The Alpha Who Waited

Chapter 8: A Father's Hope

My father had always carried himself like a man bracing for bad news, even on good days. I noticed it more here at Stonebridge than I ever had at Ashwood, maybe because there was finally room to notice anything at all besides survival.

So when Elder Marcus came to the house three days after the border skirmish and asked to speak with him privately, I watched my father's shoulders tighten out of habit before he even knew what the conversation was about.

They talked in the front room for almost twenty minutes. Tobias and I sat in the kitchen, pretending not to listen, failing completely.

"You think it's bad news?" Tobias asked quietly.

"I don't know." I kept my eyes on the doorway. "He looks worried about everything lately. Maybe that's just his face now."

When my father finally stepped back into the kitchen, his expression wasn't the one I expected. It wasn't relief, exactly, and it wasn't fear either. It was something I hadn't seen on him in years, something that took me a moment to place because it was so unfamiliar.

Hope.

"They want me to train the junior warriors," he said, like he still didn't fully believe the words coming out of his own mouth. "Full position. Housing included, separate from your grandparents' place, once we're settled properly."

Tobias sat up straighter. "That's a real rank. That's not just charity because we showed up begging."

"No." My father shook his head slowly. "Marcus said Alpha Vale specifically requested I be considered, after watching me help during the border alert. Said a warrior with my experience shouldn't be wasted."

I felt my chest tighten at the mention of Cassian's name, the same strange reaction I'd been having every time someone said it out loud for the past week. I pushed it down and focused on my father instead, on the way his hands weren't shaking for the first time since we'd left Ashwood.

"At Ashwood," he continued, quieter now, "I trained warriors twice my rank for a man who never once thanked me for it. Here, they're offering me a title because of one afternoon's work."

"You deserve more than one afternoon's worth of credit," I said. "You've been training warriors for twenty years."

"Nobody at Ashwood saw it that way." He looked at me, and something in his expression cracked slightly, the careful composure he usually kept around us slipping just enough to show how tired he actually was underneath it. "I kept thinking, if I just worked harder, trained better fighters, protected the pack well enough, eventually Draven would see me as more than someone to use and dismiss."

"That's not how he saw anyone," Tobias said flatly. "Not just you."

"I know that now." My father exhaled, some of the old tension finally leaving his shoulders. "I think some part of me always knew it. I just didn't have anywhere else to take us."

The kitchen went quiet for a moment, all three of us sitting with the weight of that admission.

"Does this mean we're staying?" I asked. "For good, not just until it's safe to leave?"

My father looked at me for a long moment before answering. "Would that be alright with you?"

I thought about Grandma Edith's garden, the way the whole territory smelled like pine and woodsmoke instead of the manicured, empty perfume Ashwood always tried to project. I thought about training every morning, about the warriors who'd started nodding at me like I belonged there instead of staring like I was something to be managed. I thought, despite myself, about the strange pull I still felt every time Cassian was anywhere near me, a feeling I hadn't figured out how to name yet and wasn't sure I wanted to.

"Yes," I said. "I think it would."

My father nodded slowly, like my answer had settled something in him that had been unsettled since the night we ran. "Then I'll accept the position tomorrow."

Tobias grinned, some of the tension he'd been carrying since we crossed the border finally easing out of his posture. "About time something good happened to this family."

"Don't jinx it," I said, though I was smiling too, something loosening in my own chest that I hadn't realized was still wound tight.

Later that evening, after my father had gone to bed early for the first time in weeks, actually sleeping instead of pacing the hallway at odd hours, I stepped outside to watch the sunset settle over the training fields in the distance.

A tall figure was crossing the far edge of the property, moving with the same deliberate, unhurried stride I'd already learned to recognize from a hundred yards away.

I told myself it was a coincidence that I'd chosen this exact moment to be outside.

I wasn't entirely sure I believed it.