THE ALPHA'S GHOST

Episode 2

KAYE’S POV

I climb into the van. My legs are shaking so badly I almost fall. The lean one climbs in after me and I see the silver cuffs in his hand a second before he snaps them around my wrists.

The pain is immediate and blinding. Silver against skin feels like being burned and frozen at the same time, like every nerve ending is being scraped raw. I gasp and try to pull away but he holds my wrists steady until the cuffs are locked. Then he lets go and I cradle my hands against my chest, trying not to scream.

"Sorry," he says, and he actually sounds like he means it. "But you are the daughter of a mass murderer and we are not taking chances."

The doors slam shut and everything goes dark except for a thin strip of light coming through the gap between the doors and the frame. I hear the engine start. Feel the van begin to move. The silver cuffs burn and burn and burn and I can smell my own skin cooking underneath the metal.

I close my eyes and try to breathe through the pain and the terror and the certainty that I am being driven toward my death. Ethan Rivers rebuilt his pack on revenge. Everyone knows that. And now he has me, the daughter of the man he blames for destroying everything he loved.

I am going to die. After six years of running, six years of hiding, six years of surviving against every odd, they finally found me and I am going to die.

My wolf howls inside me, a sound of pure despair, and I let her because there is no one here to hear.

The van drives for hours, or maybe minutes, I cannot tell anymore. Time stops meaning anything when you are breathing through agony. At some point I realize my wrists are bleeding where the silver is burning through skin. At some point I realize I am crying and I cannot remember when I started.

When the van finally stops and the doors open, daylight stabs my eyes and I have to blink against it, disoriented and dizzy. Strong hands grab my arms and haul me out. My legs do not want to work. I stumble and nearly fall but they hold me up.

We are somewhere in the mountains. I can see pine trees everywhere, smell clean air and earth and wolves. So many wolves. Dozens of them, maybe more, their scents layered on top of each other in a way that makes my wolf want to submit and hide at the same time.

The packhouse rises in front of me like something out of a nightmare. It is massive, built from stone and wood, beautiful and terrifying at once. This is not the burned ruin I expected. This is something new, something powerful, something built by someone who refused to let tragedy define him.

They drag me up stone steps and through double doors and into a hallway that smells like lemon cleaner and coffee and rage. Wolves line the walls, watching me with eyes that promise violence. A woman spits at my feet as I pass. Someone else mutters something that sounds like monster.

Then we are at another door and the lean one knocks twice and a voice from inside says, "Come in."

They push me through the door and I stumble, barely catching myself before I fall. The office is large, lined with bookshelves and weapons mounted on the walls like decorations. There is a massive desk near the window and behind it sits a man who can only be Ethan Rivers.

He is younger than I expected. Maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. Tall even sitting down, with broad shoulders and dark hair and eyes the color of storm clouds. There is a scar I can just see at the collar of his shirt, disappearing down his back. He is handsome in a way that would make people stop and stare, but there is something cold in his expression, something hard that says this man has seen terrible things and decided to become more terrible in response.

He looks at me for a long moment, his face unreadable. There are other wolves in the room, five or six of them, watching me with varying degrees of hatred and curiosity. But I cannot look away from Ethan. Cannot stop staring at this man who holds my life in his hands.

Then he stands and walks around his desk and the air in the room changes in a way I do not understand. My wolf surges forward, pressing against my skin, and for a second I think I am going to shift involuntarily which would be a disaster.

Ethan stops three feet away from me. Close enough that I can smell him, pine and smoke and something wild underneath. Close enough that I can see the exact moment his expression changes from cold calculation to shocked recognition.

The mate bond hits us both at the exact same time.

It feels like being struck by lightning. Like every nerve ending in my body suddenly rewired itself to be aware of him and only him. Mine, my wolf howls. Mate. Claim. Protect.

I stagger backward and hit the wall. Ethan goes completely still, every muscle locked, his eyes wide with something that might be horror. The bond thrums between us like a living thing, pulling, demanding, insisting that we close the distance and complete what nature started.

No. No, this cannot be happening. This cannot be real.

But it is. I can feel his emotions bleeding through the connection, confusion and rage and desire and betrayal all tangled together so tightly I cannot tell where one ends and another begins. I can feel his wolf howling the same word mine is howling, mate mate mate, completely uncaring about pack politics or dead families or six years of hatred.

For ten seconds nobody moves. The other wolves sense something is wrong but they do not understand what. I watch Ethan's hands clench into fists at his sides. Watch his jaw tighten. Watch him fight against the bond with everything he has.

Then he moves.

He crosses the distance between us in two strides, grabs me by the throat, and slams me back against the wall hard enough that my head bounces off wood. His hand is not tight enough to cut off air but it is close. I can feel his pulse racing under his skin where his wrist presses against my collarbone.

"You," he says, and his voice is barely human, "are going to tell me everything your father did. Every order he gave. Every wolf he killed. Every second of that night. And then I am going to decide whether killing you quickly is too merciful."

The bond screams at both of us to stop this, to step back, to acknowledge what we are to each other. But Ethan ignores it with what must be massive force of will, and I am too terrified to do anything except try to breathe.

"He didn't do it," I manage to say. "My father didn't give those orders. Someone framed him. I have been trying to find out who—"

"Liar," Ethan snarls, and his hand tightens just slightly. "Your father's scent was all over the accelerants. We found his pack's markers at three different ignition points. The bodies—" His voice breaks for just a second before he gets it under control. "The bodies were still burning when we found them. Children, Kaye. He burned children."

"It wasn't him!" I am crying now, tears running down my face, my wrists screaming with silver burn and my throat aching under his grip and the mate bond pulling at me so hard it feels like I am being torn in half. "Please, you have to believe me, he would never—"

Ethan leans in close, so close I can feel his breath on my face. "I don't have to believe anything you say. You are going to stay here as a prisoner until I figure out what to do with you. You will work as a servant under supervision. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will not leave the packhouse grounds. And if you try to run—" His eyes flash gold, his wolf rising to the surface. "If you try to run, I will hunt you down personally and make your death last days. Do you understand?"

I nod because I cannot speak, cannot breathe, cannot do anything except feel the bond screaming that this is wrong, that we are supposed to protect each other, not hurt each other.

Ethan lets go of my throat and steps back like touching me burns worse than the silver burns me. He looks at the enforcers waiting by the door. "Take her to the servant quarters. Lock a silver cuff on her ankle with the boundary trigger. If she crosses the property line, she gets a dose of wolfsbane straight into her bloodstream."

"Yes, Alpha," the lean one says.

Ethan looks at me one more time and I see something flash across his face, something that might be pain or regret, before his expression goes cold again. "Get her out of my sight."

They drag me from the room and I do not resist because there is no point. The last thing I see before the door closes is Ethan standing by his desk with his back to me, his shoulders rigid, fighting against a bond neither of us wanted and neither of us can escape.

The mate bond hums between us, a connection that will never break, tying me to the man who wants me dead.