The Alpha’s Second Chance

Chapter 3 - Fractured Truths

Amara's POV

Shadows creep, long, down the hallway I slip. It feels too small, too close, as if I’m too close, trapped inside. They won’t allow me to sleep, not with Ryder’s words still cutting through me, not with the laughter and whispers of the pack in my head. I am slowly, piece by piece, becoming splintered, breaking apart.

I hear voices from my parents room. My eyes widen as I see my chest tightening a bit, but I take a quiet step closer and walk myself up to the wall with my eyes lowered and ears pressed in. I don’t want to listen in… but I feel compelled to stay.

My mother’s voice is a low whisper, choked with worry, “She’s been through enough already.” “But for how much longer can we keep this from her?”

My heart skips. Keep what from me?

My father responds low, steady, “She’s strong.” It would shatter her, but I would not tell her.” About where we found her.”

As the words tighten my stomach even more with each word. It feels like I’m slipping, dirt crumbling beneath me. Found me? The words continue to come, and I press my hand against the wall trying to steady myself.

Years of secrets and weight, signs my mother. “By the stream, all alone. No one around that tiny bundle. Just… left there. We had to take her in.”

Cold as winter wind runs through my veins. I always knew I was adopted. They never hid that. And now it’s different, somehow, hearing it like this, that they found me, that they took me in like a stray. I feel wrong, as if I was someone from the outside in my own life.

“What if…” Her words are barely more than a whisper, my mother’s voice breaks. “What if she’s always known? Deep down? That’s why she always feels… apart.”

My father says he doesn’t know, and I can hear the sadness, the regret in his voice. “We were never hers and we’ve raised her as our own.” That’s what matters. Isn’t it?”

Something inside cracks within me. It’s small, like the first split in ice before it shatters. Then, it’s breaking, breaking all the way through me. As their own. They raised me, but really I’m not theirs. Not truly. Not like I thought.

My foot brushes against the floorboards, and without thought, I take a step back. In the quiet night the creak sounds loud. My heart is racing, my own fear freezes me, but they’ll never hear. The girl just outside their door, they are just too wrapped up in their own world in their own secret to notice.

I feel the walls close in on me and stumble back. My hands are trembling and my mouth is pressed against them to keep from speaking. I need air. I need space. I need to get out.

The front door is a long way off, and I move forward, each step heavy as if I’m walking through water. The night air rushes in over me, cool and sharp; I push the door open. I take a shaky breath but it doesn't stop the storm inside me.

They aren’t my real family.

Over and over the words repeat in my mind — they cut in, deeper and deeper, into me like knives. I’m not one of them. I never was. Maybe Ryder pushed me away, maybe I never fit in with the pack… maybe that’s why. Maybe everyone else saw what I couldn't see.

My legs carry me forward on instinct, I walk. They’re not that far from the cliffs, beyond the trees. That’s where I always go to clear my head, be something other than pain. My feet are soft, and the wind is cold as it bites and claws at me.

The darkness grows closer and closer, the dull edge of the cliff sharp and jagged, waiting to swallow whatever the ladders can’t. I look out into the valley from the edge. The sky is silver, the moon hangs low, casting a silver glow over everything. It’s beautiful, but tonight it’s mocking me. I’m a shadow in the light, getting faint and disappearing.

My chest feels heavy with a weight pressing down on it, making it so I can’t breathe. My mind is spinning with questions with no answers; I take a shaky breath.

Who am I? Where do I come from?

I make a fist, gripping my hands to the earth around me. It’s not so much that the answers don’t matter, not really. I don’t belong here because wherever I come from I don’t. I never have. Not with the pack, not with my family, or anywhere.

I blink back tears and refuse to let them fall. I won’t cry. I won’t break down. Not now. But when there’s no one left to care.

It hurts too much, too new, a wave and it’s tugging me under. I look down into the dark drop below me, the shadows obscuring everything. For a moment I wonder, what would it be like if I just let go, fell, dissolved into darkness.

The wind races by me and it whispers in my ears and I close my eyes. It would be easy. I just need another step and this pain and this loneliness and this emptiness will just be gone.

I breathe in, the pull of the dark below, the quiet whisper of the dark below. I have no secrets, no lies, I don’t feel like I don’t belong.

There is something that stops me but a small fragile spark inside me. When I was little my mother tells me stories, soft and warm, brushes back my hair and holds me close. I hear my father’s laugh, it’s deep and steady and as I am taught how to fish, how to track, how to survive. I can hear their love, their care, in every memory, in every moment they gave me.

They’re not my real parents. But they raised me. They chose me. They didn’t have to, but they did anyway. Maybe… maybe that meant something.

I pause, step back, earth solid under my feet. The darkness is still there; still urges me to return, but I do not listen; my heart races. I still hurt, still broken, but I’m not ready to let go. Not yet.

The tears finally fall, silent, steady as I walk back through the woods. I let them come, I felt them there, felt the pain, the confusion, the anger, and I just let them come. The whole thing is broken, smashed into a thousand, but as I continue to walk, I feel the smallest piece of strength growing within, as though one thread is weaving its way through the cracks binding me together.

That just might be enough, and perhaps there’s enough.