The Alpha
313 Words
Chapter Two:
Blackridge Lodge perched on the mountainside like a watchful animal, all stone and timber and wide windows that glowed with firelight. When Rowan stopped at the edge of the clearing, Mara turned to thank him.
He had already stepped back.
“You’ll be safe from here,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied. “For the escort.”
His gaze lingered, sharp and searching, as if he were memorizing her face against some future need. “We’ll meet again,” he said.
It was not a question.
Mara watched him disappear into the trees before she remembered to breathe.
Inside the lodge, warmth wrapped around her. The cousin—Aunt Elin, by marriage and distance—greeted her with a fierce hug and a mug of mulled cider. The lodge was quieter than it would be in peak season, but it hummed with a steady life: staff moving with purpose, guests murmuring by the fire.
“Locals?” Mara asked, nodding toward a group of men and women clustered near the window.
Elin followed her gaze. “Pack,” she said simply.
Mara frowned. “Pack?”
Elin smiled like a woman who knew when to stop talking. “You’ll learn.”
Mara did learn.
She learned that the mountains belonged to the wolves, though few outsiders ever named them as such. She learned that Blackridge Lodge had been built with pack blessing generations ago, and that it thrived because of it. She learned that Rowan was the Alpha.
The word settled in her chest with a strange rightness.
She saw him often after that—at the edge of the property, in town, once at dawn when he stood on a ridge and looked out over his land as if listening to something no one else could hear. When their eyes met, there was recognition.
And something more.
- Writer
