The Alpha’s Last Bride

Blood for blood

Ayla

I hadn’t eaten in two days.

The ache in my stomach had faded from pain to emptiness, a hollow echo that moved with me as I trudged through ankle-deep mud. My boots had split somewhere along the ridgeline. One was held together with a strip of cloth from the hem of my cloak, the other soaked through completely. Every step squelched. Every breath burned.

The forest pressed in on all sides, wet and watchful. Branches clawed at my sleeves, and the sky above remained a constant sheet of grey. No moon. No sun. Just cold.

I didn’t know where I was exactly — only that I hadn’t stopped moving since the ridge. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my brother falling. The way his body hit the earth. The way the blood bloomed around him like ink in water.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat.

But I could remember.

And I could hate.

I’d thought grief would feel like something breaking inside me — loud, violent, final. Instead, it crept in slow and silent, wrapping around my bones like frost. I could barely remember Rowan’s voice now. Just the way his hand had clenched around that axe. The way he’d looked so sure of himself, right before Damien cut him down without a second thought.

“If I couldn’t save him,” I muttered aloud, my voice hoarse, “I could at least kill the man who ended him.”

The words didn’t give me strength, but they gave me direction.

Even that was enough.

The hunger was worse at night. So was the cold. I curled into myself beneath the shelter of a fallen tree and tried to keep my breathing shallow. Rain dripped from the branches above in a steady rhythm — the kind of sound that should’ve been soothing. Instead, it felt like a countdown.

I pulled the last of my makeshift wrappings tighter around my shoulders and closed my eyes, just for a moment.

Sleep came sharp and unwelcome.

In my dream, I was back on the battlefield. Smoke and fire everywhere. Rowan’s body still warm beneath my hands. Then his eyes opened — wide, empty, wrong — and he whispered a single word I couldn’t understand.

I woke with a start, heart pounding, drenched in sweat that did nothing to fight the cold.

My fingers dug into the dirt beside me.

I had nothing left. No army. No food. No plan. Just a blade, a name, and the memory of what I’d lost.

And still, I kept going.

Because even if it killed me, I would see Damien Voss bleed.

By dusk, I found the trail.

It wasn’t much — just a line of deeper ruts through the mud, punctuated by hoofprints and wagon grooves half-washed by rain. But the packed earth showed recent weight, and the faintest scent of horses lingered in the air.

I crouched low, fingers brushing the surface. Warm dung. Fresh hay. Supply routes.

Stormwatch was close.

The thought didn’t thrill me. It didn’t scare me either. It simply sat in my chest like a stone. I rose and followed the trail without care for who might spot me. Let them try. I didn’t plan on making it back out anyway.

The woods thinned as I moved north, the trees giving way to boulders slick with moss. Just beyond the rise, a break in the trees revealed the outer wall — tall, jagged, built not for beauty but for war. Black stone teeth against a dying sky.

Stormwatch Keep.

Even from a distance, it looked cold. Soulless. Like something ancient that had clawed its way out of the mountain itself. No banners flew. No smoke rose from the towers. It didn’t need to show strength. It simply was.

I stayed in the trees until nightfall.

I watched.

Guards patrolled the perimeter, moving in pairs. Wolves walked beside them — silent, obedient. The gates remained shut except for a small delivery cart at twilight. The rhythm was tight, but not flawless.

There were gaps.

And gaps were all I needed.

I’d stolen a blade days ago from a dead rebel scout — short, sharp, easy to hide. I’d kept it tucked under the laces of my boot, the leather digging into my ankle with every step. Now I took it out and held it in my lap, running my thumb along the edge.

It wasn’t the blade of a soldier. But I wasn’t a soldier either.

I was a sister. A healer. A girl who had believed in something once.

Now I believed in nothing but this: if I couldn’t bring back Rowan, I could send Damien Voss to meet him.

I wrapped the blade in fabric to muffle the sound, then tucked it beneath the hem of my cloak.

The tremble in my hands had nothing to do with fear. I’d already died once — on that ridge, with my brother’s name in my throat. Everything since had been

If I fell tonight, it wouldn’t matter. The pack was gone. The cause was ash. I had no legacy, no bloodline, no grave waiting.

But if I got close enough…

I might carve his name into the dark.

I found him in the stormlight.

The corridor opened into a high-vaulted chamber, half-lit by fractured beams spilling through an arched stained-glass window. Dust hung in the air. The space was old — older than anything else I’d seen in the Keep. A shrine to silence, cold stone, and something ancient beneath the skin.

And there he was.

Standing with his back to me, silhouetted by silver-blue moonlight. Dark hair swept back from a sharp profile. Broad shoulders. Tall. Still. The black of his shirt clung to muscle like a second skin, sleeves rolled halfway up, revealing the kind of forearms that didn’t belong in storybooks — they belonged on the battlefield.

Damien Voss.

The man who killed my brother.

