The Alpha's Second Chance Son

Chapter 2: The Burden of an Alpha

Ronan POV

The stack of patrol reports on my desk hadn't gotten any shorter in the last hour, but I'd read the same line four times without understanding a word of it.

"You're not actually reading those," Callum said from the doorway.

"I'm reading them."

"You've been on the same page since I brought them in."

I set the report down and rubbed a hand over my face. I hadn't slept well in three nights, and I couldn't explain why. My wolf, Ash, had been restless pacing under my skin like something was coming, though nothing on the border reports suggested any real threat. Just Ironwood being Ironwood, loud and unstable under their aging Alpha.

"What do you need, Callum?"

He came in and shut the door behind him, which meant this wasn't pack business. This was personal.

"The Ashford family," he said. "Remember them? Nina and Michael, they've been with us since before you took over."

"I remember."

"Their son-in-law reached out. He's a warrior in Ironwood Pack. Says the Alpha there has taken an unhealthy interest in his youngest a girl, seventeen. Draven's apparently offered the father a promotion if he hands her over as a mate candidate."

My stomach turned before my brain even finished processing the words. Draven was in his forties. The girl was a minor.

"That's disgusting," I said. "Tell me we're helping them."

"Already told the Ashfords yes. The family's leaving tonight the father, a son, and the daughter. They'll cross into our territory sometime before morning."

I nodded, already thinking through logistics. A house. Extra patrols in case Draven decided to chase them down instead of letting them go quietly, which, knowing his reputation, was more likely than not. "Get a house ready near the Ashfords. Put extra warriors on the southern border tonight, just in case Ironwood tries something stupid."

"Already done." Callum studied me for a second longer than necessary. "You good?"

"Fine."

"You've been off since Mia," he said carefully. It wasn't often anyone said her name to my face. "It's been four years, Ronan. You let yourself run the border alone at night more than you sleep in your own bed."

"I don't want to talk about Mia."

"I know. I'm just saying a family fleeing an obsessed Alpha to protect his daughter. That's not exactly nothing, given everything you went through."

He wasn't wrong, and I hated that he wasn't wrong. Mia had rejected me in front of half the pack, walked away without looking back at either me or our newborn daughter, and left me to raise Rose alone while everyone whispered about the cursed Alpha whose own mate couldn't stand him. I'd built four years of walls since then, brick by brick, and I had no intention of tearing a single one down for anyone.

"I appreciate the concern," I said. "Go make sure the house is ready."

Callum sighed but didn't push further. He knew when to let something go, which was exactly why he was my Beta and not just my friend.

After he left, I sat alone in my office for a long time, listening to the sound of the packhouse settling around me kids laughing somewhere on the first floor, the low hum of the kitchen preparing dinner, the ordinary rhythm of a pack that trusted me to keep it safe. I was good at that part. Keeping people safe. It was the only part of being Alpha I'd ever felt completely certain about.

Ash stirred inside me again, restless in a way I couldn't place.

Something's coming, he said.

Nothing's coming. It's a family in danger. We help them. That's it.

Not it.

I ignored him. Ash had opinions about everything lately, most of them cryptic, and I'd learned not to chase every feeling he threw at me. Since I'd inherited the strength of a bloodline older than any pack alive today, my wolf had always been a little different sharper senses, deeper instincts, things even I didn't fully understand. My parents had warned me before they died that Titan's ancestors, and mine, were never meant to be ordinary. I carried that weight quietly, the way I carried everything.

I found Rose in the playroom that evening, curled up with a stuffed wolf twice the size of her head, watching cartoons with two other pack kids.

"Daddy!" She launched herself at my legs the second she saw me, and for the first time all day, something in my chest loosened.

"Hey, little Rose." I picked her up, and she immediately started telling me an elaborate story about her day that I only understood half of. I carried her up to dinner, ate with her, put her to bed early, and made sure she was deeply asleep before I let myself leave the house again.

I told myself I just needed a run to clear my head. That was true, mostly.

Outside, the night was clear and cold, stars scattered thick over the mountains. I stripped and shifted at the edge of the tree line, and the second Ash's paws hit the ground, he took off toward the southern border like he had somewhere urgent to be.

Slow down, I told him.

He didn't listen. He never did when he was like this.

We ran for miles, faster than usual, cutting through the dark toward the exact stretch of border where the Ashford family's relatives were supposed to cross before dawn. I told myself I was just checking the extra patrols were in position. I told myself a lot of things that night.

Ash slowed as we reached the ridge overlooking the main road into our territory, and for the first time since Callum walked into my office, the restlessness in my chest sharpened into something I couldn't name something that felt less like worry and more like anticipation.

They're close, Ash said. And something about this is different.

Different how?

He didn't answer. He just stared down the empty road toward the horizon, ears forward, every muscle coiled, waiting for something neither of us understood yet.