The Alpha Who Broke Our Bond

Chapter 9 – After the Grip

For a heartbeat, everything went silent.

No shouts, no breath, no heartbeat but my own, roaring in my ears as Mirael vanished into the tree-shadow, fingers torn from mine.

Then sound crashed back.

“Mirael!” someone screamed. Might have been me. Might have been her mother. Might have been all of us.

I lurched to my feet, mud slick under my boots.

“South line!” Orlen roared. “Cut them off—”

“Don’t follow blind!” Gravik snapped, already sprinting toward the treeline with a squad on his heels.

Aren’s hand clamped around my arm, hard enough to bruise. “Lysandra!”

“Let go,” I snarled, yanking against his grip. “They have her—”

“You are not running into a spell-slicked forest with your head full of that poison,” he bit out. “You’ll drop before you take ten steps, and they’ll have both of you.”

My vision wavered. The world still lurched at the edges, trees breathing too fast. The oily magic from the hollow clung to my skin, whispering like gnats.

We remember you. We took one back. We can take more.

I sucked in air that tasted like iron. “They touched her mind,” I said. “She smelled like it. If they push too hard—”

“Then she needs you alive,” he said. “Not face-down in the dirt.”

I hated that he was right.

Wolves scattered into the trees in coordinated bursts, not a panicked rush: Gravik’s voice cracking out assignments, Orlen’s patrols fanning wide. Within seconds the clearing held only us, the shaken mother clutching Ren, and Mirael’s empty cloak crumpled in the mud.

I knelt and grabbed the cloak, fingers sinking into the damp wool.

Still warm.

My head pounded, trying to push me under again, back into that night with stone and screaming. I forced myself to focus on the now.

“Mirael,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “Come on, girl. Give me something.”

The bond that wasn’t a bond—whatever thin, half-healed thread existed between me and the children this magic had touched—tugged. Faint, like a spider-silk line.

Cold stone. Dripping water. The echo of boots on rock. A girl’s breath, shuddering in the dark, holding in a sob.

“Cave,” I said hoarsely. “Rock, wet. Farther east than last time. Deeper.”

Aren’s grip on my arm eased, then shifted into something more like support. “Can you follow it?”

“Yes,” I lied. “With help. With time.”

“Good.” His voice was steady, even if his pulse under my fingertips hammered as fast as mine. “Then we use both.”

He raised his head and let out a sharp, commanding howl that cut through the chaos at the treeline—a pattern every Crosswind wolf knew. Regroup. Hold. Hunt smart.

The answering howls rolled back: angry, grieving, ready.

I opened my eyes. The world still trembled faintly, but I was on my knees instead of my face. Improvement.

Aren crouched in front of me, too close, his hands firm on my shoulders.

“We will get her back,” he said.

“You don’t know that,” I whispered.

His jaw clenched. “No,” he said. “I don’t. But I know this: last time, they took our children and we let old men decide what price to pay. This time, they took a girl from under my roof.”

His eyes burned, gold bleeding into the brown.

“This time,” Aren Crosswind said, voice low and lethal, “we decide the price.”

And for the first time since stepping back into these mountains, I believed him.