Chapter 03
1077 Words
Jax’s POV
I couldn't process fast enough. I just moved, gathering whoever was left in the house, everyone who hadn't already gone with Garrick and Torin, and ran straight for Northern territory, my mind refusing to sit still on any single thought. A fire in the South, hostages in the North, and I hadn't even had a chance to wash the ash off my hands from the first disaster before the second one landed on my doorstep.
Two crises in one night, and somehow I handled both before sunrise. Signing that treaty with the Howling Fangs was the last thing I wanted to do, handing over land they'd been demanding for months, but children's lives outweighed my pride.
I told myself the worst was over. Then, a week later, an ordinary fever spiraled into something none of us had a name for.
"Alpha Jax." The pack doctor kept his distance, gloved and masked, voice muffled through the fabric. "Luna Rowena and former Alpha Garrison are both still spiking dangerously high temperatures."
"Do we know what's causing this?" Dread coiled tight in my stomach.
"Honestly, no. This isn't anything documented in werewolf medicine. Nothing like it exists in any of our texts. I'm sorry, Alpha." He excused himself without another word.
I stormed straight for the forest, desperate for answers, unable to stomach watching my pack suffer with no Omegas left standing and doctors running themselves ragged.
Fear crawled up my spine despite the anger driving me forward. I kept my human form and pushed deeper into the trees.
"Oracle!" My voice tore through the silence once I reached the clearing at the forest's heart. "Show yourself! We need to talk!"
I knew better than to be outside at night with sickness spreading, but after everything the Oracle had already warned me about, hiding in my room felt useless. Where the hell was he?
"I know this is your doing! Some kind of payback, isn't it? Get out here and fix it!"
"And what exactly would that accomplish? I never cursed you, Alpha. This plague isn't mine to command." The familiar voice answered from somewhere unseen.
"Come out and face me!" I shouted until my throat burned, but he stayed hidden no matter how much I demanded otherwise.
"Stop lying to me! Cure this epidemic or I swear I'll end you!"
"I hold no power over sickness, Alpha. This fell on you because you ignored my warning. I told you not to return to that house, and you went anyway." His tone stayed maddeningly calm. "My duty begins and ends with this forest."
"Then tell me how to fix it!"
"I don't have that answer. What I do know is this
you are the cause. You are the misfortune walking through their lives, Alpha."
I ran until my lungs gave out, branches tearing at my bare arms, my feet numb against the cold dirt, and somewhere along the way the tears I'd been holding back all night finally broke loose, the weight of everything crashing down at once Catherine, Cassian, the fire, the hostages, and now this sickness I couldn't even name. When I reached the packhouse, I went straight to my father's bedside and told him the truth behind everything falling apart around us.
His finger shot up toward me, trembling from fever as much as fury. "You knew this the whole time and said nothing?!" he roared.
I never imagined a curse could unravel everything I loved in the span of a few short days. One moment I was Alpha of a pack that trusted me with their lives, and the next I was standing in my father's room, watching him struggle to breathe while trying to explain something I barely understood myself.
"None of this was what I wanted, Father!" The words came out broken, half-swallowed by the sobs I couldn't hold back anymore. "I don't trust strangers, and yes, I know the old man claims he can see the future, but I genuinely thought he was full of nonsense."
"The Oracle sees things the rest of us can't! You should have come to us the moment you sensed trouble, given us a chance to search for a way to break this thing before it spread. Instead you kept it buried, and look where that's landed all of us!"
"I know, Father. I'm sorry, I truly didn't mean"
"Leave." The single word cut through whatever I'd been about to say.
"Leave? What do you mean?"
"You heard me, Jax. You've become a walking disaster, and this house isn't safe for you to occupy anymore." A cough tore through him mid-sentence.
"I can't just leave! I'm the Alpha, this pack needs someone at the helm!"
"Are you serious right now?" His voice cracked with exhaustion and rage in equal measure. "Half this pack is burning up with fever and you're worried about optics? Do you want more of us dead from whatever's coming next?"
The words landed like a slap, but he wasn't wrong. If staying meant risking more lives, then leaving was the only choice a real leader could make.
"Garrick." I hadn't heard him come in, hadn't even locked the door behind me but I felt his presence the second he stepped inside. "You're in charge while I'm away. Handle everything. I have something I need to sort out."
I zipped my bag shut before finally turning to face him.
"Wait, where exactly are you going?" His eyes darted from my face to the chaos scattered across my bed half my closet, it looked like, stuffed into whatever bags I could find. "That's not a weekend trip's worth of stuff, Alpha. What's actually happening?"
"Since when does a Beta get to interrogate his Alpha?" I slung the last bag over my shoulder and pushed past him toward the stairs, leaving him standing there with a dozen unanswered questions and a face full of confusion. I didn't look back, even as I heard him calling after me, practically pleading for something, anything, to explain what he'd just watched happen.
At the gate, I allowed myself one final look at the packhouse I'd grown up in. "See you when I see you, Razor."
the training yard, the crooked oak my mother planted the year I was born, every window I used to sneak out of as a kid and a single tear slid free before I could stop it.
"See you when I see you, Razor."
- Writer
