The Alpha’s Obsession

POV: Elowen The screaming started before I understood what screaming meant. I was seven years old, tucked beneath my quilt with my favorite wooden doll, when the first crash shattered our front door. Mama's gasp cut through the night like a blade. Papa's voice roared something I couldn't understand, words that made the air crackle and hum. Then came the smoke. "Elowen! Under the floor, now!" Mama's hands were on me before I could blink, her supernatural speed making the world blur. She ripped up the loose floorboard near my bed, the one Papa always said he'd fix but never did. Her eyes were wild, terrified, beautiful. "Get in, baby. Don't make a sound. No matter what you hear, don't come out." "Mama, what.." "Now!" She shoved me down into the crawlspace. The last thing I saw before she dropped the board back into place was her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, lips moving in what might have been I love you or I'm sorry. Maybe both. The darkness swallowed me whole. Through the thin gaps between the floorboards, I watched my world end. Masked figures poured into our home like a flood of nightmares. Their faces were hidden behind silver masks carved with symbols I didn't recognize, but their intent was clear. Hunters. Alpha hunters. The ones Papa whispered about when he thought I was asleep, the ones who wanted people like us dead. "There!" one of them shouted, his voice muffled behind the mask. "The hybrid scum!" Papa stood in the center of our small living room, his hands already wreathed in flames. Not normal fire, the kind that burned orange and red. No, Papa's fire was blue, touched with something ancient and powerful. It danced along his arms like living serpents, casting strange shadows on the walls. "You will not touch my family," Papa said, his voice steady despite the fear I could see in his eyes. "Leave now, and I'll let you live." They laughed. All of them laughed. "Brave words from a dead man," the leader said, stepping forward. He was taller than the others, broader, with a crescent moon etched into his silver mask. "Your kind shouldn't exist. Hybrids are an abomination, a stain on the natural order. Tonight, we cleanse the world of your filth." Mama moved then. One moment she was across the room; the next, she was a blur of motion, her fists connecting with two hunters before they could even raise their weapons. Bones cracked. Men screamed. She was magnificent and terrifying, my beautiful mother who sang lullabies and braided my hair, now moving like death itself. But there were too many. For every hunter Mama dropped, two more took their place. For every burst of Papa's flames, a dozen arrows flew in return. I pressed my fist against my mouth to keep from crying out, tears streaming down my face, my body shaking so hard I thought I might fall apart. "Elowen!" Papa's voice cut through the chaos, raw with desperation. He was on his knees now, an arrow through his shoulder, blood soaking his shirt. But his eyes found the floorboard, found me somehow through the c***k. "I'm sorry, little spark. I'm so sorry." His hands began to glow, not with fire this time, but with something else. Something that made the air itself seem to bend and shimmer. Words poured from his lips, old words, power words, the language of our ancestors that he'd been teaching me in secret. The hunters noticed. They charged. "No!" Mama screamed, throwing herself between them and Papa. A blade caught her in the side. She gasped, stumbled, but didn't fall. Never fell. Not my Mama. "Run, love! Finish it! Protect her!" Papa's spell reached its crescendo. The light from his hands shot across the room, through the floorboards, and slammed into me. It burned. Gods, it burned like someone had pressed hot iron against my forearm, searing something into my skin, into my very soul. I bit down on my fist so hard I tasted blood, swallowing my scream. When the light faded, a mark remained on my arm. A sigil, intricate and beautiful, glowing faintly in the darkness. It looked like a wolf mid-leap, wrapped in thorns and flames, with symbols I couldn't read spiraling around it. "The royal mark," one of the hunters breathed, his voice filled with sick triumph. "The child carries the bloodline." "Find her!" the leader roared. "Tear this place apart!" Mama was there suddenly, above my hiding place. Blood dripped between the floorboards, warm drops landing on my cheek. She was dying. I could see it in the way she moved, slower now, her supernatural speed fading. But she still fought. "You want her?" Mama snarled, and even wounded, even dying, she was fierce. "You'll have to go through me first." "That can be arranged," the leader said. What happened next, I've spent years trying to forget. Trying and failing. They killed my mother. Stabbed her again and again until she stopped moving, stopped fighting, stopped being the woman who had tucked me in every night with a kiss on the forehead. She fell beside my hiding place, her hand landing near the c***k in the floorboards. Our fingers almost touched. Her lips moved. No sound came out, but I could read the words: Run. Papa's roar shook the house. The fire erupted from him like an explosion, wild and uncontrolled, driven by grief and rage. The hunters scattered, screaming as the flames caught their clothes, their skin. "Burn it all!" the leader shouted from somewhere outside. "Burn it to the ground! The child dies in the flames!" The house ignited like kindling. Smoke filled the crawlspace, choking me, burning my eyes and throat. Heat pressed down from above, unbearable, suffocating. I heard Papa scream one last time, heard the hunters cheering, heard the crackle and roar of everything I'd ever known turning to ash. Mama's hand, still warm, still reaching toward me. I don't remember deciding to move. I just remember pushing, crawling, squeezing through a gap in the foundation that no adult could fit through, my small body scraped raw by rough wood and stone. I emerged into the night, into a village painted orange with flames, bodies in the street, smoke blotting out the stars. I ran. I ran like Mama had taught me, like Papa's blood sang in my veins, I ran until my lungs screamed and my legs gave out and the world went dark. When I woke, the village was silent. Empty. Nothing remained but smoking ruins and the mark on my arm that would never fade. I was seven years old, and I was alone. That was the night Elowen died. The girl who'd played with dolls and believed in happy endings burned with her home, with her parents, with everything safe and warm and good. What crawled from those ashes was something else entirely. A survivor. A weapon. A promise carved in blood and fire. Someday, I would find the ones who did this. Someday, I would make them pay. And I would start with the Alpha they whispered about in terror, the one whose name the dying hunter had gasped before Papa's flames took him. The one who'd given the order, who'd orchestrated the m******e of my entire bloodline. Varyn Holt. I didn't know then that fate had already tied our souls together in ways I couldn't imagine. I didn't know that revenge would become something far more complicated than a blade in the dark. All I knew was hatred. All I knew was survival. And as I touched the mark on my arm, feeling its warmth, feeling the power sleeping beneath my skin, I made a vow that would shape every day of the years to come. I would live. I would grow strong. And one day, I would watch Varyn Holt's world burn the way mine had..