The Wolf Girl with Two Alpha Mates

Chapter 20 – River’s Edge

The river was louder at night.

Maybe it was just the way the city quieted, the human noise thinning so the water finally got to have an opinion. Maybe it was because Lupa’s own head was so full that the hiss and rush sounded like relief.

Either way, she was grateful for it.

She’d slipped out of the med wing after Mirel declared her “stable enough to grumble in private” and Kess threatened to smuggle her terrible hospital Jell‑O if she didn’t come back by dawn.

Now she stood on the narrow strip of concrete that passed for a riverwalk in this part of Riverside, jacket zipped, stitches pulling every time she breathed too deep. The spot wasn’t far from where they’d found Daniel Urich. Close enough that the memory of blood still clung to the bricks, if you knew how to smell for it.

The city lights painted the water in broken streaks. Across the dark ribbon, Everwood rose in a black mass, the tree line a jagged silhouette against a cloudy sky.

Behind her, footsteps approached. She didn’t need to turn to know which alpha it was.

Alder’s presence settled beside her like a familiar coat. Not touching. Just there. He leaned his forearms on the railing, mirroring her stance, eyes on the current.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” he said.

“You’re supposed to be in a meeting,” she countered. “With Caiden. And clauses.”

“Meeting’s over,” he said. “Clauses are in hell, where they belong.”

She huffed a laugh. The sound surprised her.

They watched the water for a while. The river didn’t care who had almost died on its banks this week. It had seen worse. It kept moving.

“You did well today,” Alder said eventually. “With the elders. With him.”

“Which ‘him’?” she asked. “The one with a desk or the one with too many teeth?”

“Both,” he said. “All three, if we’re counting Everwood.”

Her chest tightened. “You felt… all of it?”

“Not the words,” he said. “Just the spikes. The moments you were standing too close to the edge. My wolf doesn’t like ravines now, for the record.”

“Your wolf doesn’t like anything that bleeds me,” she said softly.

“Accurate.”

The current slapped against the embankment, cold and rhythmic.

Lupa picked at a flake of rust on the railing. “Do you ever,” she began, then stopped.

“Dangerous question,” Alder said. “I can tell.”

“Do you ever wish,” she tried again, “that the Moon had just… done the normal thing? One bond. One path. No circles. No… me in the middle of this mess.”

He was quiet long enough that she almost regretted asking.

“No,” he said finally.

She blinked. “That’s a fast answer for a big question.”

“For me, it isn’t big,” he replied. “For you, yes. You’re living all the fractures. But if the Moon had taken the easy road, I wouldn’t have you in my pack. I wouldn’t have you at all.”

Her throat did that tight, traitorous thing. “You’d have a less troublesome beta.”

“I’d have fewer gray hairs,” he allowed. “And a pack that never learned it’s allowed to question the people on those screens.”

He turned his head, studying her profile in the washed‑out light.

“And I,” he added, quieter, “would still be pretending what I feel for you is something I can file under ‘alpha instincts’ and ignore.”

Heat crept up her neck. She kept her eyes on the water, because looking at him felt dangerous.

“Alder…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said quickly. “I know you’re still… recalibrating. Bonds. Choices. Monsters with grievances.”

She snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”

He shifted closer, his shoulder brushing hers, light and deliberate. The contact sent a small, steady warmth across that inner thread between them. Not the searing, involuntary pull she remembered from Erynd. Something slower, like embers catching.

“When he hit me,” Alder said, “and I felt your pain like my own…I wasn’t shocked.”

She glanced at him, startled.

“I was angry it took this long for the world to admit what I already knew,” he went on. “That we’re tied together more than a job description says. That if something tears into you, it tears into me.”

“You’re not supposed to want that,” she whispered. “The elders—”

“The elders are wrong about a lot of things,” he said. “Including what makes a bond worth having.”

Wind dragged river‑cold fingers through her hair. Somewhere far off, a siren wailed. The pack’s scents were a faint halo behind them — Kess’s spice, Mirel’s ink and coffee, Nyla’s restless ozone — all folded into the background hum of home.

Across the water, a light flicked on in Everwood’s treeline, then off again. A small, distant sign that another alpha was probably pacing his own borders, feeling his own altered bond thrum in time with hers.

Lupa blew out a breath, watched it ghost white in the night.

“I don’t know yet what I can give you,” she said quietly. “Not with… all of this.” She waved a vague hand at her chest, encompassing tangled bonds, legal statuses, monsters and moons.

“I know,” Alder said.

“What I do know,” she continued, words dragging themselves out, “is that when I was on that alley floor, and again in the ravine, and inside those circles…my wolf wasn’t calling for fate. She was calling for pack. For you.”

He went very still.

“That’s something,” she said. “I don’t know what shape yet. But it’s not nothing.”

His laughter was a soft, disbelieving huff. “You have no idea,” he said. “How much not‑nothing that is.”

They stood like that for a while: two silhouettes on a strip of concrete, city at their backs, forest at their front, river between.

At the farthest edge of her awareness, a thin presence stirred. Not lunging. Not accusing.

Watching.

Careful, Iven’s echo brushed her mind, almost wry. He might decide you’re worth the trouble.

She rolled her eyes internally. You’re very chatty for a nightmare.

Blame you, he said. You came back.

“Problem?” Alder asked, catching the shift in her breathing.

“Just my resident haunting offering relationship advice,” she said. “Nothing urgent.”

He snorted. “Tell him to file a report like everyone else.”

She smiled, small but real.

The river went on talking to the dark.

Somewhere above it all, the Moon hid behind clouds, listening.