Rejected by Her Alpha, Claimed by His Brother

Chapter 21 – A Cub’s Cry

Sleep didn’t last.

I’d barely dropped onto the couch, shoes still on, when the world punched through my ribs.

A sharp, jagged bolt of terror slammed into my chest, so pure and small it stole my breath. Not mine. Not Corren’s. Not any wolf in the den.

A child.

I bolted upright, hand pressed hard over my sternum, riding the echo of a heartbeat that wasn’t there.

“Liora?” Dris’s voice came muffled from his room down the hall. I’d crashed in the tiny apartment above the clinic rather than drag myself back to pack lands. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I lied, because this had nothing to do with him and everything to do with stone walls and old promises. “Bad dream.”

It wasn’t a dream.

When the worst of the ice in my lungs melted, I slid off the couch, grabbed my jacket, and headed for the back door. The sky outside was a flat, bruised gray, not yet dawn. The town slept. The forest did not.

Cold air knifed down my throat. The panic still thudded inside my chest, weaker now, but insistent, like a hand tugging on my sleeve from very far away.

“Tavis,” I whispered.

An answer brushed my mind—no words, just a sense of yes, and please, and hurry.

I didn’t bother with the road. I cut straight behind the buildings, over the low fence, across the strip of scrub that pretended to be “protected green space” before the trees took over for real.

Halfway to the border, a shape detached itself from the shadows.

Maera.

She fell into step without comment, her breath white in the cold, dark hair bound tight.

“You felt it too,” she said.

“Like someone set a cub’s heart on fire,” I said. “You?”

“Like a thread snapped and someone tied it back with shaking hands.” Her jaw ticked. “Corren’s on his way. Bryn’s rounding up anyone he trusts not to panic.”

“And the elders?”

“Arguing about guest lists for the apocalypse,” she said dryly. “Let them.”

The border prickled over my skin as we crossed. The forest’s scent hit harder than usual—damp earth, cold stone, a faint copper undernote that made my wolf growl.

“Where?” Maera asked.

I stretched my senses, letting resonance slide along the invisible lines that webbed the territory. The circle we knew burned bright to the east, a steady ache. Beyond that, other knots glowed faintly—Serin’s work. But the tug in my chest ran… down.

“Not the clearing,” I said slowly. “Below. Deeper. Like a cave, but not… quite natural.”

“Old tunnels,” Maera murmured. “The ones under the ridge. Your father sealed most of them when we were pups.”

“Of course he did,” I muttered. “Nothing says ‘this is fine’ like burying your worst ideas.”

We angled toward the ridge.

By the time Corren joined us—a dark shape slipping between trunks, scent sharp with adrenaline and half-buttoned shirt—I could track the child’s panic without trying. It pulsed like a beacon under our feet.

“Report,” he said, dropping into stride beside me.

“Tavis,” I said. “Or one of the others with him. Something shifted on their end. He reached. Hard.”

“You overextended,” Maera added.

“I’m walking,” I snapped. “I didn’t pass out. That’s a win.”

His hand brushed my back, fleeting but warm. “I’ll take it.”

The ridge loomed ahead, a jagged dark line against the lightening sky. Somewhere inside it, old stone corridors wormed through rock—leftovers from gods-knew-what era of ritualists who’d decided altitude wasn’t dramatic enough.

We stopped at a narrow cleft, half-hidden by ferns and an obliging fallen log.

“You sealed this,” I said to Maera.

“Yes,” she said. “On the night your trial went wrong. At his order.”

Him. The old alpha. Stabilizing sacrifice, the book had said.

“Unseal it,” Corren said.

She bared her teeth. “Gladly.”

They worked in efficient silence, Maera levering stones aside, Corren hauling deadfall out of the way. I held the pulse in my chest like a fragile thread, following it as it angled down into darkness.

When the gap was just wide enough for a wolf, Niko appeared at the tree line, chest heaving.

“You weren’t supposed to follow,” Corren said without turning.

“Too bad,” Niko panted. “Sela woke up screaming. Said the ‘underground place’ was moving. I’m not staying topside while you go poke it.”

Maera’s mouth twitched. “Stay at the entrance,” she told him. “If anything comes out that isn’t us, you run and wake every wolf in that den.”

“I can fight,” he protested.

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I want you alive to do it where it matters.”

He bit back whatever retort wanted out, jaw locking.

The cleft yawned in front of us, breathing cold air up from below. It smelled of damp stone, old smoke… and kids. Scared, exhausted, hanging on.

“Last chance to pretend this isn’t happening,” I said lightly, because if I didn’t I’d scream.

Corren snorted. “You first.”

I dropped into the dark.

The stone passage was narrow enough that my shoulders brushed either side, sloping down in a shallow, relentless angle. The only light came from the small lamp Maera carried and the faint, eerie shimmer clinging to the walls—a residue of old magic that made my skin crawl.

With every step, the tug grew stronger.

“Liora,” a whisper brushed my mind. Clearer now. Tavis. “You’re closer.”

“We’re coming,” I breathed.

Behind me, Corren’s power was a steady presence, braced rather than flaring. He was learning not to push blindly against every unknown force. Good. We’d need that control.

The tunnel opened suddenly into a small chamber.

No doors. No iron bars. Just rough stone, the faint trace of circles etched into the floor—and a ripple of air in the center, like heat over a road.

A seam.

“Not here,” I said aloud, frustration spiking. “But close.”

“Another gate,” Maera murmured. “Anchored from their side.”

“Can you see us?” I asked Tavis, not bothering with my mouth this time.

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then a hand pressed flat against the air in front of me.

Small. Too thin.

It didn’t touch my skin. It couldn’t. But the impact jolted me anyway.

“Hi,” a hoarse, painfully young voice whispered in my head. “You found the other door.”

My throat closed.

Corren stepped up beside me, his hand hovering where the invisible barrier shimmered.

“Tavis,” he said, voice rough. “It’s Corren.”

A pause.

“Your scent is older,” the boy said. “But it’s you.”

Maera sucked in a breath that might have been a sob.

The seam between us pulsed, a weak, flickering light.

On the other end, stone groaned.

“Hurry,” Tavis said. “They felt you last time. They’re trying to move us.”

Cold slid down my spine.

“Move you where?” I asked.

“Deeper,” he murmured. “Where even the forest can’t hear.”