Fated to the Dread Alpha

On the Edge of Almost

Lizzy's POV

The kitchen was almost empty when I walked in, which was weird.

Usually by this hour, it buzzed with Omegas and clattering dishes and the low hum of gossip. Today, only a few steaming pots simmered over stoves, and one lone Lycan stood at the center island, frowning at a pile of food like it had personally offended him.

Kai.

He had his sleeves rolled up, forearms flexing as he tried to fit way too much into a single pack. Bread, dried meat, some kind of dark fruit, water skins, a tin small enough to be spices or poison. Knowing this place, it could be both.

He looked up when I stepped in.

“There she is.” His mouth tilted into a grin. “I was starting to think you bailed on me.”

I snorted. “Trust me, if I were going to run, I’d pick somewhere sunnier than this place.”

He glanced toward the high, narrow windows, where the sky was its usual deep, bruised shade. No sun. Just layers of shifting cloud and the faint glow of whatever passed as daylight here.

“Hey,” Kai said, “we get… variation.”

“Right,” I said. “There’s ‘slightly less dark’ and ‘you will die without a torch.’ Very diverse.”

He laughed, surprised, and something inside my chest loosened.

The last few days had been like that. Quiet training. Small jokes. Awkward stumbles around the topic of Varek. Kai was easy in a way nothing else here was. Effortless.

I walked over to the island and peered into the pack.

“That’s a lot of food,” I said. “Planning to feed an army or just one very anxious Beta?”

“We’re hiking for hours up canyon walls that like to crumble,” he said. “You’ll thank me when you’re not fainting halfway.”

“Wow. Confidence.”

“Realism.” He picked up a water skin. “You’ve been working hard, but Varek wants you faster, stronger, more coordinated before he lets you anywhere near the real Rites set-up. Today is for stamina. Balance. Focus. Also,” he added, “it is my sworn duty to prove this realm has at least one scenic spot that doesn’t look like it wants to kill you.”

“High bar,” I muttered.

He nudged my shoulder with his. “Eat.”

He handed me a piece of bread and a slice of dried meat. My stomach growled on cue.

“Traitor,” I told it under my breath and took a bite.

The kitchen smelled like herbs and metal and something faintly smoky. Holly appeared from the storage room, arms full of folded cloth. She paused when she saw us, eyes darting from me to Kai and back again.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re… leaving?”

“Not permanently,” Kai said. “Unless she pushes me off a cliff.”

“I wouldn’t waste the effort,” I said, then flashed Holly a smile. “Training hike.”

Holly’s expression softened, the tension easing from her shoulders. “Be careful. The canyon winds can be unpredictable.”

“I’ll keep her alive,” Kai said. “Promise.”

“I’m not a vase,” I muttered.

He looked me up and down. “You’re shorter than a vase I own.”

“Wow,” I said. “Body-shaming your future Luna. Bold strategy.”

His grin snapped a little too sharp at that, but it faded quick.

Holly watched us with a look I couldn’t quite read. There was a flicker of worry there. And… something else. But before I could ask, another Omega called her name from the back room, and she hurried away.

Kai sealed the pack and slung it over one shoulder.

“Ready?” he asked.

No. Not even close.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go pretend hiking is fun.”

The canyon rose from the land like some ancient wound, jagged and steep and shadowed. Its walls were dark stone veined with pale lines that glowed faintly, runes running through rock like captured lightning. The air was thinner here, colder, the wind threading through narrow cuts and sending a low whistle across the path.

“We’re… actually going up that?” I asked, squinting at the narrow trail that clung to one wall.

Kai followed my gaze and grinned. “Terrifying at first glance. Less terrifying once you’re too tired to care.”

“You are not selling this.”

He started up the path. “Come on, Lizzy.”

I followed because the alternative was staying in the keep and counting the number of days Varek had managed to avoid looking directly at me.

Three. Three full days of his absence at training, three days of his scent clinging to halls he wasn’t in, three days of hearing his footsteps and turning just in time to watch his back as he walked away.

