The Alpha’s Second Chance

Chapter 4 - Descent into Darkness

Amara's POV

Slowing the dawn, a pale, muted light barely makes the horizon. The world holds back, waits, everything feels cold and distant. I am at the edge, feet almost planted to the very edge, toes curling until they look white. I don’t pull back as a wild wind whips around me, brushing icy fingers over my skin. I have never felt cold the way I should. I barely feel anything.

Below, quietly unaware, the pack’s land stretches out. The hills wrapped in soft mist, the trees are dark shadows. It should be a sight that is familiar, that’s grounding even. But not today. I feel like I am a stranger looking out at a place that I don’t belong to today.

My fingers clench, nails digging into my palms and I wait. It’s a tinge of pain, a point of pain, small, sharp, oddly remote, like it’s someone else’s pain. I think everything belongs to someone else, and the weight of that is so great, it almost takes my breath away. Everything I had done, every thing I had ever done in my life, had been a lie. Mostly, they didn’t want me. My own parents. My own mate. They never considered me as theirs and now I don’t have anything to hang onto.

Who am I, if not one of them?

My chest is too full with something I don’t know what to call. Despair. Grief. Anger. It’s all tangled together, knotted just so that it won’t come apart. Ryder’s words run in my head like a loop that will not stop. Weak. Not enough. The way he stared at me, as if I was something.

I close my eyes, but I can still see him there, striding away from me, away from the pack, away from me.

And there’s another truth, too, the truth that cut even deeper. “Not even our real daughter.” I hear the soft tremor in my mother’s words. For how long has she had that secret? How often did she look at me and see another’s child?

But thoughts crash in me like a storm inside me, unstoppable. I thought I knew who I was. And I thought I had a place, a family. None of it was true–a well rehearsed illusion that fell apart when I got too close.

I open my eyes and stare down at the waves crashing against the rocks below. Each one hits the cliff’s base they’re fierce and wild, slamming against it, an unyielding rhythm. It’s mesmerizing, in a way. Almost calming. One step, I think. Just one step, and it’s over.

It’s a weird sort of peace. Swallowed whole by the dark depths below a quiet promise that all the pain all the confusion will fade away. I breathe in the salty air, breathe, let it fill my lungs as I close my eyes. The wind grabs my hair like fingers and pushes me ahead.

My voice is small and lost in the roar of the sea, but this is it. It’s such a strange sensation, a strange calm that follows and softens the pain, the sharp edges of it. As if I’m already half gone and only a shadow at the edge.

I imagine my mother’s face, her soft smiling, her hands brushing back my hair. I imagine my fathers laughter that always seems to be there when I need it, he was always there for me through the challenges throughout my life.

Those memories were far away, hazy and out of reach, but now they seem to go away. Were they because they were never truly mine? I was just… something thrown, something they chose to pick up. Out of pity, like a lost animal, given a home. Not love. Not really.

I feel the weight of that thought press itself down on me, almost pushing me forward. My insides feel hollow, scraped clean and what’s left is an empty shell.

If I didn’t belong to them, then where did I belong?

My feet shift forward just slightly, I take a shaky breath, feeling the edge crumble a little under my weight. It felt strangely satisfying to feel the ground give way like it always has, and I’m slipping free, finally slipping free from all of the things that have held me down. I move forward just enough so gravity begins to pull on me, down down into the depths.

Then there is just the wind, hard and cutting across my skin. I lose my world, my colours and shapes whirling into a tornado. I’m not a thing anymore, not even a living thing, I’m weightless and free slithering through the air like a fallen leaf. No fear, just some kind of calm. This quiet, this endless descent, it’s almost beautiful.

Then, something inside me turns, a warmth sparking in my chest, a little bit, but a lot. It’s a spark to dry kindling, the flicker of light spreads through me quickly, growing. Hot, wild, filling me up until I’m strong, a strength I didn’t know I had. The wind around me fades, my fall eases as if something is grasping me unseen.

I gasp, a sound lost in the rush of air, but there is this, a pulse, beating steadily and strongly from within.

I am somehow suspended, suspended, there is sky and there is sea and I am in the crack between them, in the light of dawn. I can feel there’s a power here, something ancient, something fierce, even in the very core of me. It’s like you’ve been sleeping for years and then you wake up, every sense is sharper and clearer than before.

Then the warmth fades just as fast as it came, my fingers slipping away, water is absorbed. I see the world blurring, back into focus, and I’m falling again, faster, and now I’m falling without the force holding me up. Before I know it, I am barely able to process what’s happening and the cold rush of water takes everything away.

I take a shock of icy darkness hitting me, knocking the breath from my lungs. I am plunged down, the water from all sides pressing on me, the cold relentless embrace. I kick myself, but the strength I felt just a moment ago is gone and I am weak and drained, falling into the dark.

I open my eyes, but all I see is black, or black and black and black. My lungs are burning, screaming for air and I'm too deep, far away from the surface. A fierce desperate panic claws at me, To fight, To breathe, To live. The weight drags me down, down up there, until I am gone….all gone…..into the silence.

My last thought is a weird one, a ghost of something that seems almost like hope. That warmth… that power… was real. It was me.