Fated to the Wrong Alpha

Chapter 15 – Forest Warnings

The trees on the northern border are older than our packs.

They rise out of the mist like patient witnesses, trunks thick with time, roots tangled deep in ground that remembers blood and vows and all the ugly little bargains in between.

We move through them in a loose formation: Corren at point, Dael to his right, Lyssa hovering somewhere between scout and chaos gremlin, Jarek anchoring our flank. I walk just behind Corren, Riya at my side, pack jacket zipped against the chill.

“This is the opposite of subtle,” I murmur, ducking a low branch.

“We’re not here to be subtle,” Dael replies. “We’re here to make sure no one else laid sigils under our feet.”

“Comforting,” Riya says dryly.

Officially, this is a joint patrol to reassure both packs after the attack. Unofficially, we’re following a hunch: the elevator trap wasn’t built from nothing. It had to be anchored somewhere. Somewhere old.

“Smell that?” Lyssa calls quietly from ahead.

I do.

The air changes—less city, more iron and ash, a faint thread of herbs that don’t grow wild here. My mark gives an annoyed little throb.

We push through a stand of firs into a small clearing, half-choked by undergrowth. At its center, stones jut from the earth in a rough circle, slick with moss and old lichen. Not as grand as the formal temple circles, but older. Wilder.

Corren’s shoulders tense. “Anyone else feel that?”

“Yes,” I say. My wolf presses toward the stones, wary and strangely drawn. “This place…remembers us.”

Riya steps closer to the nearest rock, eyes narrowed. “Someone’s been working here recently. Weeks, not years.”

She squats, brushing aside leaves. Beneath them: the faint outline of a sigil carved shallowly into the soil, half-erased by rain. My stomach dips.

“Same structure?” Corren asks.

“Similar,” she answers. “Different hand.”

Jarek crouches opposite her, fingers hovering over another faint mark burned into the base of a stone. “This one’s Council standard,” he says grimly. “Or was.”

“So we’ve got at least two ritualists playing in the same sandbox,” Dael mutters. “Very reassuring.”

Lyssa circles the edge of the clearing, boots barely making a sound. “This feels wrong,” she says. “Like walking into a room where someone already had an argument and left the echo hanging.”

My wolf agrees. The air is thick with old vows and fresh violations.

I step between two stones, into the heart of the circle. The ground dips slightly, bare earth beneath my boots. My mark flares hot, then cold, like someone just dragged an ice cube over a brand.

“Aeryn,” Corren says sharply. “Careful.”

“I’m fine,” I lie.

I close my eyes and breathe.

For a heartbeat, everything narrows: the creak of branches overhead, the soft scuff of boots, the pulse in my veins. And under that, something else—a low, muffled hum, like a heartbeat under floorboards.

Our bond stirs, stretching thin across the circle. I feel Corren’s presence at the edge of my awareness, steady as ever. But there are other threads, too. Faint. Frayed. Pulling.

A flicker of lilies and fear. Elira. A heavy, distant grief. Another unknown weight. All of them tugging toward some point beyond the trees, beyond this circle.

“Someone used this place as a relay,” I say quietly, opening my eyes. “To reach us. To reach…all of us.”

Riya’s gaze is sharp. “Can you feel direction?”

I turn slowly, letting the tug guide me. North. Further into the forest, past even Lyall’s claimed land. Toward the territories where external clans like to lurk.

“There,” I say. “Whoever’s playing with us? They’re not just under our feet. They’re out there.”

Dael swears under his breath. “Of course they are.”

Lyssa stops by a stone, fingers resting lightly on its worn surface. “If they’re using this as a doorway,” she says, “we can’t just walk away.”

“No,” Corren agrees. “But we also don’t know what happens if we start poking at it.”

“My favorite kind of problem,” Lyssa says brightly.

Riya straightens, brushing dirt off her palms. “We mark it,” she says. “We ward it, as much as we can, without triggering whatever’s half-asleep here. And we log every trace of magic I can pull before the rain takes it.”

“And then?” Jarek asks.

“And then,” I say, feeling the faint, relentless pull along the shared threads in our bond, “we follow where it leads. But not today. Not unprepared.”

Corren steps into the circle beside me. Our shoulders almost touch. The bond between us hums, the wrongness…less jagged here, in a place that recognizes what we are.

“We’re on someone’s map,” he says quietly. “Have been for a long time.”

I meet his gaze. “Maybe it’s time we redraw the lines.”

A wind gusts through the clearing, stirring leaves, rattling branches. For a second, the sigils in the dirt glow—just enough for Riya to catch them with her scanner—then fade again.

Behind my ribs, my mark pulses like a warning.

Or a summons.