chapter 4
1706 Words
Alison's Pov
The forest was endless.
It swallowed the sky and the earth, the stars and the sun, until time itself unraveled. I ran through it blindly, branches slicing across my arms, thorns snagging my dress, until my feet bled and my lungs screamed. My breath came in jagged bursts, sharp as shattered glass but I kept going.
Because the voice in my head wouldn't stop whispering his name.
Ryder.
It came with every gust of wind, soft and cruel. The name I had once whispered like a prayer now haunted the silence like a ghost I couldn't outrun.
I ran with the weight of betrayal pressing into my ribs. With dried blood crusted on my skin from the rogue wolves I barely escaped. With bruises blooming like violets down my spine, claw marks mapping my survival in crooked red. My body was a battlefield and my spirit might cracked. But I wasn't broken.
Not yet.
Days bled into nights until they blurred into one long nightmare.
Hunger gnawed at my insides, hollowing me out. Grief anchored me to the ground, yet I refused to fall. I clawed through the wilderness like a wounded animal, too afraid to stop, too hurt to scream.
And then I saw them.
Wolves. Massive, muscled, their eyes a sharp silver that glinted through the trees like cold moons. They moved like shadows, silent and watching.
Not rogues. Not mercenaries.
Blue Moon Pack.
The ones who didn't come to the mating ball. Who didn't raise a glass to Tamara's rule or bow to her throne. Outsiders. Like me.
When I reached their border, I collapsed. My knees hit the dirt. My body refused to move. I couldn't shift. Couldn't even cry. I thought they'd kill me.
Honestly? I hoped they would.
But then HE appeared.
Alpha Aidan.
He stepped forward, tall and dark, with the kind of stillness that made the air tremble. His eyes locked in me like I wasn't a stranger. He didn't ask who I was. Didn't even flinch at the blood or filth. He just looked at me.
And then, with a nod, he said, "Take her in."
No questions. No mercy. Just a command.
His maids bathed me that night. Not like a command but like a beginning. They fed me broth and bread, wrapped me in soft cotton, tucked me into a bed that didn't smell like damp dungeons or garlic but of lavender and warmth.
It felt like kindness. Until it didn't.
Because the moment Aidan touched me, I realized this kindness came with chains.
He didn't ask. Didn't need to. His touch was possessive. Not violent but claiming, like he was branding me.
"You're mine now," he said one night, his breath warm in my hair. "No one else will ever touch you again."
I was supposed to feel safe.
Instead, I felt owned.
But I let it happen.
I let him kiss me. Let him undress me. Let him mark me with bruises and bites and a silence that burned deeper than words. He never forced me — not with his hands. But he never asked either. It was expected. A routine. Every night, the sheets grew warmer and my shame deeper.
And I hated how my body responded.
Hated the way my back arched beneath him, the way my lips parted, the heat that coiled low in my belly when his hands roamed. I hated that part of me needed to be wanted, to be seen as something other than a liar. A traitor.
Aidan was fire. Bright and dangerous.
But I craved the burn.
Each night, after he used me, he held me like I was something fragile. He traced my scars, whispered nothing at all, and yet, I still heard the truth — "You belong to me"
And I let it comfort me.
Because at least he looked at me. At least I wasn't invisible.
But every time his mouth found mine, a pulse throbbed beneath my skin. A faint, aching ember. The bond. The mate's bond.
Ryder's bond.
It hadn't snapped. It hadn't faded.
It still lingered like an unwanted tattoo. Like a slow burning grief that refused to die.
I'd loved him. I still did, in some twisted way. Even after he left me to die. Even after he believed the lies and turned away.
I was torn.
Half of me still screamed his name in my sleep.
The other half was learning to breathe under Aidan's shadow.
And then, came the night I broke.
It was raining. The fireplace hissed. Aidan's arms were wrapped around me, his chest rising and falling against my back, and I turned to him voice trembling.
"Aidan," I whispered, "I think I'm falling in love with you."
He froze.
For a second, I thought he'd say it back. That something real might shatter through his silence. But all he did was run a hand through my hair and kiss me. Deep, slow, and final.
