The Alpha Who Begged

Old Walls

Mira

I was awake and dressed before anyone else made noise in the pack house.

Habit, mostly.

Back in Silvercrest, I took dawn patrol three times a week. My beta could’ve handled it. He did, the other four days. I just… couldn’t lie there. Never could. Waiting for the day to start without me feels like losing.

Here, I don’t have patrol. Nothing scheduled until midmorning. Second alliance session.

So I walked.

Bad call. First of many, probably.

East corridor hasn’t changed.

Grey stone. Those skinny windows that throw pale bars of light across the floor. The carving at the end — wolf mid-jump — still there. Been there since before Roman’s father took over.

I walked this hallway at seventeen and thought my chest would crack open from how full it felt. At eighteen I was in here yelling at Lyra over something dumb. Neither of us remember what. At nineteen I walked it for the last time with empty hands. Emptier chest. I’d already shoved everything down somewhere dark and lost the key on purpose.

Stone doesn’t care who’s walking on it.

I kept moving.

Great hall’s empty this early. No tables set. Cold hearth. The Shadowfang banners are up in the rafters like always. Black and silver. The wolf crest is so old the thread’s gone mostly grey at the edges.

My feet stop at the doorway. I don’t mean them to.

Ate a thousand meals in there. Sat at that long table with the pack all around me, loud, arguing, laughing. Belonged in a way you don’t question. Like breathing. Like your own pulse.

Then Roman stood up in front of all of them and said two words.

After that, I didn’t belong.

I drag my eyes off the banners. Keep walking.

Find Lyra’s old room without meaning to. Or maybe I did mean to. Door’s open a crack. Curtains are new. She redecorated, probably in the last three years. But it’s the same room. Same fields out the window. Same chip in the doorframe from when we tried to hang a shelf and wrecked the wall instead.

Forgot about that shelf.

Sixteen. Lyra swore she could use a drill. She absolutely could not. We ended up on the floor, couldn’t breathe for laughing, three new holes in the wall and a shelf that sat crooked as hell.

Roman came by. Looked at the wall. Looked at us. Didn’t say a word. Just did that little head shake thing and walked off. But I caught it. Corner of his mouth. How he used to bite it down when he didn’t want to smile.

I knew every version of that not-smile.

I pull the door shut, quiet. Leave it.

By the time I get to the back of the pack house, the sun’s up for real. Kitchen noise starts. Boots on stone. Somebody’s already on the training field.

I push out the back door.

Grounds look wider from here. Sun hits low and gold and for one stupid second it looks like it did when I was nineteen and this was still home.

I make myself look at the tree instead.

It’s worse when you’re close.

From my window last night it looked bad. Three feet from the roots, it looks like it’s dying on purpose and hoping no one calls it out.

Bark’s wrong. Not rotten. Just dull. Like the color got leached out. Like it’s putting all its effort into not falling over and has nothing left for anything else.

Three big limbs are down. Just lying there where they snapped. No leaves now. Ends going soft and grey. No one’s moved them. Either the pack gave up, or they can’t stand to look long enough to deal with it.

I crouch.

Roots are still massive. Still deep. So it’s not dead. But it’s using everything it’s got just to hold on to the ground. Nothing left to grow.

Hell. I know that.

I put my hand on the bark.

Don’t know what I’m waiting for. A pulse maybe. Something. Luna energy works through touch. I’ve felt Silvercrest’s tree plenty of times. That low, warm hum you get from a steady pack. Tree takes it in, gives it back.

This one gives me nothing.

Not mad. Not too far gone.

Just… waiting.

I take my hand back. Stand up.

“You’re up early.”

I don’t jump. Heard him coming. Been listening for him since I stepped outside, which is pathetic, but apparently three years doesn’t fix that.

Roman’s a few feet off. Training clothes. Hair damp around the edges. He looks better moving than he does sitting in council. Less like he’s holding himself together with wire.

Just a little less.

“So are you,” I say.

He walks up beside me. Not close. Stops where the roots push through the dirt and stares at the tree the same way I was. Like he’s memorized every inch of damage.

