The Alpha Who Broke Our Bond

Chapter 3 – Home, Not Home

Our house hadn’t changed.

The porch still creaked in the same protesting note when I stepped onto it. The lantern above the door still swung a little too wildly with every gust, scattering light over the claw-marks Kerrik had carved into the frame when he was ten and “marking territory”.

I stood there a heartbeat too long, the chill of the mountain night sticking to my skin.

“Are you going to open it,” Kerrik asked behind me, “or do we sleep on the porch like strays?”

“Tempting,” I muttered, and pushed the door.

Warmth and noise hit me like a wave. The smell of stew, leather, wet fur, old wood polish and herbs; the low rumble of voices; a single sharp bark of laughter from someone in the kitchen.

For a wild second my wolf arched her back in relief. Home.

Then the room turned, and a dozen eyes landed on me like I was a stranger.

“Lysandra.” Maera’s voice cut through the murmur. She stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a cloth, grey-streaked braid swinging against her back.

She didn’t hug me. We weren’t that kind of family. She scanned me head to toe, healer’s gaze checking for hidden wounds.

“You look thin,” she said finally.

“You look exactly the same,” I shot back. “Terrifying. Efficient.”

Her mouth twitched; on Maera Vex, that was practically a grin. “Take off your boots. You’re leaving dirt on my floor.”

“Of course,” I said. “Gods forbid I offend the floor.”

Rogan came in behind us, closing the door with a soft thud, shutting out the council’s echo. The beta mantle seemed heavier on his shoulders in our cramped entryway. He hung it on its peg with slow fingers, as if it might bite.

“Food,” Maera ordered. “Then talk.”

The main room swallowed me as I stepped in. My old chair by the hearth. The little table where I’d once sorted herbs until dawn. The nick in the wall from the time Kerrik had tried to throw a practice knife and nearly taken my ear off.

I brushed my fingers over it in passing. The stone was smooth with years, but my palm remembered the sting, the laughter, my mother’s angry lecture. My chest squeezed.

We could have stayed this, my wolf whispered. Before him. Before that night.

“Staring won’t change anything,” Maera said, shoving a bowl into my hands. “Eat.”

The stew was too hot, too salty, perfect. I burned my tongue and didn’t care.

Kerrik dropped into the seat across from me, elbows on the table, eyes all shine and storm. “So. You and Aren Crosswind, married for a year. That’s…”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” I warned.

“Strategic,” he said quickly. “Very noble. Very, uh, adult.”

“You can say ‘horrible’,” I said. “It won’t break me.”

He winced. “Do you hate him that much?”

Heat pricked the backs of my eyes. I stared into my bowl. “I don’t know him enough to hate him properly,” I said. “I remember the breaking better than I remember the before.”

Rogan pulled out the chair at the head of the table and sat, heavy and deliberate. “This isn’t about hate,” he said. “It’s about the pack.”

“It’s always about the pack,” I snapped. “Tell me, father, at what point does it get to be about me?”

Maera made a soft, dangerous sound. “Lower your voice,” she said. “Your brother doesn’t need to hear you spit on what keeps him alive.”

Kerrik’s jaw clenched. “I can leave,” he said.

“You’ll sit,” Maera said, “and you’ll learn how adults make impossible choices without throwing tantrums.”

I laughed. It sounded brittle in my own ears. “Is that what this is? An impossible choice? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like the council made it very possible by shoving me in front of their problem and saying ‘fix it’.”

Rogan’s eyes were tired when they met mine. “You’re not the only healer,” he said. “You know that.”

“But I’m the only one he was mated to,” I said quietly. “That’s what they’re banking on.”

Silence settled for a heartbeat.

“You can still walk away,” Kerrik said, too quickly. “Just—refuse. Run. We’ll—”

“And do what?” I asked. “Hide in the hills while pups vanish? Watch from the sidelines while they pick another girl to stand beside him and pretend nothing ever happened?”

His mouth shut with an audible click.

Maera exhaled, slow. “You were always too soft for this world,” she said. “Too soft, and too stubborn. Bad combination.”

I smiled without humor. “You raised me, remember.”

We ate the rest of the meal with the quiet of wolves each tracing their own circling thoughts.

Later, in my old room, I stood in the doorway and stared.

The bed was made, the quilt folded sharp as a blade. Shelves still held my battered medical texts. A dried wreath of mountain flowers, cracked and dulled with age, hung over the headboard. Maera hadn’t taken it down.

I stepped inside. The air smelled of dust and lavender, and under it, faintly, of younger me.

I sank onto the mattress. It dipped the same way it always had.

Somewhere in the distance, across the valley, a wolf howled—a long, low note, rich with frustration. It wasn’t from our pack.

My skin prickled. My heart knew that voice before my mind named it.

Aren, my wolf breathed.

I lay back, staring at the dark ceiling.

“One year,” I whispered again.

And the house that had once held all my future suddenly felt too small for the war waiting in the morning.