The Alpha’s Last Bride

Stormwatch must endure

Damien

The parchment shook slightly in Garrick’s hand. Not from fear. From rage.

“They’re calling it a vote of stability,” he spat, tossing the letter onto my desk like it was something foul. “The Bastion Alliance means to strip Stormwatch of its seat if we don’t present a viable line of succession. A wife. An heir.”

I didn’t move. The fire in my study crackled, spitting embers against stone. Rain hissed against the high windows, the wind pressing against the glass like claws. Even here — buried in the heart of the Keep — the storm still tried to find its way in.

“They’ll never get the votes,” I said, but my voice lacked certainty.

Garrick didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The letter said enough: the capital had grown tired of my failures. Four wives. Four funerals. No heir. And worse — no explanations.

I leaned back in the chair, jaw tight. The weight of legacy settled across my shoulders like the soaked furs still drying by the hearth.

Stormwatch had stood for centuries. Built into this jagged corner of Aruyios to keep the border lands safe. No bastion could survive without an Alpha. No Alpha without a Luna. No Luna… without blood on her wedding veil, apparently.

“They’re not wrong,” I said finally, dragging a hand through my hair. “Order requires succession. And I’ve given them nothing.”

Garrick crossed his arms. “You’ve given them peace, leadership, fear when needed. But that isn’t enough for them. They want bloodlines. Ceremony. They want to watch you parade some girl down the marble steps in white and pretend that makes us safer.”

I didn’t answer.

Because that was the problem. They didn’t care that I had ruled since seventeen. That I had kept this cursed, frostbitten territory from collapsing under the weight of its own storms.

They only cared that I was thirty-one. Still childless. Still cursed.

“If I die tomorrow,” I said, “Stormwatch has no heir. No Luna. The packs will descend like wolves. Every Alpha with a spare son will be here within the week demanding to be my successor.”

“And if you do name one?” Garrick asked. “What then?”

“Then I fracture the alliance. I alienate half the territories. Start a civil war over the corpse of a frozen mountain pack that’s already bleeding.”

Garrick fell silent.

He knew I was right.

“I’ll send riders to the noble houses again,” he said after a moment. “Offer stronger terms. Gold. Land. Maybe one of them will—”

“No,” I cut in. “They’ve all said no once already. Some of them more than once.”

Because they were afraid. Or superstitious. Or worse — hoping I would fall, and they could divide the carcass.

My gaze drifted to the window. The storm was endless lately. Soaked to the bone. Days and nights blurred by grey skies and harsher choices.

Then—unexpectedly—her face surfaced.

Not the pale, powdered girls of the noble courts. But hers.

The soaked cloak. The defiant eyes. The hair — a heavy red-brown, darker than firewood but gleaming when the lightning struck.

I hadn’t meant to let her go. Not really. But when she stood there, soaked and snarling, refusing to kneel when everyone else had…

I’d felt something shift.

And when I saw her fevered body sagging in the cell yesterday — barely conscious — something colder settled beneath my ribs.

She wasn’t a warrior. Not really. Not a leader either.

But she was alive. And unclaimed.

And gods help me… she was still in my Keep.

I was meant to be preparing for the next steps—mobilizing Garrick, sending emissaries to the southern border, writing to the Bastion Alliance with a firm promise of compliance—but my hand hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. The letter sat untouched before me, the quill bone-dry, my thoughts elsewhere.

Back in the dungeons.

She’d been burning up. Sick, maybe from exposure, maybe from the wound on her shoulder. But it wasn’t the fever that haunted me—it was the look she gave me before passing out. Fierce. Disgusted. Proud.

Every other prisoner I’d broken had whimpered. Bargained. Wept. But not her. Ayla Morvain had stared me down as if I were the lesser beast.

“Stormwatch must endure,” I murmured aloud, rubbing a hand over my jaw.

And it would. But this girl, this… rogue —they all thought she was disposable. Garrick had called her a “symbolic brat.” Elias had laughed at the idea she’d get a trial. Everyone around me acted like she was already dead.

But I couldn’t stop thinking of her face in the torchlight. Dirt-smudged. Pale. Glowing with fever and stubborn will.

Why did that bother me?

I pushed back from the desk and strode down the corridor before I had time to talk myself out of it. Past the guard posts. Down the winding stairs. Into the lowest level of the keep.

The dungeons were older than memory—stone and rust and rot. Most of our prisoners didn’t make it more than a week down here. Ayla had barely been down here two nights.

Yet somehow, it already felt too long.

The guard on duty stiffened as I passed. “Alpha.”

I said nothing. Just took the torch from the wall and approached the final cell.

