The Alpha who was Meant to Kill Me

Chapter 4

The frogs and crickets fell quiet sometime before dawn, and the morning birds took over with a riot of chirping that felt personal. The soldiers were already saddling up. The light was grey. The air was cold. I did not want to be awake.

A light kick landed on my backside.

"Come on, beautiful. We don't waste daylight."

I cracked one eye. Alec was crouched next to me, packing his bedroll, his hair standing up on one side like a rooster's crest. He looked like he had slept about as well as I had, which was to say not very much.

Guilt poked at me. I stretched and sat up.

The others were nearly ready. I jumped to my feet and pulled my things together. Alec knelt beside me and packed the blankets himself, and when I opened my mouth to protest he gave me a look that said don't start.

I pulled my hair into a fresh bun and tied the helmet under my chin. Then, because I was not about to give Alec the pleasure of doing it for me again, I scooped up a handful of dirt and smeared it across my own cheeks. I caught his grin out of the corner of my eye and ignored it.

I strapped both swords across my back, my own and the black sheath, and the moment the Shadow Gladius settled between my shoulder blades my wolf gave a small, alert turn inside my ribs. The sheath was quiet today. Quiet the way a dog sleeps when you walk past. Not gone. Watching.

I walked to my horse. Alec had the reins ready. He did not say a word about last night. I was grateful to him for that more than I could say.

"Ready when you are." I shot him a grin as I swung up.

"Sure. Act like you've been ready the whole time."

"I have been ready the whole time."

He laughed and mounted up, and we rode.

We rode most of the morning in quiet. Soldiers woke the way they always wake, slowly, with grunts and elbows. The land changed around us in small ways. The trees grew taller. The soil darker. We were well inside Specter territory now. Alpha King Darien's land. I could feel the edge of it in the air. Wolf territory has a weight to it, a low pressure you sense before you understand. Even my sealed wolf noticed. She lifted her head behind my ribs and sniffed.

Leo came galloping back from a scouting sweep around midday. His green eyes flicked to Alec first, then to me.

"Horses ahead, sire. Soldiers, by the saddles. I caught the shadow hand on their emblem."

Alec nodded once. "We're in Specter territory. A patrol makes sense. Shouldn't be a problem." He turned to me and the men. "Remember. Wren here is just another soldier."

We came around a bend in the road and there they were, a black-and-silver clutch of riders drawn up at a clearing. One of them broke from the group and spurred his horse forward at a lazy canter, and even before I could make out his face I felt it.

Alpha.

Not Alec's Alpha, which was warm and known and fit against my skin like old leather. This one was different. Colder. Heavier. Older somehow, though he could not have been much past twenty-nine. It pressed against the air the way thunder presses against the inside of your chest before a storm.

My sealed wolf surged so hard I had to lock my jaw to keep my face neutral.

She threw herself at the inside of her cage. She clawed at it. I had never felt her do that in twenty-five years. Not once. Not when I was sick with fever. Not when a bear came too close on a hunt. Not when my mother's portrait fell off the wall and cracked its frame.

And the sheath at my back went warm.

Not hot. Warm the way a sleeping creature is warm. Warm the way something alive turns over to listen.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no.

The rider slid down off his horse in one easy motion, and I got my first real look at him.

He was almost as tall as Alec and built thicker through the shoulders. Hair black as wet ink. Skin the color of pale sand. And then he turned his head and I saw his eyes and forgot my helmet was on.

Green. Not grass green. Not forest green. The hard bright green of a blade just off the whetstone, and they caught the sun and seemed to glow with it.

Alpha King Darien.

"It's about time you got here!" he called, and Alec swung down off his horse to clasp him in one of those rough warrior embraces men do when they have missed each other and will never say so out loud.

"What are you doing all the way out here? Come halfway to meet me because you missed me that badly?"

"I knew you'd get tired of that stuffy princess."

I nearly choked on my own tongue.

Stuffy princess?

"Don't talk about her like that, Darien." Alec glanced back at me with a look that was part apology, part brace yourself. "I swear the two of you are jealous of each other."

"We both know you went there to fulfill your obligation and warm the princess's bedside. Can't imagine what else you'd want with her. Tea time? Reform classes? A stuck-up prissy princess isn't anyone's idea of a good week. Obviously you came here to see me. I understand needing to take care of your needs first."

Oh. Hell no.

Is this what male bonding looked like? It was revolting. I was not a prissy princess. I did not host reform classes. And to imply I was spreading my legs for Alec was a particular kind of insult I had not even considered an Alpha king might reach for in front of his own men. I felt heat climb my neck under the helmet and fought it down. My wolf snarled silently inside me.

Alpha King Darien of Specter. I was not impressed. I was going to push him off a cliff.

And Alec. Alec was just laughing nervously. He had not corrected him. My best friend, who carried my life above his own, was laughing.

Darien's head tilted. Something in his jaw went still. He drew a long slow breath through his nose in the way wolves do when they are testing the wind, and his green eyes flicked past Alec and landed directly on me.

My sealed wolf went quiet under that look. Quiet the way a rabbit goes quiet under a hawk.

He kept looking.

Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough that I felt it inside my ribs. Then his nostrils flared, faint, and I saw his brow tic once, the smallest catch, as if a scent had passed him that he could not quite place. His eyes flicked to the strap at my shoulder. To the mouth of the black sheath where it rose above my armor.

The Shadow Gladius stirred warm against my spine. Quiet. Quiet, quiet, quiet.

Alec cleared his throat and Darien's attention snapped back to him, and the moment passed. But the press of his Alpha stayed on me long after, like a palm print on warm glass.

"The truth is, we came out here because we have a problem." Darien's voice dropped into something businesslike. "Bandits. A ring of them hitting the villages just south of here. We're catching them today. Lucky for us, you brought me extra swords."

Alec's face paled.

"What's wrong with you? You're acting strange."

I did not get to hear Alec's answer.

Leo's horse reared underneath him with a violent whinny. A snake, long and grey-green, was sliding across the road just under its hooves. My own horse snapped its head up and began to back and buck, eyes white. I felt its body tense to throw me.