Until The Last Alpha Begs

The Blood Mark

POV: Kaelen

Ten days. Rowan was supposed to return in five.

A piece of coarse paper sat on the center of my desk, the edges already turning soft from where my thumb had traced the same ink lines over and over. It was efficient work. The first coded message had arrived three days ago, slipped beneath my door during the quiet hours before dawn by a hand my guards failed to intercept.

The female in Blackthorn Valley is alive and carrying.

The words didn't make emotional sense, so I treated them as data. Freya was alive. The drop from the cliff hadn't broken her neck, the current hadn't filled her lungs, and the blade hadn't left her to rot in the mud.

More than that, she was carrying…my child. The timing aligned perfectly with the final week before she was removed from the estate. Statistically, the probability was near certain.

I didn't feel the sudden spike of joy or panic the poets wrote about. I felt a logical tightening behind my eyes. A piece of my bloodline was sitting in the den of my direct rival, growing inside an Omega whose wolf could barely hold its own skin together.

Then the second message came yesterday.

The handwriting was a mess. Rowan’s signature clean strokes had degraded into a shaky, desperate scramble, the charcoal smudging across the parchment.

“Ashmoor knew and the ambush wasn't a localized strike. He pulled the strings from the valley. It smells of old wars, Kaelen. Older blood. I am being hunted. Do not reply.”

“You've been staring at that wall for twenty minutes,” Selene said, her voice cutting through the silence of the study.

She was sitting by the window, a small knife in her hand as she peeled a winter apple. The skin came off in one long, unbroken red curl. She didn't look at me, but her scent was heavy with that vinegary tint of suspicion she’d been carrying for weeks.

“The Northern supply lines are running thin,” I said, my voice perfectly level. “I'm calculating the cost of shifting the patrols.”

“You don't care about the supply lines, Kaelen,” she murmured, slicing a piece of the white fruit and popping it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, her eyes finally lifting to meet mine.

“You haven't touched your tea. And your wolf is pacing so loud I can hear the floorboards shaking from here.”

She was right. Beneath the skin, the beast was clawing at the marrow of my bones, a fury that didn't care about logistics or borders. It wanted to rip the throat out of Blackthorn Valley. It wanted Freya back.

Why? She was an Omega. A creature I had signed away with a nod because the math of our pack demanded Selene’s family alliances. It was a trade. A logical transaction to secure the eastern border.

But the math was wrong now and the variables had changed.

“Rowan is delayed,” I said, setting the soft paper down on the mahogany surface, my fingers perfectly still despite the storm under my ribs. “He’s tracking rogue movements near the smoke lines.”

“Rowan is a hound,” Selene said, her knife clicking against the tray. “If he's gone this long, he's either dead in a ditch or he found something he shouldn't have. My father's elders are getting restless, Kaelen. They think you're looking backward. They think you're still hunting for the trash we cleared out of the stream.”

I looked at her.

Her family had ordered the strike. I knew that. I had permitted it by looking away, letting them do the work while I maintained the clean desk.

“Your father's elders should focus on their own borders,” I said.

Selene froze, her knife hovering an inch above the tray. The indifference in her face cracked for a fraction of a second, a flicker of genuine alarm crossing her eyes before she forced a tight, rigid smile.

“We are your allies, mate. Don't forget who put the silver in your treasury.”

‘I don't forget anything, Selene,” I said.

She stood up, leaving the half-peeled apple on the silver dish, and left the room without another word. The door clicked shut, the sound echoing through the empty space.

Alone in the dark, I started to spiral.

If Zevren took her, he didn't do it out of mercy. He doesn't have any. He found her because he knew what she was. Or rather, he knew what I was, and he wanted the leverage. My child in his hands was a death warrant for my leadership in Shadowbrook. The elders would cast me out the second they realized my bloodline was compromised, hosted by the enemy.

The words kept looping, a maddening chant. My wolf slammed against the cage of my ribs, demanding blood, demanding the hunt. I reached out, my hand wrapping around the crystal inkwell on my desk, my grip tightening until the glass groaned under the pressure.

I had to move.

For the bloodmark. For the piece of me he thought he could keep.

×××

“You're making a mistake, Kaelen,” Selene said, stepping out of the shadows near the heavy drapes.

She walked into the center of the study, her eyes sharp with a dangerous amount of knowledge—knowledge she had absolutely no business having. She knew about the search. She knew about Rowan's messages.

“The elders are meeting tonight in the great hall,” she continued, crossing her arms, her chin tilting upward. “They're going to discuss your fitness to lead this pack. Your obsession with a dead Omega is weakening our standing with the Northern alliance, Kaelen. It's pathetic. You need to choose right now between your throne and your ghosts.”

I watched her face, analyzing the tight line of her mouth, the slight tremor in her fingers. The ambition was there, loud and clear, but beneath it lay that same raw fear I’d seen the day Freya disappeared. She was terrified that the math was about to change.

