Chosen by the Alpha Who Destroyed My Pack

Chapter 6 – Threads Burning

Sylvi found Corren in his office, exactly where she wanted him and exactly where she didn’t.

The room was less “alpha throne” and more “overworked administrator”: maps pinned to corkboard, shelves stacked with binders and old leather-bound ledgers, a scarred wooden desk buried in folders. A wide window looked out over the clearing, where the sounds of training still drifted in.

He stood with his hands braced on the desk, head bowed, as if he’d been breathing through something before she knocked.

“You knew,” Sylvi said from the doorway, before he could straighten. “About the almost-marriage.”

His shoulders tensed. Slowly, he looked up. “Riven talks too much.”

“Riven talks exactly enough.” She stepped inside and shut the door behind her, the click sharper than she meant. “Was that going to come up before or after I finished diagnosing your mysteriously broken pack?”

His gaze sharpened, but his voice stayed level. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“That’s a lie,” she said, even though part of her screamed not to rip this open. “Because the last time an alpha’s marriage decision led to blood in the snow, my life went with it.”

Silence stretched taut between them.

Corren straightened slowly. “Sit,” he said.

“No.” Her palms felt slick. “We can talk just fine without me pretending we’re doing a performance review.”

He studied her for a beat, then rounded the desk and leaned against its edge instead, crossing his arms.

“Fine,” he said. “What did Riven tell you?”

“That you decided not to marry someone you didn’t want,” she said, keeping her tone flat. “That it was a big enough deal the pack still talks about it. That’s all I need to know.”

“It’s not,” he said quietly.

Her laugh came out thin. “I’m not here for your tragic backstory, Vael.”

“Corren,” he corrected, almost automatically. “And this is not about tragedy. It’s about war.” His eyes met hers, gray and storm-shadowed. “Look.”

He reached back and slid a thin file toward her across the desk. Old paper, edges worn soft. Sylvi hesitated, then stepped forward and flipped it open.

Names. Dates. Handwritten lines noting terms: land, resources, proposed union between two alphas’ bloodlines.

Her vision blurred on the words.

“I was nineteen,” Corren said, voice low. “My father had just died. The council wanted a quick peace. They arranged a bond with a girl from a smaller pack. She was—”

He stopped, jaw working.

“Never mind what she was,” he said roughly. “What mattered is that she had no say. They meant to hand her to me like a tithe.”

Sylvi’s fingers dug into the paper. The smell of ink and dust rose, overlaying, for a second, the memory of old parchment and adult voices whispering over her head.

“I broke it,” he said. “Refused. Publicly. Negotiations fell apart. The other alpha took it as an insult. Fighting started.” His eyes didn’t leave her face. “Too many died who shouldn’t have.”

“You think this is supposed to make me feel… what? Sympathy?” Her voice rasped. “You torched a treaty to spare one girl and the fire ate everyone else.”

“Yes,” he said simply.

The honesty of it rocked her more than denial would have.

“And now?” she said. “Now you get to be the noble martyr who hates bonda and arranged marriages and expects me to applaud?”

“No,” he said again, harsher. “Now I get to live with every name in that file. Every widow. Every pup who grew up without a father because I chose war over chains.”

He pulled the file back from her grip, set it aside with deliberate care.

“It is not a story I’m proud of,” he said. “But you walked into my home and told me you will not wear a collar. You should know I once burned the world to stop someone putting one on my neck and hers.”

Her heart hammered against her ribs, too loud in the close room.

“You don’t even say her name,” Sylvi whispered.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “She never came here. She never chose me. She may be dead. Or not. My sin is not against her. It’s against the wolves who followed me into that mess.”

Wolves like mine, she didn’t say.

Heat crawled under her skin, the old wound in her chest aching like it had been freshly opened.

“So now you’re what?” she asked. “Punishing yourself by staying alone? ‘Alpha without a luna’ as penance?”

His mouth thinned. “It simplifies things.”

“Does it?” Sylvi stepped closer before she could stop herself, anger burning away fear. “Because from where I’m standing, you have a house full of wolves who’d die for you, a boy in your infirmary with some nightmare chewing his bond, and a woman in your office whose gift is apparently tangled up in whatever you started by playing hero at nineteen.”

He flinched, barely, at “hero.”

“This infection,” she pushed, because if she didn’t talk she might scream, “whatever’s burning through bonds out there? It’s not just random cruelty. It’s targeting the system that made that file.” She jabbed a finger toward the paper. “The system that decided girls could be line items. Maybe it even started with someone who watched you burn it down the wrong way.”

Corren’s eyes darkened. “You think my choice made this?”

“I think,” she said, “that the world doesn’t break along clean lines of right and wrong. You tore one rotten structure down with fire, and someone else learned to do it faster with poison. We’re all standing in the smoke.”

His scent shifted—anger, yes, but threaded with a raw, reluctant understanding.

“You still think bonds are worth saving,” he said.

Her throat tightened. “I think some of them are. The ones built by people who choose them. The ones that keep pups safe.”

“Then we find a way to protect those,” he said quietly, “and let the rest burn.”

The air between them throbbed. Her gift, frayed and sore, hummed in response to his conviction, to the way his gaze held hers like she was the only steady thing left.

Sylvi took a step back, breaking whatever strange gravity had started to pull at her.

“You want my help?” she said. “Fine. I’ll look at your wolves. I’ll tell you what I see. I’ll even try not to throw your past in your face every time you walk into a room.”

“Appreciated,” he said dryly.

“But understand something, Corren.” Her voice softened, the anger cooling into something steadier. “If the thing tearing at your pack is any echo of what wrecked mine, I’m not patching holes so you can keep pretending nothing was ever wrong with how bonds worked.”

He inclined his head. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

Liar, her wolf murmured.

Maybe he believed it now. Maybe he’d never meant to be anyone’s cage.

It didn’t matter.

Sylvi turned toward the door, pulse still racing. “I’m going to see Kalen,” she said. “The one with the quiet bond.”

Corren’s voice followed her, low and rough. “Sylvi.”

She paused, hand on the knob.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “if someone had tried to trade you to me on paper back then, I like to think I’d have burned that contract, too.”

The words hit like a thrown stone, rippling through memories she refused to examine here, in his office, with his scent in her lungs.

“Good thing we’ll never know,” she said without looking back, and stepped out into the hall before the past could swallow her whole.