“Last winter was worse,” he says.

“It’s still bad.”

“I know.”

The quiet isn’t comfortable. But it’s not a fight. It’s two people looking at a problem too big to fill with small talk, and neither of us wants to lie about it.

“What are you doing about it?” I ask.

He looks at the tree a second longer. Then at me. Face is careful. Controlled.

“Everything I can,” he says.

Not an answer.

We both know it’s not.

I turn from the tree and head back. Alliance session’s in two hours. I need food. Notes. And I need to stop standing here in the morning light with Roman Cross, having conversations that mean something else under the words.

“Mira.”

I stop. Don’t turn around.

“Thank you,” he says. “For coming. For the alliance.”

I wait for it to sting. For the anger. For that clean, easy certainty that his thanks don’t mean a damn thing to me.

Doesn’t come.

“Don’t thank me,” I say. “Sign the documents.”

Go inside before he can say anything else.

Cael’s in the little dining room off the kitchen. Coffee. Map of rogue territory spread out. He looks up when I walk in.

“How bad?” he says.

“The tree?”

“All of it.”

I get coffee and sit down across from him. Out the window I can see pack life happening. Wolves going to train. Some of the younger ones racing each other across the field. Somebody’s hanging laundry. Sheets bright in the sun.

Normal. They don’t know how close to the edge they are.

“Bad,” I say.

Cael nods. He knew. He always does.

“His wolf isn’t surfacing right,” I tell him. “Tree’s on borrowed time. Pack hasn’t noticed yet. They will.” I’ve got both hands wrapped around my mug. Need the heat. “Whatever’s wrong with him. It’s been wrong a long time.”

Cael’s quiet. Folds the corner of the map down. Careful. That’s what he does when he’s picking his words.

“And you?” he says.

“Fine.”

“Mira.”

“Fine, Cael.”

He gives me that look. The one that means I don’t buy it and I’m not gonna push because I respect you enough to let you lie to yourself for a while.

I’m glad for that look.

“Rogue movements,” I say, and pull the map closer. “Walk me through what your scouts got yesterday.”

He lets me change the subject. Love him for it. We lean over the map and I stick to borders, threats, numbers. Don’t think about the tree. Don’t think about this morning. Don’t think about how Roman said my name like it might break if he said it wrong.

Almost don’t.

Alliance session runs three hours.

Roman’s war council is good. Better than I thought they’d be. Disciplined. Prepared. No time wasted on posturing. Alpha Dray from the third pack spends the first hour testing every edge. Typical. Ambitious wolves do that when they smell weakness. I handle him. Precise. Don’t raise my voice.

Second hour, Dray quits testing and starts working.

Third hour, we’ve got a real framework. Patrols. Resources. Comms. Stuff that might actually hold when the rogues stop circling and start attacking.

Roman closes it. Professional. Clean. When the room clears, he catches my eye across the table. Just a second. Just a nod. We did that. It worked.

I look away first.

Late afternoon. My room. Notes everywhere. Food’s cold.

Should be going over the patrol proposals. I’m at the window instead.

The tree.

Afternoon light doesn’t make it look better. Just more honest. Bare branches are sharp against the sky. Broken limbs throw long shadows over the roots.

A packmate walks past it heading for training. Doesn’t look at it.

None of them look at it.

I get that. When something’s broken and you can’t fix it, sometimes not looking is how you keep moving. Learned that one young.

What I don’t get is how it got this bad without anyone doing something. Without someone walking up to him and saying it out loud. Alpha, the territory’s bleeding. Something has to change.

Unless they did.

Unless he already knows.

I think about this morning. How he looked at the tree. Not like a new problem.

Like he’s been living with it.

I pick up my pen. Back to patrol proposals.

The tree isn’t my problem. Roman Cross isn’t my problem. I’m here for an alliance. The alliance is working. In a few weeks I ride back to Silvercrest and leave this place and all its broken things behind.

I tell myself that.

Getting better at almost believing it.