Claimed By The Ruthless Alpha

Chapter Six: The Girl Who Would Not Break

POV Alpha Morgan Vantor

"Twenty three years," I said. "That is before I was even born."

"Yes," Bren said. "Long before you existed to ruin everything with your father's blood running through your veins."

"Let her go, and tell me the rest," I said. "I do not care about old family history right now. I care about the knife at her throat."

"Careful with that tone, nephew," Bren said. "You almost sound like you care about her."

I said nothing. My silence answered the question better than words could have, and Bren's smile grew wider, feeding on it.

"Morgan," Elara said suddenly, her voice steadier than I expected. "Do not listen to him. He wants you angry. You told me yourself, angry men make mistakes."

Bren pressed the blade harder against her throat. "Quiet, girl."

"No," she said, and something in her voice changed completely. The fear was still there, but underneath it, something else rose to meet it. Something sharp. "I spent years being quiet for men like you. I am done."

She moved fast, faster than I expected from someone who looked half starved an hour ago. She twisted her bound wrists upward, driving her elbow hard into Bren's ribs. He grunted, the blade slipping from her throat for just a second, and that second was all I needed.

I closed the distance between us in three strides and drove my fist into his jaw hard enough to send him stumbling backward into the dirt.

"Elara, move," I shouted.

She scrambled away from him, wrists still bound, and I stepped between them, every instinct in my body screaming to end this the way I ended every threat that ever stood against me.

Bren wiped blood from his mouth and laughed, low and cold. "There he is. There is the monster your father raised."

"You do not get to talk about my father," I said.

"Why not," Bren said, climbing to his feet slowly. "He stole my birthright and called it justice. He took the alpha title that should have been mine, and everyone bowed to him like he earned it instead of stealing it."

"You are lying," I said.

"Ask Callum," Bren said. "He was there the night your father forced the pack council to change the succession. He watched me lose everything because your father wanted a crown he did not deserve."

My mind raced, trying to separate truth from poison, but I had no time to sort through it. Bren's men, hidden until now among the trees, stepped out of the shadows, surrounding us on every side.

"You should have brought more than three men, nephew," Bren said.

I positioned myself in front of Elara without thinking, my body answering before my mind caught up.

"Run," I told her quietly. "Back toward the packhouse. Now."

"I will not leave you," she said.

"That was not a request."

"I know," she said. "I am staying anyway."

For a single strange moment, in the middle of a forest surrounded by armed men who wanted us both dead, something shifted inside my chest that had nothing to do with anger or fear.

Bren's men closed in.

I braced myself, ready to fight until there was nothing left of me to fight with, when a sudden howl split the night air from somewhere deep in the trees. Not one voice. Many.

My pack.

Ronan burst through the treeline first, an entire unit behind him, and within seconds, the clearing turned into chaos. Bren's men scattered or fell, and through the noise, I saw Bren himself backing away toward the darkness, blood still dripping from his split lip.

"This is not over, nephew," he shouted. "Ask Callum what he really did twenty three years ago. Ask him why your mother truly ran. And ask him whose side he is really on tonight."

Then he was gone, swallowed by the trees before anyone could stop him.

I turned to find Elara staring at the spot where he vanished, her whole body shaking now that the danger had passed.

"You could have died," I said.

"So could you," she said. "You still tried to protect me anyway."

I did not have an answer for that. I helped her stand instead, cutting the rope from her wrists with careful hands, more careful than I had been with anything in a very long time.

That was when Ronan approached, his face pale in the torchlight, holding a folded letter he had found near where Bren once stood.

"Alpha," he said quietly. "I think you need to see this. It has Callum's seal on it."

I broke the seal and read the first line, and the ground seemed to shift beneath me all over again.

*By the time you read this, I will already be gone. Forgive me, Morgan. I was the one who let Bren inside the packhouse walls tonight.*