The Alpha’s Last Bride

A kingdom fed to fire

Ayla

The canvas flapped like torn skin above us, the storm tugging at the ropes with every screaming gust. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of blood and boiled herbs — a nauseating mix that clung to my throat. Lantern light flickered across soaked bedding, shadowing the worst of it. Not all of it.

“Hold him still,” I ordered, my voice hoarse.

The boy beneath me was no older than fourteen. An arrow had gone clean through his thigh. He was shivering, teeth clenched against a scream he was too proud to give voice to. Another nurse, Myra, pressed down on his shoulders while I worked with blood-slick hands to snap the shaft.

He jerked violently when I broke it, but didn’t cry out. I would’ve told him he was brave, but the words tasted like ash. Bravery hadn’t saved anyone here.

“Get the rest of it out,” Myra said under her breath.

I nodded, and we moved in practiced silence, knee-deep in our own little war inside this tent of misery.

Outside, Rowan’s voice rose again. I didn’t have to look to see him — I could picture it: standing atop the stacked crates by the fire pits, arms outstretched like some self-crowned prophet.

“They will kneel before us!” he roared. “Stormwatch has ruled too long! Their blood will feed the soil they stole from us!”

The cheers came half-hearted now. Scattered. Thin.

I turned my attention back to the boy. He was barely conscious. The bleeding had slowed, which was both a relief and a concern. I reached for the needle and thread.

Behind me, the flap flew open again.

Two men carried in a woman, soaked and barely breathing. Her ribs were showing through torn fabric, her side painted red.

“Arrow. Shallow, but infected,” one said. “She was hiding the fever.”

“Over there,” I said, jerking my chin to the far cot. “Myra, with me. Heat more water.”

“I’m out of balm.”

“We’re out of a lot of things.”

I washed my hands in a half-bucket of lukewarm water and moved to the woman. Her eyes fluttered open just long enough to meet mine — wild, sunken, desperate. She didn’t speak.

She didn’t need to.

I could read the truth in her eyes.

We were losing.

And Rowan still stood outside, preaching a war we had already lost before it began.

He’d once been my hero.

When I was young, and the winter fires burned low, he’d tell stories of the Moon’s justice. Of a world where small voices could grow teeth. Of an Aruyios free from pack rule — from bloodlines, from hierarchy, from the cruelty that had left us fatherless, homeless, and wandering the cliffs.

He told me I would help build that world. That I would be Luna of the No Lands, when we had no Alpha but the people themselves.

And I’d believed him. Gods help me, I’d believed.

Now I sat surrounded by the moaning, the dying, the gangrenous and broken. And all I could think was—

There has to be another way.

The woman died before I could finish stitching her wound.

One moment she was breathing — shallow, ragged — and the next her body just… stopped. No scream. No final gasp. Just stillness. My hand paused, thread halfway through her skin, and I stared at her chest, waiting for the rise that didn’t come.

Myra’s voice broke softly beside me. “Ayla.”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

The tent was spinning. My skin felt too tight. My mouth too dry.

She wasn’t the first we’d lost today. Wouldn’t be the last. But something about this one — maybe it was the way her hand had found mine mid-sewing, as if she trusted me — cracked something inside my ribs.

She’d trusted me. Believed in our cause, and I couldn’t even save her.

“I need air,” I said, rising too fast.

I pushed through the canvas flap just as another wave of shouting erupted from the camp.

The storm hadn’t let up. It screamed across the mountainside, drowning out voices until only the loudest could rise above it — and Rowan’s voice was always the loudest.

He was still on the crates, arms raised high like he thought the Moon herself was watching.

“The Alpha of Stormwatch has come!” he roared, hair whipping in the wind. “Damien Voss! But only an Alpha can face an Alpha!”

A hush fell across the camp.

Then Rowan grinned. “I’ll handle this myself.”

“Rowan,” I whispered, but he was already gone.

He jumped from the crates and stormed off toward the ridge, snatching a bloodstained axe from a nearby cart as if that would be enough.

“Myra!” I shouted, stumbling back inside the tent. “Get the wounded below ground—now! Stormwatch is coming!”

But I barely got the words out before a young scout burst in behind me, soaked and panicked.

“Alpha Damien’s already breached the ridge!” he shouted. “The outpost is down—he’s cutting through our fighters like they’re nothing!”

