Chosen by the Alpha Who Destroyed My Pack

Chapter 16 – Teeth and Secrets

Time snapped into shards.

The dog launched.

Riven moved first. One arm slammed across Sylvi’s chest, shoving her back against the wall, his other hand snatching a metal tray off the counter and whipping it up between them and the oncoming jaws.

Metal rang as teeth hit steel. The tray bent with a screech.

Mira screamed, stumbling sideways into the cabinets. Instruments clattered to the floor.

“Get out,” Sylvi gasped. “Mira, go—”

“Like hell I’m—”

Riven kicked the table hard. It skidded, leg catching the dog’s hindquarters and knocking him off balance. Not enough. He twisted midair, hit the ground, scrabbled for purchase.

His eyes weren’t human. They weren’t canine. They glowed—pale, poisonous amber.

Sylvi’s wolf lunged at the glass inside her chest.

Let me out. Let me out—

She slammed into the wall of that block again, stars bursting behind her eyes. No time. No shift. Just skin and bone and a half-born bond humming hot under her ribs.

Fine.

She shoved off the wall, ducking under Riven’s arm.

“Arkett—”

“Hold him,” she snapped. “Don’t kill him unless you have to.”

The dog whipped toward her, lips peeled back. His growl was a bubbling, static-laced sound that scraped at her teeth. Up close, the reek of foreign magic was almost overwhelming, tangled through his scent like oil.

“You want me,” Sylvi said, low and clear, every nerve screaming. “Then look at me.”

For a heartbeat, he did.

The not-voice slammed into her again: recognition, hunger, curiosity.

You keep putting yourself between them and my work.

“Yeah,” she said through clenched teeth. “Bad habit.”

She grabbed.

Not fur—threads. Her gift flared, hand closing on the skein of wrong magic woven through his aura. It burned, icy hot, trying to wriggle away, to surge up her arm and into her.

She anchored herself on the only solid thing she had: the thin, stubborn line humming to her left, where Corren would be if he were here.

He wasn’t. But the echo of him—of his steady, relentless will—vibrated through the bond, faint but present.

Hold, she thought at it. At him. At herself.

Power jolted down the tenuous connection, not from him—he was miles away—but from her memory of him. The choice she’d already made to stand with him, even without magic dictating it.

The foreign magic recoiled.

Riven slammed his weight down across the dog’s shoulders, forearm wedged against the animal’s throat, pinning him without choking him outright.

“Now would be an excellent time,” he gritted out, “to do whatever freaky thing you’re doing.”

“I’m working on it,” she snarled.

The magic inside the dog writhed, sensing the trap. It tried to reverse course, to surge back into him, to launch another lunge at her face.

Sylvi did the only thing she could in the cramped, human room.

She pulled.

Not gently. Not kind. She ripped at the strands of wrongness like roots out of soil, dragging them out of his aura and into herself. They came screaming, hooks tearing across her nerves.

Pain lanced up her arm into her chest, white and blinding. She bit down on a cry, tasting blood.

The dog yelped once, then went abruptly limp, eyes rolling back. Not dead—she felt the thud of his heart under her palm—but stunned, empty of that foreign pressure.

The not-voice hit her one more time, furious and startled.

Reckless, it hissed. Dangerous little wolf.

Then it snapped away, like a wire cut.

Sylvi staggered. The room tilted. Riven grabbed her elbow with his free hand, keeping both of them from going down.

“Breathe,” he barked. “Sylvi. Hey.”

She dragged air into her lungs in ragged pulls. The pain ebbed from agony to a deep, corrosive ache.

The dog lay slack under Riven’s weight, chest heaving. The glow had drained from his eyes. They looked… normal. Scared. Confused.

Mira pressed herself against the cabinets, shaking.

“What the hell was that,” she whispered. “What is going on, Arkett?”

Sylvi’s stomach dropped.

Her wolf, exhausted, sank down behind the glass. The borrowed heat of the bond with Corren faded back to its usual faint hum, leaving her shaking and cold.

Riven glanced at Mira, then at Sylvi. “We need to move,” he said. “Before anyone else comes back here and sees this mess. Or before your friend decides to call it in.”

Mira inhaled sharply. “Are you kidding me? I’m calling everyone in. That dog just went full Cujo and you—”

“He was going for my throat,” Sylvi cut in, voice raw. “You saw that.”

“Exactly!” Mira’s eyes blazed, fear sharpening to anger. “And then you did—something—and now he’s lying there like a drunk after karaoke. You expect me to pretend that was just…good bedside manner?”

Sylvi’s pulse thundered. This was the moment she’d been pushing off for years—the crack in the wall between her lives.

You can still lie, a small, cowardly voice whispered. Say adrenaline. Say training. Say—

“I expect you,” Riven said smoothly, “to remember that if we walk out of here and animal control hears someone at this clinic let a rabid dog attack a vet, they shut this place down. Hard.”

Mira’s jaw clenched. “That wasn’t rabies.”

“No,” Sylvi said, before Riven could press. She met Mira’s gaze head-on and, for the first time, didn’t look away. “It wasn’t.”

Silence slammed into the room.

Mira’s breath hitched. “Then what was it?”

Sylvi swallowed. The words stuck in her throat, heavy with years of secrecy.

“A problem,” she said finally. “From…my other job. One that’s been hitting a lot closer to my side of the fence and just stuck a toe over onto yours.”

Mira stared at her, searching her face for a joke, a tell. Found none.

“You’re going to have to narrow that down,” Mira said hoarsely. “Because right now it sounds like you’re telling me monsters are real and we just tranquilized one of them on my table.”

“Not monsters,” Sylvi said softly. “Wolves.”

Mira laughed once, too sharp. “Cute. Very Twilight.”

“And some of them,” Sylvi went on, heart pounding, “walk on two legs.”

Riven muttered, “Well, that’s subtle,” under his breath.

Mira went very still.

“My other job,” Sylvi said, the dam cracking, “is making sure they don’t eat each other. Or you. This—” she gestured weakly at the unconscious dog “—was someone trying to use one of ours as a test run out here.”

Mira’s eyes were wide and white. Her knuckles were bloodless where they gripped the counter.

“So,” she said carefully, voice shaking, “when you say ‘ours’…”

She looked at Sylvi’s too-bright eyes, at Riven’s too-still posture, at the way the “cousin’s” teeth had looked a little too sharp when he snarled.

Understanding hit like a falling brick.

Mira swallowed.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m listening. But if this is some elaborate bit, I swear to God I will staple your ears to the exam table.”

Sylvi let out a breath that felt like it took half her old life with it.

“No bit,” she said. “And no more lies. Not to you.”

Out in the parking lot, a siren wailed past and faded.

Inside Exam Room Three, with a half-wolf on the table and magic burning like acid in her veins, Sylvi finally stopped pretending the human world and the wolf world weren’t already bleeding into each other.

And somewhere, very far away, the presence that had reached for her licked its wounds—and smiled.