And Saints help me, in another life — if I hadn’t hated him — I might’ve blushed.

I shook the thought off like a curse. My fingers clenched around the dagger hilt. Every breath I took burned in my throat.

“You’re quiet,” he said, voice low and unhurried. “But not quiet enough.”

He didn’t turn.

“How did you get past the guards?”

“I’m not here for conversation.”

“I can see that.” He shifted his weight, hands still clasped behind his back. “Yet here you are. After I told you to run.”

My jaw clenched. “You think I take orders from you?”

Now he turned.

The sight of his full face knocked the breath from my lungs — not because of fear, but because he looked like every warning carved into the bones of a mountain. Harsh. Carved from shadow. Eyes like obsidian set in steel. That was the thing about him — he wasn’t beautiful. He was terrifyingly striking, like a creature you’d survive only if it let you.

“I’m an Alpha,” he said simply. “You should’ve listened.”

“You’ll never be my Alpha.”

That earned a low, amused hum. “And yet, here you are, uninvited. In my Keep. Holding a blade.”

“I came to finish what you started.”

“Your brother started a war.”

I stepped forward, every part of me tight with grief and hate and something I couldn’t name. “You murdered him.”

“He charged me with an axe.”

“Because you left us no choice!”

For a moment, neither of us moved. The storm clawed at the shutters behind him. My hand trembled. He noticed.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“No,” he agreed softly. “But you should be.”

Then he nodded toward my blade. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You want me to strike first?”

“You came here to kill me,” he said. “So try.”

I lunged — not out of strategy, but from something wild and cracked inside me. Grief. Rage. Shame.

But he was faster.

He caught my wrist mid-swing, hand iron-tight, eyes glittering. For a heartbeat, we stood locked like that — heat searing up my arm where he touched me. My breath caught. His grip tightened just enough to force the blade loose, and it clattered to the stone at our feet.

He didn’t shove me back.

He stepped into me — close, towering, unflinching.

“You call this revenge?” he asked. “Stormwatch steel would’ve killed me. That’s a kitchen blade.”

“Would’ve been enough,” I growled.

“No,” he said, low and infuriatingly calm. “But you’ve got spirit.”

And then — without warning — he bent, grabbed my waist, and threw me over his shoulder.

“Put me down!”

He ignored me entirely, walking down the hall like I was nothing more than a sack of potatoes.

“You broke into my Keep,” he said dryly. “Attempted to kill me. That makes you a traitor, Ayla Morvain."

“You knew my name?”

“Of course I knew. I remember every face that doesn’t kneel when told.”

He kicked open a heavy door and descended a flight of stairs I hadn’t noticed earlier. The air changed — damp stone and rusted hinges. A cell block.

He reached the last one. Unlocked it. Tossed me in.

The door slammed shut with a ring of finality.

The bolt clicked.

And his voice, low and amused, curled through the bars like smoke.

“You’ll be safe here, Luna.”

The cell was barely larger than a closet. Stone walls damp with age, a slatted iron door that let in more cold than light. A cot lined with scratchy wool. A rusted bucket. That was it.

I stood frozen where he’d left me, breath shallow, heart still hammering in my chest.

He’d known my name.

Not just who I was — he’d remembered me. Seen me. Locked eyes with me on that battlefield and carried the echo of it all the way back to his fortress of stone and snow. And now—

He’d tossed me in a cage like I was a child caught playing pretend.

“Safe here,” he’d said.

Luna.

The word scraped across my thoughts like glass.

He’d said it mockingly, I was sure. I pressed my hands to the cold stone and tried to slow my breathing.

I wasn’t hurt — not physically. He hadn’t so much as bruised me. But I felt shaken. My ribs felt tight, my skin too hot, too aware.

It wasn’t just failure that stung. It was him.

Damien Voss was a monster. I knew that. My brother’s blood still painted the inside of my eyelids. I’d come here to carve that truth into him — to make him feel what I’d felt.

Instead, I’d been disarmed like a child and thrown into a cell with his scent still clinging to my clothes. Heat bloomed behind my eyes, but I refused to let the tears fall.

“You’re not broken,” I whispered to the stone. “Not yet.”

I sat on the cot, pulled my knees to my chest, and stared at the wall until the storm outside dulled into a steady, far-off growl.

I didn’t know what would come next. Interrogation. Punishment. Death. Maybe all three.

But I’d looked him in the eyes and hadn’t knelt. Not once.

And for a moment — just a sliver of a heartbeat — I thought maybe he’d admired me for it.

The thought twisted in my gut like a betrayal.

I wasn’t here to earn his respect. I was here because I had nothing left.

I buried my head in my arms and whispered the only truth I had left.

“If I couldn’t save Rowan,” I said, “I could at least kill the man who ended him.”

My voice cracked.

But the rage was still there, beneath the grief. Still burning and it would carry me through whatever came next.