So, I gave her exactly what she wanted to see.

I let my shoulders slump, just a fraction. I let the tension drain out of my spine, playing the part of the defeated, exhausted Alpha whose grip on reality was slipping.

“You're right,” I said, my voice dropping. I let my hand fall heavily onto the desk. “I've been foolish, Selene. Hunting for a corpse won't secure our borders. I will attend the elder meeting tonight and make my position clear. The past is dead.”

A look of satisfaction washed over her features. The tension left her frame, her shoulders dropping as she gave a small nod.

“Good,” she murmured, turning on her heel. “See that you aren't late.”

I waited until the echo died completely before I stood up, my spine instantly snapping back into a rigid, line. The defeated Alpha was gone.

By midnight, I had gathered six warriors in the lower courtyard—men who had bled for me in the trenches, men who asked no questions and gave everything without expecting a speech in return.

We didn't use the main gates. We cut straight through the narrow, overgrown eastern pass while the elders were busy drinking wine in the great hall, waiting for an Alpha who had absolutely no intention of showing up.

The forest was incredibly dense, the moon barely offering enough light to see the branches crossing the path, but I didn't slow the pace. My horse’s hooves tore through the damp earth.

With every mile that blurred past, I reached inward, pressing my bare palm flat against my chest, searching through the dark vacuum of the pack bonds for her pulse. For days, it had been nothing but a faint, microscopic thread—weak, but stubbornly unbroken.

Then, as our horses crossed the stone marker into the wild, lawless lands between territories, the bond surged.

A massive wave of awareness slammed right into my chest. I gasped, my grip slipping on the leather reins as the sudden impact nearly unseated me from my horse. The beast beneath me stumbled, kicking up loose gravel before finding its footing again.

I held my breath, focusing every ounce of my mind on that glowing thread. Freya’s heartbeat was there, unmistakable and stronger than before. But beneath it?

Two smaller, distinct rhythms.

Two tiny, rapid pulses tangled completely together, beating in perfect, frantic time.

Twins.

The knowledge hit me like a blow to the solar plexus, knocking the air straight out of my lungs. The logical math I had built my entire life around instantly shattered into a thousand useless pieces. I wasn't just tracking a piece of my compromised bloodline. I was a father…a father of twins.

“Sir?” one of my warriors called out from behind, his horse pulling up short beside mine in the dark brush. “Is everything alright?”

“Keep riding,” I ordered, my voice coming out raspy, the growl of my wolf tearing at the back of my throat.

I slammed my boots into the horse's flanks, sending us hurtling deeper into the dark trees. The logic was completely gone, replaced by a frantic, spiraling panic that tore through my veins like fire. I was riding toward them. But it was too slow. Always too damn slow.

We hit the border of Blackthorn Valley just as the first cold lines of dawn broke through the trees.

The camp Rowan had established was completely gone. Shredded canvas hung from snapped wooden poles, supplies were strewn across the dirt, and dark patches of blood were soaked deep into the earth.

The patterns were all wrong for a m******e, though. There were no bodies left behind. No sign of Rowan, and no trace of the three warriors who had ridden out with him. Just the markers of a desperate struggle.

I dismounted, my boots sinking into thick mud.

“Spread out,” I told the men, “Find a trail.”

I walked toward the edge of the clearing, where a massive tree stood watching over the wreckage. The bark had been violently stripped away in patches, exposing the wood beneath. And painted right across the trunk, in blood that hadn't even fully dried yet, was a symbol I hadn't set eyes on since I was a child.

A crescent moon inside a perfect circle, split clean down the center by a sharp vertical line.

My breath rattled in my chest. My father’s private war journals contained entire pages dedicated to that exact mark, the sketches jagged and the notes written in a hand that had clearly been trembling.

The Guardian Hunters. A faction of zealots that was supposed to have been wiped from the face of the earth decades ago. Enemies my father had fought in the shadows and never spoke of again after the treaties were signed. A nightmare that was supposed to have been buried with the old wars.

I reached out, touching the edge of the symbol with my bare fingertips. The blood was still tacky, sticking slightly to my skin.

It's not over, the past isn't dead at all.

Suddenly, a blinding lance of agony tore right through my chest, so sharp it forced me to my knees against the root of the tree. I gasped, clutching my shirt as the pack bond screamed.

Freya.

She was in intense pain, right now. Through the link, I could feel a bright, terrifying surge of fear mixed with something much worse, like an ancient power finally breaking through a rotting dam.

“Stay back,” I growled, forcing myself to stand, my fingers stained with the fresh blood from the tree.

I was too far away to stop it. I was miles from the valley house, completely blind to what Zevren or his people were doing to her. I couldn't reach her in time, but the wolf inside me didn't care about the miles. I could only move forward.

We had to run. Through enemy territory, through whatever was waiting for us on Rowan's trail, and straight through the shadow of a war everyone thought was buried in the dirt.