The alpha's chosen rogue

Chapter Four _ The Elder

Elder Maren had been in Blackthorn Pack longer than anyone could reliably account for.

That was what Finn told me, in the way he'd taken to telling me things — sitting beside me at meals, at the training yard fence, on the wide stone steps near the eastern fire pit where I'd started going in the evenings to be outside without being social. He was a reliable source of information delivered with no guile whatsoever, which made him more useful than he knew.

"She was here when the Alpha's grandfather was born," Finn said. "Some of the older wolves say she was here before the compound was built, but that's probably myth."

"Probably," I agreed.

"She's been watching you."

I looked up from the fire. "What?"

"Elder Maren." He said it like I should have noticed. "She was at the training yard yesterday. Stood at the far end near the equipment shed and watched the whole session. She was watching you specifically. I noticed because she doesn't come to training. She never comes to training."

I filed that away under things to think about when I'm alone and gave Finn a neutral response, and then that night I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and thought about it extensively.

I had not seen her.

Which meant she hadn't wanted me to.

The next morning, she came to me.

I was at the creek on the eastern edge of the compound — not the border creek, a different one, smaller, that ran through the property and served as the informal boundary between the main buildings and the training grounds. I went there in the early hours because it was quiet and because water had started feeling safe to me in a way I couldn't explain, like it had given me something when I'd knelt at that border creek three days ago and hadn't taken it back.

She sat down on the rock beside me without announcing herself, and she was so quiet about it that I'd felt her presence for a full thirty seconds before I registered it consciously.

Elder Maren was old the way mountain ranges are old — not frail but layered, like she had been accumulating weight and density for so long that she had simply become harder to move than things that hadn't lived as long. Her eyes were a pale, almost colorless gray that made me think of fog, and they were fixed on me with an attention so specific it felt almost physical.

"You don't know what you are," she said. Not a question.

"Good morning," I said.

Her mouth curved. Just slightly. "Good morning, child. You don't know what you are."

"I'm a powerless rogue who crossed a border she shouldn't have," I said.

"You are not powerless." She said it so simply, so completely without drama, that it took me a full three seconds to process it. "What you are is undetectable by the standard methods. Your gift does not register on any test this pack would give you. It doesn't read as a gift at all, which is — by design, I think. What you carry is very, very old. And it did not want to be found."

I looked at her. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about why the Alpha's wolf recognized you at the border and couldn't look away." She folded her hands in her lap, unhurried. "I'm talking about why the wolves near you at training performed better than they had in months without understanding why. I'm talking about Finn's form correction — which you saw in ten minutes that his trainer has missed for three months."

The creek ran. A bird called somewhere in the canopy. I was very still.

"I'm talking," she said quietly, "about a Voss girl who was thrown away for having nothing — and was carrying everything."

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

"What I have," I said, very carefully, "is nothing. I have never shifted with any power. I have never felt the moon. I have never—"

"You have never had your power directed inward," she said. "Because it doesn't work that way. It flows outward. Always outward. Toward whatever wolf is nearest." She tilted her head. "Tell me — did your father's power seem stronger when you were nearby? Did your pack win engagements you shouldn't have won? Did injuries heal faster than expected?"

I was very quiet.

"Did they get worse," she said, softer now, "after you left?"

My hands were not entirely steady when I folded them against my knees.

"What am I?" I asked. My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.

"The last recorded instance of this gift was four hundred years ago," she said. "They called her a Tide. A conduit. Someone who does not generate power — but moves it." She looked at me with those fog-colored eyes. "You can amplify every gift in a wolf near you. You can suppress them. In extreme circumstances — strong emotion, high threat — you can nullify them entirely. Permanently."

The creek was suddenly very loud.

"Nobody in this pack knows," she continued. "Not yet. But, Seraphina — someone will figure it out. They always do. And when they do, every enemy this pack has ever made will come to collect you."

She stood. Smoothed her robe. Looked down at me with something that was not pity — pity was condescending, and she was not condescending. It was something closer to grief. The kind you feel not for yourself but for all the years someone lost not knowing the truth of themselves.

"I'm going to tell the Alpha," she said. "I wanted to tell you first."

She walked back toward the compound. I sat by the creek for a long time after she was gone. Long enough that the morning light moved and the shadows shifted and I could hear the training yard coming alive in the distance.

You can nullify them. Permanently.

I looked at my own hands like they belonged to someone else.

Maybe they always had.