Chosen by the Alpha Who Destroyed My Pack

Chapter 14 – An Agreement with Teeth

They burned the mark before sunset.

Olvar insisted.

“Cutting it isn’t enough,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose with ink-stained fingers as he studied the raw wound in the birch. “You scrape away the carved lines, he still has the memory of them. Burn it, and you erase the pattern entirely.”

“Trees are alive,” Riven muttered. “Burning feels like overkill.”

“So does sawing wolves off each other,” Olvar shot back, sharper than Sylvi had ever heard him. “We’re past worrying about his feelings.”

In the end, they compromised: Ilyss mixed a thick salve of ash and crushed herbs, and Serah smeared it carefully over the stripped patch of bark, humming under her breath. The smoke that rose was thin and sharp, carrying a crackle of wrongness that slowly thinned.

Sylvi stood just inside the treeline, arms folded tight across her chest. The earlier jolt from cutting the sigil still vibrated in her bones. Her wolf paced in tight circles, hackles up.

Corren watched the process in silence, arms loose at his sides. The pack’s tension gathered around him like static.

“We need rules,” Maerin said finally, breaking the quiet. “Not just for cutting his marks, but for what we do with her.” He jerked his chin at Sylvi. “And what she does with us.”

“‘Her’ is standing right here,” Sylvi said. “Try a name. Or, if it’s a bad day, ‘hey, witch.’”

A few wolves snorted. The worst of the edge eased a notch.

Maerin didn’t smile. “You are now, for all intents and purposes, the line between that—” he nodded at the birch “—and our throats. We treat you as a guest and we’re fools. We treat you as a prisoner and we’re asking for a different kind of disaster.”

“So we treat her as what she is,” Corren said evenly. “Essential.”

That made her want to take a step back more than any threat.

“Congratulations,” Sylvi said. “You’ve elevated me from ‘contractor’ to ‘strategic nightmare.’”

“Promotion looks good on you,” Riven murmured.

“Shut up,” she muttered, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

Maerin exhaled slowly. “We need an agreement. In front of the pack. So no one decides, in a panic, that handing you over to him is a clever bargain.”

A low growl rippled through the gathered wolves at the thought. Sylvi’s stomach turned.

“Is that on the table for anyone?” she asked, voice cool.

“No,” Corren said, before Maerin could answer. His eyes swept the group, daring anyone to contradict him. “It is not.”

“Not while you’re breathing,” Taren muttered from the back.

Corren turned his head just enough to meet the older wolf’s gaze. “Not while any of us are.”

The new thread between him and Sylvi pulsed, hot at the possessive note. She forced herself not to lean into it.

“So.” She uncurled her arms, meeting Maerin’s eyes. “What does this agreement look like, in your tactical brain?”

“You’re not pack,” Maerin said, blunt as a hammer. “You don’t owe us loyalty. But you’re also not neutral anymore. He’s touched you. You’ve touched us. That makes you… entangled.”

“Beautiful word,” she said dryly. “So reassuring.”

“Means,” Riven cut in, “we don’t pretend you’re just some nice lady from town who pops in to fix broken bones. It means we assign you protection like we would any high-value asset. It means we don’t let you walk into the woods alone when he’s clearly using the trees to listen.”

“And it means,” Ilyss added, wiping her sap-sticky hands on a rag, “you don’t throw yourself into every half-dead bond you see without telling someone first.”

Sylvi narrowed her eyes. “You all keep saying ‘don’t,’ but not offering alternatives.”

“Alternative is you dead or worse,” Serah snapped. “We’ve buried enough daughters for pack politics.”

The words hit like a slap. Not from Serah—Sylvi knew where that sharpness came from. From the echo: daughters traded, daughters lost.

“I’m not your daughter,” Sylvi said quietly. Gentler than she would’ve, a week ago.

“No,” Serah said. Her voice cracked. “But you’re someone’s. And you’re standing between my boy and something I can’t hit with a ladle. That’s close enough.”

Heat burned behind Sylvi’s eyes. She blinked it away, hard.

“Fine,” she said. “Then here’s my side.”

She stepped into the center of the rough circle of wolves before she could overthink it. The air thickened around her, heavy with attention.

“I stay,” she said. The decision landed in her own chest as she spoke it. “For as long as this—” she nodded toward the destroyed sigil “—and whatever made it keeps coming. I work with Ilyss on any wolf touched by this thing. I go where I need to inside your territory to see scars, fresh or old.”

“Under escort,” Maerin inserted.

“Under escort if I ask,” she shot back. “Or if our scouts have reason to think a specific area is hot. I’m not walking through your damned forest with a babysitter every time I need to pee.”

A few snickers. Even Maerin’s mouth twitched, grudgingly.

“No one,” Sylvi went on, “tries to use my gift without my consent. Not to poke at me, not to experiment, not to see if I can fix your love life. If I say no, that’s the end of it.”

Agreement hummed through the crowd—even the young ones had already seen enough to fear her power as much as crave it.

“In return,” she said, heart hammering, “I give you everything I see. As ugly as it is. If I find out this thing is tied to me in ways you don’t like? You hear it from me, not in a rumor while I’m running.”

“That part,” Maerin said, “I like.”

“And one more thing,” Sylvi added.

Corren’s gaze sharpened.

“If it ever looks like the fastest way to stop him is to trade me for the rest of you?” She looked straight at Taren as she said it, then at Serah, then at Jorek. “We talk. All of us. There’s no quiet side deal in the woods. No waking up in a strange circle because someone decided my life was a fair price while I was asleep.”

A ripple went through them—shame, anger, fear. Too many remembered times when decisions had been made that way.

“And if you decide it’s worth it?” Taren asked roughly.

She held his gaze. “Then I decide if I agree.”

Silence.

Corren stepped forward, placing himself at her shoulder. The air shifted, the pack’s focus splitting between them.

“On behalf of this territory,” he said, voice carrying like a low drumbeat, “I accept her terms. We add one more: anyone who tries to trade Sylvi Arkett without her consent is traitor to this pack and will answer to me.”

“And me,” Serah said.

“And me,” Riven added, lazily dangerous.

“And me,” Jorek muttered, because of course he did.

One by one, others rumbled assent.

The sound settled into Sylvi’s bones like the first crackle of a fire in a cold room.

Corren looked down at her, something fierce and unguarded in his eyes.

“You’re not a hostage,” he said softly. “You’re not a guest. You’re… ours. On your own terms.”

The word ours should have crawled under her skin.

Instead, for the first time in a very long time, it felt like a shield instead of a chain.