The Alpha Who Tried to Unmate Me

Chapter 13 – Old Ghosts, New Tracks

We didn’t go in loud.

Three wolves in an armored SUV drew enough attention without flashing lights and sirens. Daxen drove, expression carved from stone. Ishan scanned the street grid on his tablet, Nyra’s map overlay ghosting over the official one. I sat in the back seat, fingers worrying the seam of my jeans, trying not to taste the metal tang of memory on my tongue.

“You sure you should be coming?” Daxen asked, eyes on the road. “Alpha seemed—”

“Alpha can file a complaint later,” I said. “If this annex was part of what happened to me, I’ll feel it before your sensors do.”

“Which is exactly the part he doesn’t like,” Ishan murmured.

“Get in line,” I said. “I’m not a fan either.”

The neighborhood bled out from gentrified brick to shabby concrete to something else—blocks that felt half‑erased. Street lamps flickered. A few windows glowed in distant apartment stacks, but this stretch was dead.

“There,” Ishan said, tapping the screen. “Parcel 17‑B. Listed as municipal storage. No active leases, no maintenance records for the last seven years.”

Daxen snorted. “Translation: someone’s pet project.”

He killed the engine a block away. We got out into a wind that smelled like dust and old rain. The building in question squatted at the end of a fenced lot, three stories of stained concrete and boarded windows.

My wolf recoiled the second we stepped through the gap in the fence.

The air here was thick. Old fear clung to it like mildew. Underneath, a ghost of burning ozone—the signature of heavy ritual work. My chest tightened in the exact, too‑familiar ache of bonds stretched to breaking.

Nyra’s red circle lived here.

“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “This is it.”

We advanced slowly, boots crunching gravel. No cameras that I could see. No fresh trash, no graffiti kids had been brave or stupid enough to leave.

“Door’s reinforced,” Daxen murmured, running his fingers along the frame. “But the lock is new.”

“Someone’s been using it,” I said.

He glanced back at me. “Step behind me.”

I wanted to argue. My wolf wanted to bolt. Neither got a say; my feet obeyed training and moved back while Daxen slid a slim tool from his pocket. The lock yielded with a soft click.

He pushed the door inward.

Dust exploded in the beam of his flashlight. The smell hit harder now—old blood and disinfectant, layered under the mineral sting of wardwork. I’d never been here consciously. My body remembered anyway.

The foyer had once been some kind of reception space: a long counter, a bank of dead terminals. Doors led deeper in. Faded signage still clung to the walls, words half‑scraped.

“…Compatibility Outreach,” Ishan read under his breath. “Sub‑department.”

A low growl vibrated in my chest before I could stop it.

We moved left, toward what the building plans said were “consultation suites.” The first few rooms were empty except for broken chairs and dust‑sheeted machines.

The fourth wasn’t.

“Stop,” I said sharply.

Daxen froze mid‑step. I edged past him, pulse hammering.

The room was small, windowless. A metal table, bolted to the floor. Restraint hooks at all four corners. My skin crawled. Someone had scrubbed this place within an inch of its life, but years hadn’t erased the faint brown stains in the grooves of the bolts.

Underneath the chemical ghosts, another scent clung, so faint a human never would’ve caught it. But I was not human.

Pine smoke after rain. Iron. Chamomile.

Me.

I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles hurt.

“They used this room as a tuning fork,” I said. “Took my profile, ran it through whatever they were doing. This is where they learned how to smear me over someone else.”

Ishan stepped carefully around a dark smudge on the floor, crouching near the far wall. “Not just you.”

He brushed dust aside with his sleeve. Underneath, someone had scratched lines into the concrete—over and over, until the marks overlapped. Four letters repeated in a shaky hand.

L I O R

The last A trailed off.

My throat closed.

“She was trying to write your name,” Daxen said quietly.

Selyne. Lying here, wrists in those hooks, with my scent pumped into the vents and my bond template grafted onto hers. Scratching my almost‑name into the ground like a talisman.

The air shifted.

The temperature didn’t change, but every instinct I had screamed that we weren’t alone.

“Daxen,” I breathed. “Do you smell—”

He was already turning, hand going for the knife at his back.

Too late.

The door slammed with a force that rattled the frame. The lights overhead flared sickly, then died, plunging us into darkness.

In the black, a voice slid along my scarred bond like a knife over an old wound.

“Welcome home, template,” Selyne whispered. “Let me show you what they did to us.”