Rejected by Her Alpha, Claimed by His Brother

Chapter 2 – Old Scars, New Titles

They took the pup to the pack within twenty minutes.

I watched them go from the clinic’s back door: Maera carrying the small, blanketed form like he weighed nothing, Corren walking at her shoulder, every line of his body speaking quiet, lethal control.

Dris leaned on the doorframe beside me, arms folded over his faded “Trust Me, I’m Almost a Doctor” T-shirt.

“So,” he said. “That was… a lot.”

Understatement of the decade.

“He’ll be okay,” I said, more to myself than to him. “He just needs rest. Food. Somewhere he isn’t terrified.”

“Like a nice, normal home,” Dris muttered. “Not a murder-forest full of giant dogs.”

I huffed a laugh that died too quickly. My insides still felt scraped raw from resonance and… whatever that had been when Corren walked in.

“Family?” Dris asked casually. “Friends? Enemies who pay well?”

I stared at the alley, where their shapes had vanished into the night. “Old clients.”

“Mm.” He tilted his head. “The tall one looked like an old something.”

I dragged my eyes to him. “Human vet tech, remember? I deal in dogs, cats, and the occasional illegally kept ferret. Whatever you just saw is between you and your overactive imagination.”

He snorted. “My overactive imagination thinks that kid was not a dog. And that when Mr. Tall and Grim looked at you, the temperature dropped ten degrees.”

“Fluorescents,” I said. “Drafty building. Stop watching so much TV.”

He studied my face for a long moment, pupils narrowed the way they did when he diagnosed without instruments.

“You’re shaking,” he said quietly.

I looked down. My hands weren’t exactly steady on the door handle. I let go and shoved them into the pockets of my scrubs.

“It’s been a long shift,” I said. “Adrenaline. I’ll crash and be fine.”

“You better,” Dris said. “Because if your ‘old clients’ decide to bring friends, I’m gonna need my favorite assistant functional. The other one still faints at the sight of blood.”

“I have never fainted,” I protested.

“You went gray when that husky came in with the fishhook in its tongue.”

“That was empathy. Not fainting.”

His smile softened. “Yeah. That’s what worries me.”

He squeezed my shoulder once, then turned back inside. “Lock up when you’re done communing with the night, Vesk.”

The door swung shut behind him, leaving me with the hum of distant traffic and the thick, familiar weight of the trees pressing in from the edge of town.

I tried to breathe past the ghosts.

You were supposed to be my brother’s luna.

Corren’s voice wouldn’t leave. I hated how it had wrapped around the word luna, low and rough, like it tasted wrong in his mouth.

I pushed away from the wall and cut through the alley toward my apartment, the route so ingrained I could have walked it blindfolded. Past the bakery that smelled like sugar and yeast, past the laundromat with its broken neon, over the little bridge where the river slipped under the road and toward the forest.

The further I got from the clinic, the louder the woods became.

Not in sound. In feeling.

A prickle ran up my spine. My wolf lifted her head, ears tuned to something my human skin couldn’t name.

Don’t, I told her. We agreed. No more circles. No more trials. No more Maalik territory.

She huffed in my chest, unimpressed.

By the time I reached my building — three stories of peeling paint and stubborn potted plants — my heartbeat had almost slowed. I climbed the stairs, unlocked my door, and stepped into the small, cluttered safety of my life.

Secondhand couch. Books piled in uneven towers. Photos on the fridge of dogs and kids with missing front teeth and one serious-eyed boy scowling at the camera like it owed him money.

Niko.

I blinked. His picture — eleven years old, shoulders too tight — burned against the metal. The boy who’d once sat on my exam table with a bloodied lip and a broken knuckle, snarling at everyone except the strange woman who could feel his anger like a sunburn.

I should have called him when the pup came in. I should—

A knock rattled my door.

Sharp. Impatient.

My wolf went alert.

“Liora?” A young, cracking voice from the hall. “Open up. It’s cold.”

I closed my eyes for half a second.

“Niko,” I muttered, and went to let the pack back in.