The Wolf Girl with Two Alpha Mates

Chapter 9 – Shockwaves

Pain didn’t knock; it kicked the door in.

Alder was halfway down the hall toward the ops room when it hit. No warning, no ramp‑up. One second he was listening to Kess’s low chatter over the comms, the next his world narrowed to a white‑hot line flaring across his ribs.

He staggered, palm slamming into the wall. Air left his lungs in a hard, ugly sound.

“Sir?” one of the night techs blurted, springing up from his station. “Alpha—?”

“Stay,” Alder ground out, fingers digging into drywall. The ache wasn’t his. His own body was whole, steady. This pain came from somewhere else, sharp and bright and terrifyingly familiar.

Lupa.

Her name flared through the bond that shouldn’t exist, a thread that had been quiet, warm background hum ever since the day he’d realized it was more than pack instinct.

Now it burned.

He forced his breathing into something like rhythm. “Kess,” he snapped, voice rough in her ear. “Report.”

Static, curses, Nyla’s panicked voice overlapping.

“Lupa’s down,” Kess got out. “We have visual on the thing— it moved— Nyla, left—”

Alder didn’t wait for more. He shoved off the wall and ran.

Every step jarred the phantom wound along his side. Not mine, he told himself, teeth clenched. Hers. Move.

The image slammed into him as he barreled through the stairwell door: not sight, but impression. Wet brick under her shoulders. Rain in her mouth. That thing’s weight, crushing the air out of her chest. And under it, worse than the pain, the flash of recognition that hadn’t been hers alone.

You left me.

He took the back stairs three at a time, shouldered through the service exit and tore across the lot toward the river district, wolf just under his skin howling to be let loose.

Somewhere far beyond the city glare, deep in the trees, another wolf hit the ground.

Erynd Varro caught himself on his hands, claws punching furrows into the dirt. The patrol around him froze, hackles up.

“Alpha?” Bren’s voice, closer than it should’ve been. “What—”

“Lupa,” Erynd snarled. The word tore itself out of his throat, half growl, half plea. His side burned in the exact same place he’d felt the ritual knife long ago. “She’s hurt.”

The Everwood wolves went very still.

“She’s in Riverside territory,” Soren said, already moving. “We’re twenty minutes out at best.”

“Then we run,” Erynd snapped.

“Alpha Vox will reach her first,” Soren began.

“I don’t care,” Erynd bit off. “She is still my—”

The old word jammed in his teeth.

Not mate. Not anymore. Whatever the Moon had written for them had been scribbled over long ago, ink smeared by blood and duty.

But the bond, frayed and wrong as it was, screamed through him now.

“Move,” he ordered, and the forest obeyed.

Back in the alley, Lupa clawed her way through the roaring in her ears. The creature’s weight shifted above her, claws scraping brick, breath hot and foul on her cheek. Nyla was shouting. Someone else was firing, bullets sparking off metal.

Two distant howls rose at once — one from the city, one from the trees — crashing together over the hiss of the river.

Her alphas were coming.

The monster’s head jerked up at the sound, torn muzzle twisting in something like a smile.

And then it turned and bolted into the dark, dragging her blood with it.