THE ALPHA WHO KNELT

Chapter 18

The bus ticket said Storm Harbor, Maine, but felt like it should say The End of Everything.

My hands shook as I clutched the thin piece of paper, sitting in the cramped bus station in the nearest human town, forty miles from what used to be my home.

Everything I owned in the world was stuffed into a single duffel bag at my feet—a few changes of clothes, some photos, the small amount of money I'd managed to save from my Luna training allowance.

It was even less than I’d had when I moved into the Alpha house all those years ago after Ronan first scented me. I’d left behind all the

clothes Ronan and Luna Helena had bought me, all the items I’d collected during my Luna training. None of that seemed necessary now.

Thirty minutes. That's all Ronan had given me to pack up seventeen years of my life and disappear forever.

He rejected us, Sapphire said in my mind, her voice raw with pain and fury. He severed our bond and cast us out like garbage.

I pressed my hand to my chest, where the phantom pain of the broken mate bond still ached like a physical wound. The connection that had defined me since I was thirteen was gone, leaving behind a hollow emptiness that made it hard to breathe.

"I know," I whispered, not caring if other passengers thought I was talking to myself. "But we're alive. Our pup is alive. That's what matters now."

Our pup deserves better than a father who would reject his child," I said firmly. "We'll be fine on our own."

But even as I said the words, I wasn't sure I believed them. I was seventeen years old, pregnant, and completely alone in the human world with less than three hundred dollars to my name. I'd never held a job, never lived anywhere but the pack territory, never had to survive without the safety net of pack support.

The bus to Maine would cost most of my remaining money, but I'd chosen it for a reason. Storm Harbor was as far as I could get. A small coastal town where no one would know me, where I could disappear and start over.

If I could figure out how to survive that long.

"Now boarding bus 42 to Portland, Maine, with stops in Salt Lake City, Denver" announced a tired-looking woman over the intercom.

I picked up my duffel bag and joined the line of passengers, my legs unsteady beneath me. The bus was old and smelled like diesel, and too many people in too small a space. I found a seat near the back, next to a window that looked out toward the mountains where my pack, my former pack, territory lay hidden in the forest.

As the bus pulled away from the station, I pressed my face to the glass and watched the landscape of my childhood disappear. Somewhere out there, Luna Helena was probably wondering where I'd gone.

She had come to my room the moment I’d fled the dining hall, her face a mask of fury and heartbreak. While I threw my belongings into a bag, she had wrapped her arms around me, begging me to stay.

“Don’t go, Elara,” she’d pleaded, her voice thick with tears. “Stay here. I will handle this. When Ronan comes back to the house tonight, we will sit down, and I will make him see reason.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I’d choked out, the pain of the severed bond a raw, physical agony in my chest. “He hates me.”

“No,” she’d insisted, gripping my arms. “He’s a prideful fool, but he doesn’t hate you. He needs to fix this, and I will make sure he does. That’s my grandpup you’re carrying.”

I’d stared at her in shock, my hands instinctively flying to my stomach. “You know?”

A sad, knowing smile had touched her lips. “Of course, I know, sweetheart. I can smell him. He’s a Blackwood , through and through.”

“Then why couldn’t Ronan …?” The question died on my lips, too painful to ask.

Luna Helena ’s expression had hardened. “Ranger would have known instantly. He would have been celebrating. The only way Ronan wouldn't know is if he chose to block him out, to let his pride roar louder than his soul.”

She squeezed my arms one last time. “Please, Elara. Just wait. Let me talk to him.”

I nodded, wanting to believe her, wanting to hope. But after she’d left, promising to return as soon as she found Ronan and convinced him to rescind the order, I’d heard them. Through my open window, the sound of the on-duty warriors gathering in the courtyard below had drifted up.

Their voices were low, but my shifter hearing caught every brutal word. “Thirty minutes, that’s what the Alpha said.”

“And after that?”

“Orders are clear. If she’s on our land a second longer, we treat her as a rogue. Lethal force authorized.”

“He really wants her dead?”

“He wants the betrayal erased.”

The hope Luna Helena had given me curdled into pure, cold terror. He didn’t just want me gone. He wanted me erased. I grabbed my duffel bag, scrambled out the private staircase of the Alpha house, and ran. I ran without looking back, the warriors’ casual discussion of my execution echoing in my ears.

The pack was probably gossiping about the scandal, already moving on with their lives as if I'd never existed.

And Ronan ...

Don't think about him, Sapphire said fiercely. He made his choice. He chose to believe we were a w***e rather than trust the bond between us.

But I couldn't stop thinking about him. About the way his amber eyes had blazed with fury and disgust when he'd called me those terrible names. About how easily he'd discarded four years of our life together, thrown away everything we were supposed to be. I was his mate. Even if he couldn’t remember, he should have believed me.

The tears came then, silent and relentless, as the bus carried me away from everything I'd ever known.

The journey to Maine took three days and two nights, with stops in

cities I'd only read about in books. Salt Lake City, Denver,each one a blur of bus stations and vending machine meals and trying to find safe places to sleep during layovers.

I kept to myself mostly, though other passengers occasionally tried to strike up conversations. An elderly woman from Denver offered me homemade cookies and asked if I was visiting family in Maine. A college student shared his phone charger and told me about the classes he was taking.

Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware that the exhausted-looking girl in the back of the bus was a rejected wolf shifter carrying an unwanted child.

They're kind, Sapphire observed after the third person had offered to help me with something. Humans can be kind without expecting anything in return.

It was a revelation that surprised me. In the pack, kindness always came with obligations, with hierarchy and expectations. These strangers helped me simply because I looked like I needed help.

By the second night, I was running dangerously low on money. I bought a package of crackers and a bottle of water for dinner, rationing what little I had left. The morning sickness wasn't helping—what little food I managed to eat often came back up within an hour, leaving me weak and dizzy.

"You okay, hon?" asked the bus driver during a rest stop outside Boston. He was a middle-aged man with kind eyes and a Boston accent. "You look a little green around the gills."

"Just tired," I said, not wanting to explain about the pregnancy. "How much further to Storm Harbor?"

"About two hours once we get back on the road," he said. "You got family waiting for you there?"

I shook my head. "Looking for work."

He studied my face for a moment, taking in my pale complexion and the duffel bag that held my entire life. "Rita's Diner is always looking for good help," he said finally. "Right on Main Street when you get off the bus. Tell her John sent you."

"Thank you," I said, meaning it more than he could know.

Two hours later, the bus pulled into Storm Harbor. The town was smaller than I'd expected, with weathered buildings that looked like they'd been fighting the salt air for decades. The harbor was visible from the bus station, filled with fishing boats and seagulls calling to each other over the water.

It was nothing like the forested mountains of home, but something about the wild, untamed feeling of the ocean called to my wolf. This was a place where we could disappear, where we could start fresh.