiet the wolf.

I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the leather of the high-backed chair, letting the clean melody drag me down into the gray fog of the only sleep I would get tonight.