I bolted past him, out into the cold again, chest tight with panic. The ridgeline was only half-visible through the fog and firelight, but I saw him — Rowan, my brother, charging forward through mud and smoke like a fool who thought glory was waiting.

I screamed his name.

He didn’t turn. Not even when the shadow came for him.

From the smoke, Damien emerged like a myth. Cloak flaring. Blade dripping.

Rowan lifted his axe.

Damien didn’t slow down.

The strike was so fast I didn’t see it — I only saw the after. My brother falling like a sack of grain. Axe clattering to the stone. Blood pooling in the earth.

It had taken one hit.

One.

And just like that, Rowan Morvain, would-be Alpha of the No Lands, was gone.

Rowan’s body lay in the mud like a warning.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe. I just stood there, blood roaring in my ears as the storm howled over the ridge.

No one else moved either.

Even the wounded seemed frozen, their cries swallowed by the sudden silence that followed my brother’s death. The crackle of fire.

The hiss of rain. The slow, agonizing sound of steel being sheathed by someone who didn’t need it anymore.

Damien Voss turned without a word. He didn’t even look back.

My knees threatened to buckle, but I stayed upright, swallowing bile and salt. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run to Rowan’s body, pull him from the mud, cradle his stupid head in my lap and scream that he should’ve listened.

But all I could do was stare.

Because the camp had gone quiet for a different reason. They were looking at me.

The nurses. The farmers with blades. The half-healed rebels dragging each other toward cover. Eyes wide. Expectant.

Not one of them said it, but I heard the word anyway, echoing in the silence like a curse.

Luna.

Not out of love. Not out of tradition, out of need.

I wasn’t Rowan. I couldn’t rouse crowds. Couldn’t chant blood and fire. I didn’t want to be the face of a rebellion. But they were still looking.

The sound of hooves rolled across the ridge like thunder. Not a dozen. Not even fifty. Hundreds.

Stormwatch riders crested the pass in black formation, their blades drawn, wolves stalking at their flanks. I saw their cloaks — rain-slick and heavy — and the silver gleam of steel against storm light.

We were surrounded.

Garrick Fenros emerged first, his face set like stone. He didn’t raise a sword, just lifted his voice above the roar of wind and fire.

“Lay down your weapons,” he called. “You’ve lost. Those who kneel will be spared and brought under Stormwatch protection.”

The word hit harder than any blade: protection.

I stepped forward before the crowd could shift. Turning my back to Garrick and the rest of Stormwatch warriors. “No,” I said, loud and clear. “Don’t you dare.”

They turned to me — all of them. Bandaged, bloodied, broken. But listening.

“Don’t you remember what we were fighting for?” I asked, voice shaking with fury. “We wanted freedom. We wanted dignity. A world where we chose who led us.”

No one answered.

Someone dropped to their knees near the back. Ellis. Then Myra. Then another. And another.

Their silence cut deeper than any wound.

“You were willing to die for this yesterday,” I said, breath catching. “And now—now you’ll kneel? While my brother’s blood is still soaking the ridge?”

Guilt flickered in some of their eyes. But none of them stood back up.

They looked at me like I was the ghost.

Then I felt him, the Alpha's heavy boots dull against the earth as he stepped closer to me. Probably deciding whether or not he had it in him to kill a woman.

He didn’t bark orders. He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to.

“Kneel,” he said, “or die.” He muttered behind me, his hot breathe fanning my ear. His voice not cruel or angry, but deep and rich.

“If you want to kill me, Alpha,” I said, “you’ll have to find me first.” I said turning to face him.

For a moment, everything else fell away. The storm. The soldiers. The smoke. It was just us — him, looking at me with eyes like tempered steel, and me, burning with something I hadn’t even known I could feel.

I didn’t drop my gaze, neither did he.

I knew what he saw — wet hair plastered to my face, blood on my hands, defiance in every breath. But I saw him too.

And for one breathless second, I wondered what he’d do if I stepped forward. If I let my knees fall into the mud like the rest of them. If I surrendered not to the keep, but to him.

Then I remembered Rowan. The flames. The lies. The cause and I straightened my spine.

His eyes darkened. Not with rage but with interest.

But I didn’t wait to see if he’d speak again.

I turned and ran — past the trembling soldiers, through the shattered line, into the storm. My cloak caught on branches. My boots slipped in blood. But I didn’t stop.

I didn’t look back.

Because they had chosen to kneel.

And I never would.