To Choose An Alpha

Chapter 8

DARIAN

Six whole days

That’s how long it's been since I left the bed, not because I didn't want to, but I couldn't do it.

My soul was weak, and my wolf was shirinking.

My wolf pulled away from me every time I went into the woods behind the castle, looking for that familiar scent under my skin. It would claw me and wouldn’t get up.

I was gradually losing it. The more I tried to fight back, the more my wolf grew weak.

It seemed as if something had been broken, or even worse, ripped out from me.I would never be complete again.

A part of me was out there…….the most important part of me.

General Cale said softly this morning, as I was having trouble with another sword practice, "You need to shift." He was standing at the edge of the training yard. "Your energy is all over the place. You’re not stable, and the guards are beginning to notice.”

I scoffed.

“Nobody dares!”.

“They can say it to my face,” I snapped.

Cale didn't move. He was used to this version of myself—the unraveling one.

I threw the blade to the ground, my fingers vibrating.

My whole body was in motion, yet my strength failed me.

Everything hurts lately, my bones, my body, and my mind. The region beneath my ribs, where something used to settle when I found out that Ravenna was my mate.

I was alive, yet my soul was dead.

No one spoke her name anymore, not since she was branded a traitor and a deserter and even said to be dead.

Except… she wasn’t, I never believed it. There was no evidence and no dead body to prove she was.

Everyone thinks she was a traitor.

I fought back every word.

I refused to believe it.

I saw through her.

I saw through her innocence, but Elvarim was against her.

My wolf still searched for her while I slept..

My wolf still wandered in the wood, searching for her scent.

Every night, she would come to me in my dreams. I see her standing by a window, holding on to something I couldn’t see, light falling on her face like gold. Sometimes she cried, while other times she smiled.

Sometimes, she opened her arms to me. The moment I ran close, she faded away like dust.

Sometimes she whispered my name—and I’d wake up drenched in sweat, fists clenched, nails lodged in my hands.

She torments me.

My whole body and even my soul wasn’t left out of her torment.

I was slowly losing it by every minute.

Lyra hated it.

Lyra hissed and rolled her eyes at every sight of existence.

She didn’t say it outright. She’d never said it outright. But the way she looked at me had changed since I rejected my mate. She wore her grin like armor and planned the wedding like it was a fight.

I was bound to a woman I no longer felt anything for, and the one my wolf jumped in exictement for was gone.

How pathetic!

“Perhaps white roses?” she said at supper two nights ago, poking her steak with so much intensity. “Or is that too traditional?”

I didn’t answer. I hadn’t had much to say to her recently.

Her presence angered me. It no longer gave me joy.

She dropped her knife. It rattled.

“You could at least pretend to care,” she remarked, voice sugar-laced with anger.

“I’m not the cause of your predicament”. She snapped.

“I’m not marrying you for the flowers, so there was nothing to say”

She didn’t react, but her silence was louder than any shout.

Women and being selfish. Lyra obviously knew I didn’t care.

Later that night, I found myself in the healer’s wing, the one Ravenna used to wander through barefoot. I could smell the herbs she mixed for the period she worked on the Queen, my mother.

Ravanna the queen of herbs.Herbs and root clung to her like breath.

“Was the rejection too harsh?” I thought to myself. There was no way we were going to work out, even though she was my mate. I’ve been betrothed to Lyra since we were kids.

I was bound to Lyra, and going against it would spell doom.

Still, I shouldn’t have rejected her.

But I was left with no choice.

***

“You’re falling apart,” my uncle, Lord Vyxen, said quietly this morning, his gaze steady.

“You keep forgetting that your wolf isn’t some tame creature you command. He’s the part of you that responds to fate, and you rejected your fate. You turned your back on it.”

“It wasn’t….my fault”. I snapped.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

I gnashed my teeth. “She left.”

“Of course she had to. You rejected her.”

I shot him a glare.

I didn’t need anybody reminding me.

I brought this upon myself.

Lord Vyxen shrugged. “Lyra is useful and strategic, but she is not fated to you. Everyone is aware of this. They know it”

“Fate”. I chuckled.

“I don’t believe in fate.”

He looked at me. “Then explain the dreams, the growing pain, the way your wolf hides like an injured animal.”

My head spun.

I stood. “Enough.” But even as I stepped out of the room, the words stuck to me like ash.

Because I didn’t have anything else to say.

Only a name I couldn’t speak of.

I moved past the frost-laced hallways of the stronghold, disregarding the cautious eyes of passing soldiers. The bulky fur wrap across my shoulders did little to warm me.

My wolf, once a continuous presence just beneath my skin, was silent. Not asleep, no, this was deeper. It felt more like a protest, a retreat. Like he didn’t trust me anymore. Like I had betrayed our pact.

My wolf withdrew completely, my whole body shivering, and my wolf suddenly numb.

The pain in my chest throbbed with every step. I had tried to tell myself that Lyra was enough, that I didn’t need… Ravenna," and that I could hush the attraction, bury the connection, and go on.

But every damn time I’m being reminded.

Every damn time, my soul yearns for her.

And my wolf shrieks gradually.

But I couldn’t even force myself to consider her name without my throat constricting.

I was becoming miserable—visible to the eyes of everyone.

I was slowly losing it but wore a tough skin on the outside.

An unexpected rush of wind came in from the open archway ahead, bearing the strong aroma of pine and the slightest whisper of wild jasmine. My steps failed. Jasmine. Her fragrance. Her scent.

My wolf twitched slightly, like the brush of a heartbeat in a long-dead limb. Then quiet again.

I swore under my breath and turned toward the training yard, wanting the distraction. Blades clashing, bodies moving, anything except quiet.

But even when I took a wooden blade and squared off with one of the younger warriors, my grip was wrong, my movements slow. My focus scattered like dried leaves in the wind.

I lost concentration.

“You’re holding back,” the boy said, wiping sweat from his brow. “I can feel it.” He was only twenty, nevertheless eager to show himself.

“Am I?” I hissed and disarmed him with a single, violent stroke that left him blinking up at the sky from the dirt.

I didn’t stay back to hear his protest. I dropped the blade and strode away, wrath bubbling under my skin. It wasn’t anger at him. It was at myself, for rejecting her, for letting her leave, for choosing duty over instinct, and for assuming that the emptiness inside me could ever be filled by anybody else.

The vacuum she had created had refused to heal.

There are some mistakes you survive, while others take off something fundamental and leave you empty.

And this… this was the type of mistake that resonated.

This was the kind of mistake that pulls a strong warrior to the ground in a battlefield, causing the enemies to rejoice over him.

***

That night, I woke up trying to catch my breath.

I clung unto my sheet tight, gasping for breath at intervals.

Another dream.

Another nightmare.

Ravenna was on a mission to make my life a living hell.

This time, she was at a market, wearing a basic gray robe. A bunch of plants in one hand, with the other hand lying on her belly.

There was something in her eyes.

Laughter.

Peace.

And

Love.

But it wasn’t for me.

I pushed my palm to my chest as my breathing slowed.

My wolf twitched faintly, like it wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words.

She’s alive!

The realization hit me like thunder, loud and impossible to ignore.

I couldn’t explain it, not in words that made sense, but I felt it deep inside me.

I knew it the same way I knew where the moon would rise or how war would begin before it happened.

Ravenna wasn’t dead.

Ravenna was alive.

And wherever she was…

Amongst human.

Among wolves…..

Or with a protective mate that wouldn’t cast her away…..

One thing was certain.

She’d have moved on.

And probably buried the chapter of me in her life.