The Alpha Who Waited

"We're leaving. Now." My father's voice cut through my sleep like a blade. I sat up so fast the room spun, and I saw him standing in my doorway already dressed, a bag slung over one shoulder. "Dad" "No time, Wren. Pack what fits in one bag. We go in five minutes." I didn't ask why. I'd been waiting for those words since I turned sixteen, the year Alpha Draven Ashwood started looking at me the way he looked at everything he wanted — like it already belonged to him. I threw clothes into a duffel bag without folding anything. My hands shook so bad I dropped my boots twice before I got them laced. Down the hall, I heard Tobias moving just as fast, drawers slamming, his voice low and sharp as he argued with our father about something I couldn't hear clearly. "He can't just take her," Tobias was saying. "There's no claim, no ceremony, nothing" "There will be," my father said. "By the end of the season, if we stay." That stopped me cold in the middle of my room. I'd known Draven wanted me. Everyone knew. But hearing my father say it out loud, flat and certain, made it real in a way the sideways looks and too-long stares never had. I finished packing and stepped into the hallway. My father was already at the front door, smashing his phone against the porch railing. The screen shattered, pieces scattering into the grass. "Dad, what are you doing?" "No trail. No signal. Nothing he can trace." He held his hand out. "Yours too." I hesitated only a second before I handed it over. He crushed it under his boot like it weighed nothing. Tobias came down the stairs two at a time, bag over his shoulder, jaw tight. He didn't argue about his phone. He just held it out and let our father destroy it without a word. We loaded into the truck in silence. My father didn't turn on the headlights until we were a mile down the old logging road, well past the last house that might notice movement in the dark. "Where are we going?" I asked, once my heartbeat had slowed enough to speak. He didn't answer right away. His hands stayed tight on the wheel, knuckles pale even in the dim dashboard light. "Stonebridge," he finally said. "Your mother's pack." I looked at him. In seventeen years, my father had never once suggested going back to the territory where my mother was born. He talked about her sometimes small things, the way she laughed, how she hated mornings but never about home. Never about where she came from. "You said we'd never go back there," I said quietly. "I said a lot of things when I thought we had time." His voice cracked on the last word, and he cleared his throat like he could shake it loose. "We don't have time anymore." Tobias leaned forward from the back seat. "What happened tonight? Really happened. You don't wake us up at midnight over a bad feeling." Our father's jaw worked for a moment before he answered. "Draven called me into his study after dinner," he said. "Told me, very politely, that he'd decided Wren would make an excellent match. Said it would strengthen both our bloodlines. Said he wanted the ceremony set before the season ends." My stomach turned over. "I never agreed to anything." "He wasn't asking," my father said. "He was informing me. As a courtesy, since I'd raised you well enough to be worth taking." The words sat heavy in the truck, and none of us spoke for a long stretch of road. I stared out the window at the dark shapes of trees blurring past, my own reflection ghosted over the top of them, and tried to make my heartbeat slow down. I'd spent two years telling myself Draven's interest would fade. That he'd find someone else to admire from a distance. I'd been wrong, and my father had known it long before I let myself believe it. "How far is Stonebridge?" I asked. "Four hours, if the roads are clear." He glanced at the rearview mirror, checking behind us for the third time in as many minutes. "We should be across the border before sunrise." "And if he comes after us?" Tobias asked. "Then he crosses into another Alpha's territory uninvited, over a claim that was never made official." My father's voice hardened into something I recognized the same tone he used when he trained new warriors, the one that left no room for argument. "That's a war he can't win quietly. Draven doesn't do anything that isn't quiet." I wanted to believe that would be enough to keep us safe. I wanted to believe a lot of things that night. Somewhere behind us, headlights flared to life on the dark road far off, but unmistakably there, and closing. My father's hands tightened on the wheel until his knuckles went white. "Hold on," he said, and pressed the gas down harder into the dark.