The Alpha’s Captive

Chapter 1

The night was quieter than I remembered.

Maybe it was just me. Six years away from this town had changed the way I heard silence. In the city, silence was never complete. There was always something, an engine running somewhere, a dog barking in the distance, the faint hum of life even at three in the morning. But here, in my parents’ town, the quiet was heavy. It pressed down on me as I walked along the stretch of road that cut through fields like a dark ribbon.

I tugged the sleeves of my denim jacket tighter around myself. September nights weren’t meant to be this cold, but maybe the air here had always been sharp after sunset. I wouldn’t know. I’d been gone since I was thirteen. My parents had sent me off to live with my aunt in the city, for my own good, they’d said, to get a better education. I had been angry with them back then, so angry that when the call came a year later saying they were gone, I didn’t even get the chance to apologize.

Now, I was nineteen. An “adult,” legally. Old enough to make my own choices. Old enough to finally come back to the house that had stood waiting all this time, empty but stubbornly mine.

And tonight was supposed to be the first step in pretending life could be normal again.

I checked the time on my phone, 10:42 p.m. The screen briefly lit my face, making my dark hair shine in the reflection before the light disappeared again. Too late to be walking alone, but what choice did I have? The town wasn’t exactly Uber, friendly, and when my friend Leah had begged me to come to the party, I’d thought walking would be fine.

“It’s just ten minutes from your house, Maeve,” she’d said over the phone earlier. “Everyone will be so excited to see you back. Don’t be weird and hide indoors.”

I had rolled my eyes, but she wasn’t wrong. People had been curious about me ever since word spread that I was moving back into my parents’ house. Some probably thought I wouldn’t last a month before running back to the city. Maybe they were right.

Still, Leah’s voice had that infectious energy, and part of me wanted to be sixteen again, sneaking into her room to paint each other’s nails while whispering about boys we didn’t even like. Maybe tonight could be a piece of that.

So here I was, walking through a road that stretched into nothingness, the occasional streetlight buzzing weakly above, like even the electricity here had grown tired. My boots scuffed against gravel. In the distance, faint music pulsed, a reminder that there really was a party waiting at the end of all this.

I stuffed my phone back into the pocket of my jacket. I’d been tempted to text Leah again to complain about this stupid walk, but she’d only tease me for being dramatic. Besides, I didn’t want to admit that the shadows pooling between the fields and the trees made my skin crawl a little.

The road wasn’t long, but every step felt stretched, like time itself wanted to punish me for coming back here. I tried to distract myself by studying the houses on the side streets, most of them dark, with only the occasional porch light glowing faintly. The town was so different from the city, so small, so quiet, so exposed.

I pulled in a slow breath. I wondered if my parents had walked this road often, if they had gone to parties like this when they were young. The thought made my throat ache.

A pair of headlights suddenly appeared behind me, cutting through the dark.

I moved closer to the side of the road, lifting my hand instinctively to shield my eyes from the brightness. The engine hummed louder, approaching too fast. My chest tightened as the light swallowed me whole.

“Slow down,” I muttered, half to myself, half to whoever was driving.

But instead of slowing, the car swerved.

I froze.

The sound came first, the squeal of tires gripping against loose gravel, rubber burning against asphalt. My instincts screamed at me to move, but my body lagged, stuck in that paralyzing half, second between choice and consequence.

The car’s headlights filled my vision, burning spots into my eyes. I turned, desperate to leap to the side, but the impact came before the thought finished forming.

A dull, brutal thud knocked the air from my lungs. My knees buckled, my shoulder slammed against the ground, and pain tore through me in bright, violent sparks. The world spun, my stomach heaving as I tried to catch a breath that wouldn’t come.

The taste of metal flooded my mouth. Blood.

I groaned, or maybe I screamed, I couldn’t tell. The noise in my ears was deafening, a ringing that swallowed everything else.

Then, faintly, voices cut through the haze.

“s**t. You hit her.”

“She stepped out of nowhere!” another voice argued. Young, panicked, male.

The sound of a car door slamming shut. Footsteps crunching against gravel.

I tried to push myself up, but my arms trembled uselessly under me. My cheek pressed against the road, the tiny stones digging into my skin. My vision swam.

“She smells human.”

The words pierced through the ringing. Human? My sluggish brain latched onto the strangeness of it. What else could I possibly smell like?

I forced my eyes open, searching the blur of movement above me. Shadows bent and shifted, figures circling, but I couldn’t focus.

Then, another voice, lower, smoother, almost amused.

“Well, would you look at that?”

The way he said it sent an involuntary shiver down my spine, even through the pain. Like he wasn’t surprised. Like he’d been expecting me.

My chest rose and fell in shallow, desperate gasps. The edges of the world grew darker, pressing in on me.

No, I thought weakly. I couldn’t pass out here, not on this empty road, not surrounded by strangers who spoke as if I were some kind of object.

But my body betrayed me.

The darkness clawed its way in anyway, dragging me under.

The last thing I saw was the outline of someone crouching near me, shadows swallowing their features, before everything slipped away.