Claimed by the Alpha Who Raised Me

Chapter 2: No One Left to Lean On

Elowen's POV

He didn't acknowledge the greeting and his eyes were already past me, scanning what was left of the Duskbloom estate. My father's territory that Kael had once seen at its most powerful now had elder seals on every door, water damage creeping across the ceiling, and me curled up in the corner like I was waiting for someone to tell me what to do next.

Pack politics moved faster than the moon and yesterday's ruling Alpha was today's disgrace, so none of this should have surprised me.

I looked at those seals stamped across the front doors and the grief hit fresh all over again, but before it could reach my face his voice came from above me, filling the room without any effort at all. "Well? Do you expect me to carry you out, or bribe you with treats?"

Aldwin understood what he meant before I did and helped me to my feet with his old hands trembling against my arm. "He means to take you with him, little one," he whispered close to my ear. "Come, let's pack your things."

Kael was the only person left that I could rely on since my mother's final words through the bond before she severed it forever had been about him. Don't trust anyone else in Thornveil, only your uncle Kael.

I asked Aldwin where he would go once I left and he zipped my suitcase with a gentle smile, saying he'd return to the rural dens of his birth pack, that he was tired after a lifetime of service and wanted nothing but quiet.

Then the smile fell apart and he gripped my shoulders with both hands, looked me in the eyes with tears running down his old face, and said what I could tell he'd been holding back since Kael arrived. "Once you enter Thornveil territory, forget you were ever the daughter of Duskbloom. Learn to yield, to endure, to survive, because that is your only path now."

He'd watched me grow from a pup who couldn't hold her human form into the girl standing in front of him now, and we both knew this was probably the last time we'd ever see each other but neither of us could say it out loud for fear of making it real.

I watched his stooped figure through the rain from the back of the black car until my tears soaked through the front of my dress and I couldn't see him anymore. Then I turned to the man beside me with my voice barely holding together.

"Could you bring Aldwin with us? He can do anything and he'll work harder than anyone you have."

"I don't need more staff."

Kael leaned back against the seat looking completely unbothered while his pale eyes dropped to the pink backpack on my lap with the stuffed rabbit keychain dangling from the zipper and then to Sable curled up in my arms, and his brow creased deeper with every second he spent looking at it all.

"Please," I tried again, but he cut me off before I could say anything else.

"Do I need to remind you that you can barely keep yourself alive right now?" His gaze lingered on my tear-soaked face for one second before it went flat again. "Your options are simple: come with me now or get out and survive on your own, and you have three seconds to decide."

The guard glanced at his Alpha in the rearview mirror and saw the same cold expression he probably saw every single day, then looked at me huddled against the door clutching a cat like it was the last real thing I owned. He coughed once and pulled the car forward without waiting for the count to finish.

There was no point begging with a man like this, so I stopped and just made a quiet promise to myself that when I could earn my own way I'd come back for Aldwin, and until then I had to survive the wolf sitting beside me.

But surviving took energy I didn't have anymore, and my parents' death, the estate seizure, the elder interrogations, the questions I couldn't answer about things I didn't understand, all of it had emptied me out so completely that when sleep finally pulled at me I didn't even try to fight it.

At first I kept my distance, still aware that getting close to this man was a bad idea. But sleep won before pride did, and the last thing I remember is my body going heavy and tilting sideways.

I slept badly, drifting in and out without ever fully surfacing. At some point I shifted and let out a sigh. I think I heard low voices after that and the faint click of a lighter, but none of it stuck. The only thing that cut through was his voice, flat and final: "Enough talking. Drive."

Then I was gone again.

When I actually woke up, heart pounding and confused in the dark, it took me a few seconds to understand where I was. The engine was humming, the car was moving, and my cheek was pressed against a cushion that smelled like leather. There was warmth beneath it, and when I looked down I realized the cushion was sitting on Kael Thornveil's leg.

I shot upright so fast my neck cracked. He'd wedged it between my head and his thigh like a barrier, and once I understood where I'd actually been sleeping, heat flooded my face so fast I was grateful for the dark.

The highway outside had gone completely dark and the headlights carved a narrow path through endless black forest with ancient pines pressing close on both sides like a tunnel that never ended.

Kael was at the wheel now with his scarred hands gripping it loosely, and the steadiness in them made driving through pitch dark look like nothing. Torrin had claimed the passenger seat and was slumped sideways with his head tilted back, snoring loud enough to rattle the windows.

Hearing me stir, Kael's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. "There are rations in the back," he said in the same flat tone he probably used to give orders on the battlefield.

Our gazes met for a split second before I shook my head and he said nothing more, his focus returning to the road and to whatever thoughts lived behind those unreadable eyes.

I couldn't stop watching him though, and five minutes passed, maybe ten, with the dashboard lights casting his features in pale blue the whole time, tracing the strong bridge of his nose, the hard line of his jaw, the dark hair falling across his forehead with a carelessness that had no business on someone so controlled.

His eyes were the most striking thing about him, and even in the dim glow they held a severity that went beyond handsome, a watchfulness that kept pulling my attention back every time I tried to look away. That intensity had terrified me as a child but now it seemed tempered by a calm authority that came from years of being obeyed without question.

"Elowen." His voice broke the quiet without him turning his head. "Is there something on my face?"

I froze and I should have looked away since the message was obvious, but I answered anyway on pure instinct. "No. It's perfectly clean."

He let that sit for a moment, and when I kept watching him anyway, his voice dropped a degree lower. "Has no one ever told you it's rude to stare at an Alpha?"