BLOOD MOON MATE: Claimed by the Enemy Alpha

Chapter 3 — Not Human

"Can you run?"

"Yes."

She didn't sound sure. She ran anyway.

He pulled her out the far end of the alley, away from the sweeping headlights, boots hitting pavement in total silence while hers slapped loud enough to embarrass her.

"This way. Don't look back."

"Why not?"

"Because it slows you down."

That was the whole explanation. She took it.

They cut behind the laundromat, through a gap in a fence she wouldn't have found in daylight, into a side street lined with dark storefronts. A truck sat at the curb, engine already running, like he'd known he'd need it before he'd known why.

"Get in."

"I don't even know your—"

"Get in the truck."

She got in the truck.

He pulled out before her door had fully latched, no headlights of his own until they'd cleared two blocks, taking turns that made no sense to her except that none of them led back toward the diner.

In the side mirror, she caught one flash of movement — a shape at the mouth of the alley they'd just left, tall, still, watching the truck go.

Wren twisted around in her seat, heart still hammering. "Was that one of them? Following us?"

"No." His eyes flicked to the mirror on his own side, checking. "If it were, you'd know. They wouldn't bother being subtle about it."

"Then who—"

"Not now."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

"There was someone else back there."

"I know."

"You didn't seem surprised."

"I'm not." He didn't look over. "I need you to answer something, and I need the truth, not whatever you think I want to hear."

"Okay."

"Has anyone ever told you your family isn't what you think it is?"

The question landed wrong in her chest, too specific, too close to the note still crumpled in her bag.

"My aunt left me something tonight," she said slowly. "A note. It didn't make sense."

"What did it say?"

"Don't trust the eyes." Her voice cracked on it. "I know what that means now. I saw it happen. Their eyes—"

"Turned gold. I know."

"How do you know?"

He finally looked at her, one quick glance off the road, gone again before she could read it properly.

"Because mine do the same thing."

Wren's hand found the door handle without her permission, some animal part of her brain already calculating a jump from a moving vehicle.

"Don't," he said, evenly, like he'd clocked the movement before she'd finished making it. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You're one of them."

"I'm not one of them. There's a difference, and it matters, but I don't have time to draw you a diagram at forty miles an hour."

"Then make time."

His jaw ticked. For a second she thought he wouldn't answer at all.

"There are three packs in this part of the state," he said finally. "Mine. The one those men belong to. And one that doesn't exist anymore, except it might, tonight, sitting in my passenger seat."

"That's not an answer, that's a riddle."

"It's the fastest true version I've got."

"Try again. Slower."

He exhaled through his nose, the first c***k of frustration she'd seen in him.

"Wolves," he said. "Not metaphor. Not costume. People who shift into something with teeth and don't apologize for it. I'm the Alpha of one pack. Those men back there work for another. And whatever you are — whatever your family actually is — it's the reason they came for you tonight instead of anyone else in that diner."

Wren sat with that in silence long enough that the tires humming against asphalt became the loudest thing in the truck.

"I'm not a wolf," she said finally. "I'd know."

"Would you."

"I'd know."

"Your reflexes back there," he said. "The way you cleared that fence gap without thinking. The way your pulse didn't spike until after the danger was already gone, like your body handled the fear first and let your mind catch up later. That's not normal. Not for a human."

She opened her mouth to argue and found she didn't actually have one.

"Where's Marion," she said instead, because that mattered more than any of this. "The man back there said she was alive. For now."

"I don't know your aunt. I don't know where she is."

"Then how do I find her?"

"You don't. Not tonight. Not alone." He finally slowed the truck, turning onto a private road she hadn't noticed until the pavement changed under the tires, smoother, newer, deliberately unmarked. "Tonight you survive. Tomorrow we figure out the rest."

"That's not your decision to make."

"It is tonight."

Ahead, a gate rose out of the dark, iron and easily fifteen feet high, flanked by two men who straightened the second the truck's headlights hit them.

One of them stepped forward and pulled the gate open without being asked.

"Alpha," he said, nodding once as the truck rolled through.

Wren's whole body went cold.

"Alpha," she repeated. "That's what they call you."

"Yes."

"So you're not just involved with these people. You run them."

"I run this pack. Yes."

"How many?"

"Enough that you're safer inside these gates tonight than you'd be anywhere else in this state. That's all you need to know right now."

"That's not an answer either."

"It's the only one that matters tonight."

He didn't answer right away. The gate swung shut behind the truck with a heavy clang that felt, to Wren, exactly like a lock turning.

"You asked what your family is," he said quietly, eyes fixed straight ahead through the windshield. "I think I already know. I just don't think you're going to like hearing it from me."

"Try me."

He finally turned to look at her fully, and whatever had been controlled and careful in his face a moment ago wasn't there anymore.

"Your scent," he said, "matches a pack that supposedly burned to the ground twenty-two years ago. Every wolf inside. No survivors. That's the official record."

Wren's mouth went dry.

"I'm looking at one right now," he said. "Sitting in my—"

A radio mounted on the dash crackled to life before he finished, cutting him off.

"Alpha. East fence. We've got someone."

Ronan's whole body went still in a way that had nothing to do with her anymore.

"Description," he said into the radio, voice flat.

"Female. Fifties. Says her name is Marion." A pause, heavier than the first. "She's hurt bad. Says she's not leaving until she talks to you directly — about the girl."

Wren's hand shot out and grabbed his arm before she'd decided to move at all.

"That's her. That's my aunt, you have to—"

"She said something else," the radio voice cut back in, quieter now, like whoever was speaking didn't want to say it at all. "She said to tell you Voss already knows the girl's alive. And he's not the only one coming for her tonight."

The truck went silent except for the engine.

Ronan didn't look at Wren.

He put the truck in gear and drove straight for the east fence without answering her at all.