The hurt sat just under my ribs, quiet and sore.

The path narrowed quickly, the ground sloping down on one side into a drop that made my stomach swoop if I looked too long.

“Eyes up,” Kai called back. “If you slip, I’ll catch you, but I’d rather not test both our reflexes just to prove a point.”

“Less talking about falling to our deaths, more telling me if there’s an easier route,” I said.

“This is the easier route.”

“Of course it is.”

We climbed.

The keep grew smaller behind us, a cluster of dark towers and jagged walls. Above, the sky stayed that strange dim twilight, cloud layers shifting, never parting. No clean blue. No golden light. Just shades of gray and muted silver.

I would never get used to it. The absence of a real sun. The way time blurred without it.

“You’re quiet,” Kai said after a while. “Dangerous. Thinking.”

“I’m allowed to think.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I just know that look.” He glanced back, walking backward like the drop didn’t exist. “You’re replaying something in your head until it turns into something worse.”

I scowled at him. “You know me so well after, what, two weeks?”

“Give or take. I’m gifted.”

“You’re annoying,” I said.

“And yet,” he said, sweeping an arm toward the path, “here you are. Alone with me on a cliff.”

I rolled my eyes but kept climbing.

The air thinned more as we gained height, making my lungs burn. My thighs started to ache. My wolf, though… Nyra liked the climb. I could feel her in the back of my mind, restless, curious, pressing against my skin. She liked the challenge. The exposure. The way the wind smelled cleaner up here, less saturated with cold stone and Lycan dominance.

Show me, she whispered, a brush of presence rather than words. What our world is now.

Our world.

That still felt strange.

“So,” Kai said after a long stretch of near-silence. “On a scale from one to ten, how much do you think Varek wants to murder me for spending this much time with you?”

I snorted. “You’d have to be in the same room for him to notice you exist.”

Kai winced. “Ouch. That bad?”

“He hasn’t come to training,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and failing. “He hasn’t talked to me. He’s just… somewhere. Being broody. Broodier.”

“Do you want the truth,” Kai asked, “or something comforting and obviously false?”

“I want both,” I said. “Start with the lie.”

“He doesn’t care at all and has totally forgotten you exist,” Kai said easily.

My chest tightened.

Then he smiled sideways at me. “Reality is the opposite, of course. That’s the problem.”

“You’re just saying that,” I said.

“No,” he said, suddenly serious. “I’ve known Varek my whole life. When he’s indifferent, he is polite. Controlled. Distant. When he starts avoiding something?” He exhaled, looking ahead. “That’s when he cares too much.”

“That doesn’t exactly make me feel better,” I muttered.

“Didn’t say it would.”

We climbed in companionable silence for a while. A flock of black birds cut across the sky above us, their cries echoing. Far below, I could see the faint glow of wards circling the keep, thin lines of light like a spiderweb.

“So,” I said finally, “how long until we get wherever you’re dragging me?”

“Impatient?”

“Dying.”

“You’re fine,” he said. “We’re almost halfway.”

“Almost halfway? That’s… that is a rude sentence.”

He laughed, the sound bouncing back from the canyon walls.

Despite the ache in my legs, despite the ever-present heaviness in my chest, I found myself smiling.

It felt wrong, a little.

It also felt good.

The halfway point was a wider ledge carved into the stone, sheltered by an overhang. Someone had anchored bolts into the rock to secure a few hooks and a flat plank that served as a makeshift bench. There were faint scorch marks on the stone.

“We stop here,” Kai said, shrugging off the pack. “Refuel, then maybe we go higher. If you don’t hate me by then.”

“I already hate you,” I said. “Keep up.”

He set out the food on the plank: bread, meat, cheese, some kind of dark berries that looked like they’d stain my soul. He handed me a water skin.

I drank greedily, realizing only then how thirsty I was. The water was cold and metallic but clean.

