The Alpha's Hidden Flame

Chapter Six

LUKA

The ridge patrol cuts through me like winter wind. Three hours walking Sarah Chen's borders, and my wolf won't stop pacing. One hundred and twenty acres of wilderness her grandmother left her—sanctuary before anyone knew we'd need it.

Movement below. Someone ghosting between buildings.

Vivi.

She slips past Rodriguez like smoke. The woman's perfected the art of being invisible, of moving through space without disturbing it. My boots follow before my brain catches up.

She finds the deer trail easy, like she's walked it before. But she hasn't. I'd know. I know every footprint on this land, every broken branch, every disturbed stone. Twenty minutes tracking her through my woods, and her destination hits me clear as a gunshot.

The lake. The deep one that sits like a wound in the earth, fed by springs that run so cold they burn.

At the shore, she strips methodical. Each piece of clothing folded with the kind of precision that speaks of ritual. Of control. Moonlight paints her skin silver-white, catches in the hollow of her throat, the curve of her spine. Even naked, she holds herself rigid. Contained.

Then she walks into the water like it's calling her home.

No testing. No adjustment. Just steady steps deeper and deeper until black water swallows her whole.

Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.

My boots hit wet stones. Forty. Fifty. She's been under too long, and I'm already moving to dive when light explodes beneath the surface. Not moonlight. Not reflection. Light from below, spreading like liquid gold through the depths.

The lake glows amber where she hangs suspended.

Steam rises in delicate wisps.

She surfaces gasping, and for one heartbeat she burns faint around the edges. Then she's swimming clumsy strokes to shore, shaking hard enough to rattle teeth. Dresses with trembling hands while I stay frozen in shadow. Wrings lake water from hair that looked copper in that impossible light but returns to black as she stumbles back through woods.

I crouch at the water's edge after she's gone. Touch the surface where she swam—still warm as fresh blood in a lake that should steal breath with cold.

What the f**k are you, Vivi Silverman?

Dawn comes bloody. Pink light through pines as I knock on her door.

She answers looking like death warmed over. Hair still damp, circles under her eyes dark as bruises. Yesterday's clothes hanging loose on her frame.

"Alpha Wakefield."

"Weapons training. Twenty minutes. You should observe."

"Council regulations—"

"f**k the regulations. Document how rogues prepare to die."

She follows, maintaining that measured distance. Always three feet. Like she's calculated the exact space needed to avoid accidental touch.

The pack gathers in the training ground. Adults checking weapons with steady hands, teenagers trying to hide terror, cubs watching wide-eyed from behind their mothers. Diana takes point, all six feet of controlled violence.

"Listen up. They're coming for blood, so we give them blood. Just make sure it's theirs." She pulls Tom forward, demonstrates on him. "Knife goes here—" Blade kisses his throat. "Twist up, not across. Across takes too long. Up hits the artery fast."

Twenty wolves practice the motion. Steel flashing morning gold. Ernie struggles, his half-form making the grip awkward. Diana adjusts his hold, patient as a mother teaching a child to write.

"Firearms next." Park spreads our arsenal across wooden tables. Glocks, Sigs, revolvers that belonged to dead wolves. "We got three hundred rounds of nine mil. One-fifty of forty-five. Maybe eighty shells for the shotguns. That's it."

"Everyone takes ten practice rounds." Diana's voice carries over the sound of slides racking. "Make them count. If you can't hit center mass at twenty feet, you're useless to me."

The crack of gunfire fills the morning. Wolves learning to kill at distance, to put metal through meat with intent. Jamie's hands shake but his grouping's tight—fear makes him focused. Maya's too young for guns but she watches everything, those bright eyes cataloging death like other kids learn multiplication.

Vivi stands at the edge, tablet forgotten in her bag. Just watching. When Maya races past chasing chickens, she steps back smooth as water. When Tom offers coffee from his thermos, she declines without looking. Three feet. Always three feet.

"Crossbows." Harvey demonstrates, arthritic hands still sure on the mechanism. "Quiet. Reusable if you can get your bolts back. Good for sentries."

After an hour, Vivi disappears. I find her later on Building C's roof. Three stories up, back against the air unit, watching us like a sniper calculating shots. Safer up there. No accidental contact. No risk.

"More concrete!" Javier shouts from the mixer. "This batch is s**t again."

I remember her suggestion. "Plasticizers. Three-quarter cup."

He adds it grudging. The new mix pours smooth, sets like stone. We sink posts deep enough to hit bedrock, thread rebar through forms, build walls that might hold for minutes when hell comes calling.

"Inventory." Park finds me between pours. "Six rifles that work reliable. Two need firing pins. That AR Tommy lifted likes to jam but it'll spray bullets if you're lucky. Three crossbows, maybe forty bolts. Twenty-three silver rounds I been saving."

"Molotovs?"

"Twelve ready. Rosie's making more."

Not enough. Not close to enough for what's coming. But you work with what you have.

The fortification continues through morning into blazing afternoon. Every wolf not training or guarding builds. Sarah organizes water stations, keeps workers hydrated. Diego brings sandwiches, feeds us without stopping work. Pour concrete, sink posts, string wire, repeat. My hands bleed through work gloves but I don't stop. Can't stop.

Building defenses feels like prayer—you do it because doing nothing means accepting death.

Vivi stays on her roof through all of it. Hour after hour, watching us prepare. The sun burns overhead, turns the metal roof into a griddle, but she doesn't move. Doesn't come down for water. Doesn't acknowledge Harvey when he leaves a bottle at the ladder. Just sits apart while we sweat and bleed and build.

