Chapter 3: Alpha Vow
1115 Words
The morning after the ridge, Aria woke to silence.
Not peaceful silence. The heavy kind that settles when someone is trying too hard to be quiet. She kept her eyes closed, listening to Leon moving through the kitchen, setting a mug down without a clink, opening the refrigerator slowly.
He was being careful. Treating her like she might break.
She hated it. And loved it.
She sat up, ignoring the tight feeling in her chest, and walked to the kitchen. Her legs ached. The hollowness remained.
Leon turned, his smile immediate but his eyes sharp, searching for sway, pallor, tremor. She made sure none showed.
"You're up early," he said, sliding chamomile tea across the counter. He knew she didn't like coffee when she was nervous.
"Couldn't sleep. The bracelet kept catching."
She held out her wrist. Silver caught the morning light. She had stared at it half the night.
Leon brushed his thumb over the clasp. "I was worried you'd take it off."
"I thought about it. Then I remembered what you said."
"What did I say?"
"That you never cared what they think." She threaded her fingers through his. "I decided to try believing you."
A sharp knock froze them. Three raps, precise and formal. Council Guard.
Leon's jaw tightened. He opened the door. A young guard in a dark uniform stood on the porch.
"Alpha-son Ashthorne." The guard bowed. "The Elders request your presence at the Council Hall. Immediately."
"For what purpose?"
"The matter of Aria Blackwood's condition. The healers submitted their findings. The Council convenes within the hour."
The guard's eyes flicked to Aria with pity, then away.
"Tell them I'll be there."
The guard left. Leon stood with his back to her, hand on the knob, shoulders tense.
"Leon."
"Don't." His voice trembled. "Don't tell me not to go. Just tell me you'll be here when I get back."
"I'll be here."
He pulled her close with desperate strength. She buried her face in his chest, breathing in cedar and pine. Then he was gone, the door closing with finality.
*
The Council Hall was stone at the center of the compound, ancient, walls lined with names of every Alpha who ruled Ashthorne.
Five Elders sat at dark oak. Eleanor Blackwood, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, at the head. Aria's grandmother, no warmth in her expression. To her left Marcus Vane, the oldest warrior, his face a map of scars. Beside him twins Darius and Selene, identical in their sternness. At the far end Roderick Ashthorne, Leon's uncle, careful neutrality.
"Sit, Leon." Eleanor's voice was final. "We have little time."
"The healers have completed their assessment," Eleanor continued. "What they found is not encouraging."
Marcus leaned forward. "The healers have ruled out illness. Whatever is happening to Aria... it resembles the old records. If it is truly the Blackwood Curse, no wolf has ever survived once it progressed."
Leon tightened his hands around the chair. "How long?"
Darius spoke dryly. "Months... perhaps a year if the progression slows. We cannot know. No case survived long enough to give us certainty."
"And no cure," Selene finished. "The archives contain seventeen cases. All seventeen died."
Leon refused to let that certainty take root.
"You're wrong," he said, steady. "There has to be something. In the archives, histories, stories older generations tell. Thousands of years and no one ever tried?"
"Many tried," Roderick said, measured. "All failed. It is not a puzzle. It is a death sentence."
"And you would have me accept that?" Leon stood, the chair scraping across stone like thunder. "You would have me nod while you tell me the woman I love will die and there's nothing I can do?"
"Watch your tone, boy. You are not yet Alpha."
"And I don't care if I never am." The words were fierce, reckless. "I don't care about throne or title. I care about Aria. I will not stand here and let you tell me she's already dead."
Behind him Marcus warned, "Leon, the archives have been searched. Every book, every scroll. There is nothing."
Leon paused at the door, hand on the iron. "Then they haven't been searched by me."
He slammed the door.
The archives were housed in a building old before the pack had a name. Squat, stone, half-buried, walls thick with moss. The main room was open to all, but beneath, behind the oldest shelf, lay the forbidden archives.
Leon had discovered them as a child chasing a cat. He had never told anyone.
The hidden door opened when he pressed the correct stone, grinding backward. Dust billowed, scent of old parchment and decay. He lit the torches.
He did not know what he sought. Only that he would not stop.
Hours passed. Shelves blurred together. One torch burned low. Dust coated his hands. His eyes were red from flame. He moved methodically, pulling scrolls, scanning for mention of black blood, dormant curse, unmarked wolf. He found the seventeen cases as the Elders said, but he read footnotes, cross-references, threads abandoned when subjects died.
Then he found something.
Not in the main record. In a margin note, cramped handwriting at the bottom of a crumbling page: "See also the Blackwood Bloodline Records, Volume 7, Appendix 4. Cross-reference with First Blood Theory."
First Blood. A chill went through his chest. He had never heard of it before.
He searched for the Blackwood Records, buried beneath books on warfare. Volume 7 was thin, pages yellowed.
The appendix was in a different hand. Older, ornate. It spoke of a theory proposed by a Blackwood scholar three centuries before the pack settled Ashthorne. The scholar believed the curse was not random, but selective. It appeared only in certain bloodlines carrying an ancient inheritance he simply called the First Blood. The remaining pages had been burned away, leaving the source of that blood unknown.
The theory was dismissed. The scholar was exiled. The records were buried.
But dismissed did not mean disproven. Leon's heart pounded, bright and dangerous.
He searched faster, frantic. Dust choked him. A rat skittered across the floor.
Then he found it.
Not a book. A single page, wedged between the binding of a larger tome as if hidden deliberately. Burned edges, blackened by fire. But the center remained, untouched, carved in ink that had not faded in three centuries.
Leon brushed dust from the final surviving page.
Three words remained.
THE CURE OF THE FIRST BLOOD
His heart stopped.
Leon reached for the next line.
The emergency sirens screamed across Ashthorne.
Every torch flickered.
Somewhere beyond the archive walls, wolves began to howl.
Something had crossed into Ashthorne territory.
Leon looked once more at the ancient page.
Then he ran.
- Writer