Like he was sealing the words inside me.
Like they were a secret better left buried.
And I told myself that maybe words weren't enough. That maybe I didn't need his words. Just the way he looked at me like I was the last thing worth holding onto.
But that night, after he fell asleep, I stared at the ceiling and thought about Ryder. About the ball. About Genevieve. About the lies. About how no one listened to me. About how they left me to die.
The bond still tied us.
But my love for him?
Ash.
And Aidan? He wasn't love.
He was war disguised as shelter.
And I was done being consumed.
I wanted revenge. Not the kind that burned cities but the kind that rewrote stories. I wanted to take back my name. My dignity. My truth.
They called me a traitor.
But soon, they'd remember.
Alison, daughter of the Moon, marked by fate, and loved by two Alpha's.
And they'd see the girl who once fried garlic and boiled spices become the woman who stirred fate itself.
Because I was done surviving.
It was time to rise.
*****
They said love was war but they never warned me I'd be fighting on both sides.
Aidan never said the words. Not once. And yet, I gave him everything — my body, my heart and my loyalty.
When I told him for the second time that I was falling in love with him, I expected a storm, anger, maybe or worse, pity, but he only blinked, lips curling into that unreadable smirk of his.
“Make me fall for you then,” he said.
Just like that.
Like it was a game.
Like I was a dare.
My heart cracked that night, a quiet fissure in a house already built in ruins but I didn't leave. I stayed because deep down, some reckless part of me believed I could be enough for him. That I could make him see me and choose me.
I didn't walk away.
I fought.
I woke early to make him breakfast. Laughed at his dry jokes. Walked beside him like a ghost he'd willingly tethered to his side. I listened to his worries. Became his secret. His solace. And in bed, I let him bury his pain in me, hoping he'd eventually dig deep enough to find something real.
But love doesn't bloom where it's not watered.
It withers.
So I tried for months.
Months bled into a year.
A whole year of almost and maybes.
And then Tamara arrived.
The moment she stepped into Aidan's territory, the air shifted. Her power clung to the wind like strong perfume.
I watched her descend from the carriage, all elegance and threat like a queen returning to her throne.
And Aidan?
He smiled. Really smiled.
A smile I had chased for a year.
I stood behind him like I always did — my face hidden behind a veil, quiet, unseen, but always watching.
When she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered something in his ear, I felt my stomach twist. Not in jealousy. Well, not entirely, but in dread.
“You never told me she was your cousin,” I said to Roman later, when we were alone.
He shrugged, pulling his shirt over his head. “You never asked.”
“I didn't think I had to.”
He looked at me then. “Tamara and I have history. Not the kind you're thinking. Blood must've tied us but war made us allies.”
I wanted to ask what kind of war. But I already knew the answer.
Ryder.
The name still hurts to say even in the silence.
I stayed close that week. Closer than usual. I followed Tamara with my eyes, listening when she thought I wasn't listening. She spoke with Aidan for hours behind closed doors and when they laughed, it sounded like knives being sharpened.
Then, one night, I heard them.
I shouldn't have.
I wasn't supposed to be near the drawing room. But something pulled me there. Call it instinct. Maybe fate.
Their voices leaked through the c***k in the wooden door.
“Ryder won't know what hit him,” Tamara said, her tone cold and triumphant. “He thinks you're hiding away with your little pet.”
Pet.
She meant me.
Aidan didn't deny it. Just chuckled.
“Let him think it. When the time comes, we'll strike. And when he falls, the packs will turn to us. To me.”
“And your pet?” Tamara asked.
Aidan hesitated to reply. For a second. “She doesn't need to know.”
My breath caught.
“But she's useful,” he added. “She softens me. Makes the pack think I've changed.”
Tamara snorted. “Or maybe you're catching feelings.”
He didn't answer.
I didn't wait to hear more.
I walked away from that door like a ghost, my heart a battlefield of shattered illusions.
He didn't love me.
He would never love me.
But that wasn't what broke me.
It was knowing that I had poured every drop of myself into a man who saw me as a tool, a means to an end.
Just like Ryder.
Just like everyone.
- Writer