"She's documenting our defensive positions." Rosie appears at my shoulder, welding mask pushed up. "For her report."

"Maybe."

"What else would she be doing?"

Hiding. Running. Drowning. But I don't say it.

Tom and Ernie work together hauling fence posts. The kid can't manage full wolf strength but he tries. Always trying, our Ernie. Half-wolf, half-human, fully ours. Cascade would put him down like a rabid dog for the crime of existing between forms.

"Sight lines are s**t on the north corner." Diana joins us, rifle casual over her shoulder. "Trees come too close. They'll use the cover."

"Can't clear them all before tomorrow."

"Then we mine the approach. Rosie still got those claymores from that military surplus deal?"

"Two. Plus whatever IEDs she can rig."

Diana grins sharp. "Good enough."

The day burns on. We pour foundations for machine gun nests we don't have machine guns for. String concertina wire that might slow them for seconds. Dig trenches that'll fill with blood come morning. Everything we build feels like gesture against what's coming, but gestures matter when they're all you have.

"Movement. Northwest." The radio crackles. Tom's voice tight. "Scouts. Just watching."

Let them watch. Let them count our pathetic defenses and half-trained fighters. Let them report back to Richard Henley that we're ready to die rather than give up Jamie. Or any of them.

Vivi shifts position on her roof. Sun catches her face, shows exhaustion carved deep. Whatever happened in that lake cost her. Or maybe it's the weight of watching us prepare to die while she sits apart, protected by distance and Council regulations.

"That observer gives me the creeps." Park stops beside me, voice low. "Earlier, during weapons training? Could've sworn I saw smoke coming off her hands. Like actual smoke. Probably just morning mist..."

"Keep it to yourself."

She spits tobacco, nods. But now I'm watching closer. Catching moments. How shadows pool wrong around her. How the air shimmers sometimes when she's still. How she holds herself like contact might detonate something.

Dinner comes with exhaustion. The pack gathers dust-covered and grim. Everyone eats like tomorrow's their last meal. Might be. Vivi stays on her roof while we shovel food, too tired to taste it.

"Perimeter's done." Rosie reports, grease under her nails, satisfaction in her voice. "Won't stop them long, but they'll pay for every foot."

The guitar starts as darkness falls. Same lonely player, same mournful song. Someone finds comfort in music while others find it in each other. Desperate sounds through thin walls—life asserting itself against tomorrow's dying.

I walk the compound, checking positions. Guards at their posts. Weapons within reach. Cubs in safe rooms that aren't safe enough. Everyone pretending courage while fear scents the air thick enough to choke.

Vivi stands on her roof, silhouette against stars. For a moment she looks wild. Free. Then she climbs down, disappears into her room. Through her window, I watch her line up pill bottles. Watch her stare too long before swallowing whatever keeps her chained.

"Boss." Tom's on the radio again. "They're moving. All borders. Surrounding us."

"Hold positions. Nobody fires first."

The compound settles into battle-ready silence. Weapons loaded. Hearts racing. Wolves who chose each other over safety waiting for violence to break like dawn.

And the observer who burned gold beneath black water sits alone in her room, choosing slow death over whatever she's drowning.

My wolf paces, ready for blood. Ready for the fight we'll probably lose. But I keep thinking about that lake. About a woman so scared of her own skin she'd rather suffocate than breathe. About what might happen when those pills can't hold anymore.

Park brings the final count as midnight approaches. "Forty-seven fighters, if you count everyone who can hold a weapon. They're bringing three times that. Maybe more."

"We've held against worse odds."

"Not this worse." But she's smiling fierce. "Gonna be a hell of a fight though."

"That it will."

She heads off to check positions again. Good soldier, our Park. Came to us broken by a world that said her love was wrong. Now she'll die defending others who love wrong, fight wrong, exist wrong according to rules written by wolves who never bled for anything.

The radio chatters with position updates. Movement here. Shadows there. Cascade tightening the noose while we wait. While Vivi sits in her room behind locked doors and chemical walls. While my pack prepares to water Sarah's inherited earth with blood.

I think about that light under water. About impossible warmth in a killing-cold lake. About a woman who maintains exactly three feet of distance from any living thing because she knows what happens when control slips.

Tomorrow brings the answer to questions nobody's asking. When the blood flows and the dying starts, when her careful distance collapses under weight of violence, what then? Will she document our deaths with steady hands? Will she watch Jamie die rather than admit what burns beneath her skin?

The night deepens. Guards walk their routes. Lovers clutch each other. Children sleep fitful in reinforced rooms. And somewhere in Building C, a woman swallows pills that keep her human while something else writhes beneath, waiting.

We're all waiting now.

For dawn. For blood. For the moment when waiting ends and the dying begins.

But I keep seeing that lake. That light. That impossible girl glowing gold beneath black water while she drowned herself in the deep.

Whatever she is, whatever she's hiding—tomorrow might rip it free whether she wants it or not. And when it does, God help anyone standing too close to the explosion.

The radio crackles one more time. "Visual confirmation. They're in position. Hundreds of them."

"Copy that. Get some rest. Tomorrow we remind them why rogues are dangerous."

But I don't rest. Can't rest. Not with Cascade at our borders and that girl in Building C carrying secrets that burn. Not with my pack ready to die and her ready to watch.

The compound breathes around me. Waiting. Ready.

And in her room, Vivi Silverman wages war against herself, one pill at a time.