The view from here was… strange. Beautiful, in a way. The canyon opened down into a labyrinth of dark rock and pale lines of glowing runes that ran like rivers. In the distance, the keep rose from the land like some carved nightmare. Farther still, jagged mountains bit into the sky.

I leaned against the stone wall and tried to imagine this place bathed in sunlight.

It didn’t fit.

“You’ll get used to it,” Kai said softly, following my gaze. “The darkness.”

“I lived my whole life with sunrises,” I said. “With light. Seasons. Leaves changing.” I shook my head. “Here everything feels… stuck.”

“Time moves here,” he said. “Just differently.” His voice turned teasing. “Besides, with your training schedule, you’re going to be too exhausted to notice a lack of sunsets.”

“You’re not funny.”

“A little funny,” he said.

I bit into a piece of bread and chewed slowly.

After a moment, I said, “Tell me something about him.”

Kai's shoulders tensed the slightest bit.

“Varek?” he asked.

“No, the other brooding Alpha with a god complex,” I said. “Yes, Varek.”

Kai sighed and sat on the edge of the path, legs dangling over a drop that made my stomach twist just looking at him.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

“Why is he… like that?”

Kai huffed out a breath. “Specific.”

“I mean…” I searched for words. “He’s so controlled it hurts to look at him sometimes. Like he’s always braced for something. Like he’s trying not to exist too loudly.”

Kai was quiet for a long heartbeat.

“You know Alaric separated him from his mother when he was very young, right?” he said finally.

My fingers tightened around the bread. “No. I didn’t.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Kai muttered. “Why would anyone here volunteer their emotional trauma for free?”

I waited.

He picked at a stray thread on his cuff. “Varek’s mother was… kind. Gentler than most Lycans. She came from an old line that believed in control through guidance, not fear. From what I remember, she used to sing to him. He was… softer with her.”

A weird ache bloomed in my chest at the image: little Varek leaning against his mother’s side, listening to music instead of orders.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Alaric decided softness was weakness.” Kai’s mouth twisted. “He believed a future Alpha needed distance from ‘lesser influences.’ So he sent his mate away. Claimed it was for her safety when war with the outer packs escalated. Maybe that was part of it. But it was also a test.”

I swallowed. “He separated mother and child to see what would happen.”

“To harden him,” Kai said. “He put Varek through every brutal trial he could design. Combat. Endurance. Isolation. All to forge him into something the dominion would fear and obey.”

I stared at my hands.

“That’s…” I shook my head. “That’s not training. That’s cruelty.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“And you?” I asked. “Where were you in all that?”

Kai gave a humorless smile. “Trailing behind. Learning from the scraps. Varek was always first in everything. I was second. The echo.”

“That can’t be easy,” I said.

“It’s less heavy being the echo,” he said quietly. “The crown doesn’t sit on my neck. The expectations don’t cut me every time I breathe.” He glanced at me. “You think he’s avoiding you because he doesn’t care. That’s… not the truth.”

“Then what is?”

Kai hesitated. “He’s terrified. Of the bond. Of what you make him want. Of how it cracks everything he was told to be.”

I let that sink in, my heart turning over in my chest.

I thought of the way Varek had grabbed my shoulders in the training ground, the panic in his voice when the trap almost caught me. The way his gaze always pulled to me first. The way it burned.

“I still hate that he walked away,” I whispered.

“I know,” Kai said.

Silence stretched between us.

The wind brushed cooler against my cheeks. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled, low and mournful. Nyra stirred inside me with a faint answering sound.

Kai threw a berry in the air and caught it in his mouth.

Show-off.

“You’re good at this,” I said before I could stop myself.

“At what?”

“Making everything feel… less awful.”

He tilted his head. “It’s a gift.”

“I just…” I toyed with the corner of the bread. “I get why Varek is the way he is, but sometimes I wish…” The thought slipped loose, unfiltered. “I wish the Moon Goddess had picked someone like you for me instead.”

The words hung in the air, sharp and echoing.

My stomach dropped.

“Oh my god,” I whispered. “Did I say that out loud?”

Kai froze.