Chapter 4
1203 Words
Sera POV
Henry never thought about me coming back home, he didn't even care if I wasn't coming back.
I know because my phone lit up seventeen times that morning. Seventeen missed calls. Then the texts started, none of it was from Henry.
I read every single one expecting he would be worried or expecting hime after two week of not showing up.
Then I put my phone face down on my father's desk and I drank my tea.
Redfang territory was everything I had forgotten it was.
Big. Powerful. The kind of place that felt alive under my feet. The trees here were older and taller than anywhere I had ever been. The pack house was not a house at all, it was a fortress. Stone walls. Wide halls. Floors that rang when you walked on them like they were reminding you where you stood.
My room was exactly as I left it, my father had kept it that way to show how precious I'm to him.
Fresh flowers on the window ledge. My old books on the shelf. My real clothes in the wardrobe, deep reds and golds, the Redfang colours, rich and heavy and nothing like the pale blue nothing Henry had always put me in.
I stood in front of the mirror on my first morning back and I looked at myself for a long time.
I looked like my mother.
Strong jaw. Steady eyes. My face filled with satisfaction that didn't ask for anything from anyone.
There you are, I thought.
My father gave me one week to breathe.
He is a caring and smart man. He knew I needed to sit in the quiet and let the old life finish falling off me like dead skin. He didn't push. Didn't ask questions I wasn't ready for. Just had meals sent to my room and left his office door open every evening in case I wanted to talk.
On the seventh day I walked in and sat across from him.
He looked up from his papers.
I said "Tell me about Ralph."
My father put his pen down.
Alpha Ralph of the Nightfang Pack was who my father wanted to be my mate until I left our pack only to be with the loveless Alpha Henry
Alpha Ralph.
Even his name sounded like a alarming.
My father spoke slowly and carefully the way he always does when the subject matters.
Ralph had taken over Nightfang at nineteen after his father died in a border war. He was twenty-six now. In those seven years he had doubled the pack's territory, ended two blood feuds, and made three neighbouring Alphas either bow or disappear. Nobody knew which ones chose which option.
He was not cruel, my father said. But he was not gentle either.
He was the kind of Alpha who walked into a room and the room changed. Not because he was loud. Because he was so completely sure of himself that everything around him shifted to make space.
Wolves called him the Nightmare Alpha.
Not because he was a monster.
Because when he wanted something, nothing in the world could make him stop.
"And he wants this marriage?" I asked.
"He asked for it, he has being waiting for you." my father said. "Three months ago. I told him I would only agree if you came home willingly."
I was quiet for a moment.
"Why me?"
My father smiled. Just a little.
"Because he knows who you are, Sera. The real you. Not the version you were playing for that Henry."
I looked at my hands.
Then I nodded.
"Okay," I said. "Set the date."
*******
Back in Henry's pack house, things were very different.
I know this because my father's people hear everything. That is the other thing about being the Great Alpha's daughter that I had forgotten. Information travels to Redfang like water runs downhill. Fast and quiet and impossible to stop.
Henry had moved Jennifer in.
She was sleeping in our bed. Using my bathroom. Sitting at my kitchen table drinking coffee from my favourite mug. She had apparently rearranged the living room furniture within forty-eight hours of deciding the space was hers.
Henry let her.
Of course he did.
They were celebrating my absent, celebrate when they think they have won. Having oud dinners. Late nights. Jennifer laughing in every room like she was trying to fill up all the space my absence had left.
She had no idea the space she was filling belonged to a Redfang.
The invitation arrived on a Tuesday.
I was in the garden when my father's head messenger came to find me. He was a tall older wolf named Cas who had served my father for thirty years and had a face like a stone cliff, solid and giving nothing away.
He handed me a small gold envelope.
"For Alpha Henry of Stonecrest," I said, reading the name on the front.
"You're father, the Great Alpha requests you review it before it is sent," Cas said.
I opened it.
The card inside was heavy cream paper. Redfang gold lettering.
You are formally invited to the wedding ceremony of Alpha Ralph of Nightfang and his chosen Luna. Redfang Fortress. Saturday the twenty-first. Dress code: formal. Your attendance is expected.
I ran my thumb over the gold lettering and I felt something warm and sharp move through my chest.
Henry will surely be acknowledge because he loves party and most important the invitation was coming from my father, Alpha Gregory the great and powerful Alpha of the strongest and wealthiest pack.
I carried the satisfaction of the surprise that'll fill Henry's face when he knew I'm Alpha Gregory only daughter and heir to the Redfang pack.
The slow, quiet satisfaction of watching a very well-made plan begin to move.
"Send it," I said.
Cas nodded and walked away without another word.
Henry received the invitation on Wednesday morning.
By Wednesday afternoon my father's people in Stonecrest reported back.
Henry had read it four times. Then called his beta in to read it. Then poured himself a drink at two in the afternoon, which he never did on weekdays.
Alpha Ralph's name did that to people.
An invitation to a Nightfang-Redfang wedding was not something any Alpha in the territory could ignore or decline. It was the kind of event that decided your position in the world. Who you stood near. Who nodded at you. Whether the most powerful packs saw you as someone worth seeing.
Henry wanted that more than almost anything.
Jennifer apparently spent the rest of the day looking at dresses online.
What neither of them knew was simple.
They did not know whose wedding it was.
They did not know that the quiet, obedient Luna who used to make Henry's coffee was the daughter of the Great Alpha. They did not know her real name. They did not know her real blood. They did not know that she had spent a year in their world playing small and she was done playing now.
They were walking into Redfang fortress thinking they were guests at a powerful stranger's wedding.
They had no idea they were walking into me.
- Writer
