MY ALPHA'S REGRET

Chapter 6: What the Blood Remembers

Lyra woke to sunlight and the smell of woodsmoke, and for one disorienting, merciful moment, she forgot everything that had happened.

Then the ache beneath her collarbone reminded her, sharp and immediate.

The whole shape of the last day came crashing back in order — the ceremony, the rejection, the black smoke curling from her own fingertips, Damien's offer, Kane's confession at the border, the shadow-wall rising up out of her like something that had been waiting her entire life for permission to exist.

She sat up too fast, and the small timber room spun sickeningly around her.

"Easy." Mara appeared in the doorway with a steaming cup in one hand. "You used more power in one night than most Shadow-bloods manage in their first month of training, according to the Alpha. Your body's allowed to be furious with you about that. Fourteen hours you were out. Drink this — it'll help with the shaking."

Lyra hadn't noticed the tremor in her own hands until Mara mentioned it. Once noticed, she couldn't stop seeing it.

"Is that normal?"

"None of us have ever hosted a Shadow-blood before," Mara admitted, settling onto the edge of the bed. "You're writing the manual as you go. For what it's worth, the Alpha thinks it'll settle once your body adjusts to holding that much power without tearing itself apart."

"Thank you," Lyra said. "For last night. For not looking at me like everyone in that clearing did."

Mara's expression softened. "You collapsed a war-wolf into thin air to protect a pack you'd known for less than an hour. I think you've earned the benefit of the doubt around here." She stood, offering a hand. "Come on. Alpha wants to see you once you're steady."

---

Lyra dressed in borrowed clothes — simple, practical wool — and followed Mara down to the main hall, where Damien sat at a long table covered in old, brittle-looking pages.

"You're upright," Damien said, glancing up. "Good."

"What is all this?" Lyra approached, eyeing hand-lettered pages, diagrams of what might have been wolf anatomy annotated with symbols she'd never seen before.

"Everything I have on Shadow-blood history. Fifteen years of collecting fragments other packs wanted forgotten." He pushed one particular page toward her, careful with its brittle edges. "I told you last night I'd tell you about my sister, once you'd slept. I think it's time."

Lyra sat.

"Her name was Wren," Damien began, his voice going quieter, older somehow. "Two years younger than me. We grew up in Ashford Pack, before I broke away and founded Cross. Our mother had Shadow-blood, though it never manifested strongly in her." His jaw tightened. "It manifested fully in Wren, the same night she turned nineteen. Not gradually, the way the old stories always claimed it should. All at once, violent and uncontrolled, in the middle of a pack gathering not unlike the one you survived last night."

"What happened to her?"

"The Ashford elders panicked. Called in favors from three neighboring packs, all of whom agreed the Shadow-blood needed to be 'contained' before it could be properly understood — their word, not mine. I was seventeen. I had no standing in the pack hierarchy to stop what happened next." Something raw and old surfaced in his expression. "They didn't kill her outright. They bound her power instead — an old ritual, cruel and only partially understood even by the elders performing it, meant to seal a Shadow-blood's abilities away entirely."

"Did it work?"

"It worked exactly well enough to destroy her without killing her outright." Damien's voice had gone flat, controlled. "The binding didn't just seal her power. It severed something essential in her connection to her own wolf. She lived another six years after that night, Lyra, but she was never fully present in any of them."

"I'm sorry," Lyra said quietly.

"It's personal for every wolf who's ever loved a Shadow-blood and watched the world decide that love was a liability." Damien's eyes met hers, steady despite the old grief underneath. "Which is precisely why I intend to do this differently with you than the Ashford elders ever managed with Wren. Training instead of binding. Strength instead of containment."

The silence sat heavy between them.

"That's why the thirty-day law exists," Lyra said slowly. "Not to protect the Shadow-blood. To give the Alliance time to decide whether binding is easier than negotiating."

"I believe so, yes." Damien met her eyes, grave and direct. "If the Alliance Council decides you're too dangerous to leave unbound, they have a ritual on record that can strip your power away entirely, and leave whatever's left of you as a warning to the next Shadow-blood who dares to wake up inconveniently."

Lyra's hands, already trembling, went cold around the cup. "Then training isn't optional anymore," she said. "It's the only thing standing between me and what happened to Wren."

"Yes," Damien said simply. "Which is why we start today. Not tomorrow. Today, this hour, while the memory of what you did last night is still fresh enough to build from."

He rose, gathering the old pages.

"There's a training ground behind the lodge. Nothing elaborate." His silver eyes held hers. "I won't lie to you about what this will cost. Real power always costs something, and Shadow-blood costs more than most. But I'd rather you learn that cost on my training ground, deliberately, than in the middle of another Vantor ambush with no warning at all."

Lyra set down the cup, her hands finally steadying.

"Then let's not waste any more of the thirty days I apparently don't actually have," she said.

Something that looked almost like pride crossed Damien's face. "Good," he said. "Follow me."

---

They stepped out into the cold morning light together, the training ground stretching ahead of them — cleared earth, a scatter of old wooden target posts, the whole space ringed by dense pine.

"We'll start slow," Damien said. "Slower than you want, I suspect. But a Shadow-blood who rushes her own control tends to end up exactly where my sister did. I have no intention of adding you to that list."

They had nearly reached the door when Mara's voice cut sharp across the hall, urgent enough to stop them both cold.

"Alpha. A rider just came through the north gate." Mara's dark eyes had gone wide, her earlier easy warmth replaced by something taut and alarmed.

"It's your mother, Lyra."

"She's asking for you," Mara said, "and she says it can't wait."

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