She was curled against the far corner, the threadbare blanket twisted around her legs. Her hair was plastered to her temple, lips chapped, breath shallow. But her eyes were open.

Watching me.

“You’re ill,” I said flatly.

“No s**t,” she rasped.

I raised a brow.

She shifted weakly onto her elbows. “If you came to finish what you started… do it. I’d rather die than be your prisoner.”

I leaned against the bars, torchlight casting long shadows across her face. “You’re not just a prisoner, Ayla. You’re a complication.”

“And here I thought I was a traitor.”

“You’re both.”

She coughed, dragging herself upright with effort. “Then why are you here?”

I looked at her for a long moment. Then said the words I hadn’t planned on saying today—or maybe ever.

“Because you may be the only one left who can save this place.”

Her lips parted, cracked and dry, but no sound came. I watched the disbelief rise in her expression, then the fury. It flared bright, even through her fever.

“Save your pack?” she spat, hoarse. “You want me to save the place that butchered my people?”

I didn’t flinch. “You wouldn’t be saving it for them.”

Her laugh was bitter and broken. “And what, exactly, would I get in return for this noble act? A nice, warm cell?”

I let the silence answer her first.

“No,” I said. “A title. A ring. A seat beside me.”

Her eyes widened, just for a second. “You can’t be serious.”

“I never joke,” I said. “Ask anyone.”

She stumbled to her feet, swaying hard into the wall. Her fists clenched at her sides, trembling. “You murdered my brother.”

“And he murdered your cause. I gave him a clean death. Can you say the same about the dozens lying in your tents?”

The slap never came, but her hand twitched like she wanted it to. She leaned into the bars instead, her voice a growl. “You’re a monster.”

“Maybe. But I’m the only one keeping Stormwatch standing.”

“And you want me to be Luna?” she said, disbelieving. “After everything?”

I stepped closer. Just enough that the iron between us wasn’t the only thing charged in the air.

“I need an heir. A wife. The Bastion Alliance will vote to revoke Stormwatch’s seat if I don’t provide one or both. I won’t let that happen.”

She stared at me, ragged and furious and shaking with fever. But still standing. Still glaring.

“You’d rather chain a stranger to your side than risk your pride?” she said, barely a whisper.

“No,” I said. “I’d rather chain a fighter to my side than hand this keep to a council of cowards.”

Her throat bobbed.

“I’m not offering you a favor,” I added. “I’m offering you a deal. Marry me, and you’ll live. You’ll have protection. You’ll have power. More than your brother ever dreamed of.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I'm sure that fever will see to you soon enough, down here alone in the cold. Not a drop of medicine or a healer will make it down here. And your people will forget your name before the frost melts.”

I watched her try to summon a clever reply, a scream, a curse—anything—but none came.

Just the fever. And the silence between us.

“Decide quickly, Ayla,” I said, turning to leave. “Stormwatch does not wait.”

The cell door groaned shut behind me, locking her in silence. I didn’t linger.

By the time I climbed the last step to the main hall, the cold from the dungeon clung to my skin like guilt I couldn’t wash off. Garrick was waiting at the top, posture tight, eyes sharp beneath the torchlight.

“You went down there?” he asked, clearly trying not to sound alarmed. “To the traitor?”

I didn’t slow my stride. “I did.”

“Why?”

I turned on him at the end of the corridor, my voice low. “Because while you and every other loyal soldier were sitting on your arse waiting for the moon to bless me with another corpse, I found a bride.”

Garrick’s brow furrowed, taken aback. “You can’t be serious.”

“She’s young. Of breeding age. Unbound by any house or alliance. And, most importantly—desperate enough not to say no.”

“She’s a rogue,” Garrick hissed. “She tried to kill you. Her people attacked us. You want to tie the future of Stormwatch to her?”

I stepped in closer, my voice dropping until it was almost a growl. “I want to give this cursed line a chance to endure.”

Garrick shook his head. “There are other options—noble houses, alliances—”

“They all said no. Or worse, they said yes and sent me corpses in silk.”

He flinched at that, but didn’t speak.

“I’m running out of time,” I continued. “So unless you’ve got a purebred Luna tucked up your sleeve who doesn’t mind sharing a bed with death—” I cut myself off, breath steadying. “She’ll do.”

Silence stretched between us like a pulled wire.

Then Garrick said, “And if she refuses?”

“Then the gallows will remember her name, even if her people don’t.”

I left him there, staring after me as the torchlight guttered in the draft. The corridor ahead was long and dim, and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t mind the darkness.

Because at least it meant I didn’t have to look anyone in the eye.