Alpha by Blood Luna by Fate

Chapter 3

"Well." The smile that spread across his face was the most frightening thing I had ever seen. "So she is your daughter."

My mother growled, a sound that came from the wolf part of her that had no use for words.

"You stay away from her."

The man tilted his head. His expression shifted into something that might have been on a different face, in a different world almost tender.

"My love." He stepped closer. "I have no interest in harming your child."

He reached for her face.

She yanked back, turning her head sharply aside. Then she spat at him directly, deliberately, onto his cheek.

"I am not your love," she said, her voice was low and shaking with controlled fury. "I have never been yours. I will never be yours. Get that through your head."

Something flickered in his pale eyes. A twitch at the corner of his jaw. The smile remained but it had gone tight at the edges, the way a mask goes tight when the face beneath it is doing something it doesn't want to show.

Slowly, he reached up and wiped his cheek clean.

"You have always underestimated me." His voice was still smooth, still pleasant, but underneath it now was something cold and sharp.

"Look around you, Serena. Your pack is burning. Your territory is compromised." He paused, letting the words settle. "And your mate your beloved Alpha love is already dead."

I know you saw how I ripped his heart out of his chest. You saw how he took his last breath in front of you. Now you're left with no one. No one cares to come my way now.

My mother made a sound like she had been struck.

The man reached out and caught a lock of her brown hair between his fingers, turning it slowly, his expression shifting back into that horrible approximation of tenderness.

"No one can take you away from me now," he said softly. "You have nothing left. No pack. No mate. Nothing." His eyes flicked to me brief as a blade catching light.

"Nothing except her."

The threat landed exactly as he intended it to.

I watched my mother's whole body tighten. Watched her weigh it. Watched her burning red eyes.

"If you want your daughter to see tomorrow," the man continued, "then you come with me. Willingly. Tonight."

"Take your hands off me."

He released her hair and stepped back, looking around the burning room with the casual air of someone surveying something they had built rather than destroyed.

As he turned, I noticed two more figures in the doorway waiting.

And then a voice came through, tight and urgent.

"Luna. We're here."

My mother's head snapped up. "Beta."

"Yes, Luna." The voice said in a steady, barely controlled tone.

"He created a situation along the territory borders to separate the warriors from the base. It was deliberate. But Luna…. Alpha is…."

"I know."

The two words were so quiet they barely existed.

She closed her eyes for a single second. Then opened them and whatever was left of her grief had been buried somewhere deep and unreachable. What remained on her face was a decision.

"Listen to me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, pitched for the beta alone. "Take Kaelira. Now. Get her out of here."

"Luna"

"Her father and I already knew if it ever came to this, Kaelira shouldn't get involved. You hear me? That was always the plan." Her jaw tightened. "Your Alpha gave his life for this pack. Now you take his daughter and you teach her what she needs to know. You raise her to lead. You let nothing blind her, nothing to break her and you make sure she is everything her father knew she would be."

"Please," the beta said. "Reinforcements are coming. Just hold on for some minutes Luna"

"I cannot hold on." Her voice cracked just once. "Not without him. I can't." Then, steadier: "I have never been a female in distress, and I am not going to start now. So let my daughter be what she is meant to be."

She turned to look at me.

And in that look in those burning red eyes of hers, filled with love and grief and terrifying certainty I understood that she was saying goodbye to me in a different way.

"Mom." I reached for her. "Mom, no"

She pulled me close one last time. Pressed her lips to my forehead held them there for one long, aching second. Her hands cradled my face.

"My brave girl," she breathed. "My beautiful, brave girl."

Before I could speak, before I could hold on any tighter.

The world lurched.

Her arms released me, her hands became something else entirely. She shoved me through the window which exploded outward and the night air hit me like a wall I was falling.

The cry that tore from my throat was involuntary and wordless. Wind rushed past my face. The burning house above me grew small. And then something solid caught me but so soft.

I lay there gasping, staring up at the sky.

Above me, the window I had come through was a jagged wreath of broken glass and orange flame. And framed within it, looking down watching me fall and land and lie there was a wolf.

Massive. White as bone. Eyes blazing red as embers.

My mother.

She looked at me for one more moment. Her gaze was steady and said everything she hadn't had time to say in words.

Then she turned back into the burning room.

"You really threw your own child through a window," came the man's voice from inside, almost amused. "For me?"

"Don't you dare touch me."

"Feisty as ever. Even now."

The fire crackled and roared. Somewhere glass shattered. And then my mother's voice came clear and furious completely unafraid.

"I can and I will."

"You really think you can win against me?"