Betrayed by my Alpha

Chapter 4 - Sent Away

The man with the different coloured eyes waited.

He stood at the centre of the path with his hands loose at his sides and his expression unchanged, giving them patience that did not feel like patience so much as absolute certainty that he had all the time in the world and they did not.

Lysan was the first to move. He shifted his weight forward slightly, trying as he might with his demeanour to announce he had peaceful intentions. He took two steps toward the man, smiling slightly to show he meant nothing harmful.

"My name is Lysan of the Mirefall clan," he said clearly. "I believe your people know me."

Something passed between the man and the two cloaked figures flanking him. Not quite recognition or the opposite of it. The man's mismatched eyes settled on Lysan with an expression that suggested he had been briefed on this name at some point and had filed it somewhere accessible.

"We know of you," the man said. "You have sent word to our borders before."

"Several times," Lysan agreed, without any embarrassment about it. "An alliance between Mirefall and the Lunaris would benefit both our peoples. I have not stopped believing that." He paused. "I hope that my being here today, helping a neighbouring clan find support, speaks to the kind of leader I am trying to be."

The man said nothing to that but he did not dismiss it either and Lysan took that as the best he was going to get for now and turned slightly to his right.

"This is Varek Navar," he said. "Alpha of the Ironpeak clan. He has come seeking–"

The change in atmosphere was immediate.

The five wolves that had been standing in patient formation shifted in an instant, weight dropping to their haunches, heads lowering, and the sound that came from them was not a single growl so much as a collective warning that rose from all five throats at once and filled the path like a wall of sound. The two cloaked figures beside the man stepped forward without being told and their hands moved to weapons at their sides.

Varek stepped back and he steadied his legs and looked at the wolves and then at the men and found nothing in any of their faces that explained what had just happened. Beside him he could feel his two soldiers tense and he held up a hand behind him without turning around.

"Easy," he said quietly. To his soldiers, not to the wolves.

Lysan had gone very still.

The man with the different coloured eyes raised one hand and the sound stopped. Not gradually, all at once, like a flame being covered. The wolves pulled back but they did not relax and their eyes did not leave Varek and the message in them was plain enough that it needed no translation.

The man looked at Varek for a long moment.

"Varek Navar of Ironpeak," he said. The name came out of his mouth the way you might hold something at arm's length to examine it. "You are not welcome here."

Then he turned his mismatched gaze to Lysan. "Nor are you. Take your parties and go."

He turned and began walking back toward the trees.

"Wait," Varek said.

The man did not stop.

"I have never set foot in this territory before today," Varek said, louder now, and there was an edge in his voice that he did not entirely try to smooth out. "Whatever your people believe they know about me I have never given your sanctuary cause to turn me away at the border."

The man kept walking.

"We came in peace," Lysan called after him. "With no weapons drawn and no ill intention. Whatever grievance your people hold, we deserve to at least understand it."

But the cloaked figures had already turned to follow and the five wolves spread slightly across the width of the path in a line that communicated very clearly that the conversation was finished and the only direction available to the visitors was the one they had come from.

Varek stood and looked at the wolves and at the trees that had already swallowed the three cloaked figures whole and felt something hot move through his chest that he forced back down with considerable effort. He had swallowed his pride to come here. He had run for two and a half days and left his clan in someone else's hands and talked himself into believing that asking for help was the right thing to do and he had been turned away before he had even been given the chance to speak.

By a sanctuary.

He turned without a word and walked back the way they had come and the sound of five wolves moving through the undergrowth behind them followed until the trees thinned and then stopped.

***

The man with the different coloured eyes walked without hurrying.

The path from the border into the Lunaris wound through trees that grew close together and tall, their canopies knitting above into something that held the light in a particular way, greenish and still and cool even in the warmer months. To anyone who did not know the way it would have looked like more forest, the same as the miles of forest surrounding it in every direction. That was intentional. The Lunaris did not announce itself. It did not need to.

He walked for several minutes before the trees began to open.

It happened gradually at first before opening all at once, the trunks spaced further apart and the undergrowth thinning and then the canopy pulling back and suddenly there was sky above and ground that had been cleared and levelled and built upon with enough care that it came from people who intended to stay.

The log houses were arranged in rows that curved slightly, following the natural shape of the land, each one solid and well maintained with small gardens at their fronts and pathways between them worn smooth by years of daily use. Children moved between the houses and two older wolves sat outside one of the far buildings doing something with their hands that looked like repair work. A group of young fighters moved through drills in an open space to the left, their movements were sharp and disciplined. They had obviously been trained properly and trained often.

In five years, the Lunaris had become something real.

It had not happened easily. The early months had been difficult. Every person who came to the border had to be assessed, questioned, investigated as thoroughly as resources allowed. Some had come with genuine desperation and left with a home. Others had come with something less honest in their intentions and had been turned away before they reached the inner tree line. The rules were strict because they had to be. What had been built here was worth protecting and everyone inside its borders understood that.

He crossed the open ground between the houses and walked toward the largest structure at the centre of it all. It was not grand with carvings and high doors and things built to impress. It was simply bigger than the rest, sturdier, with wide windows and a roof that had been reinforced more than once. It served as both the leader's home and the space where decisions were made and those two things had never felt like a contradiction to the woman who lived there.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Two elders were standing near the far wall in conversation with the person between them and all three looked up when he entered. The elders were familiar faces, grey haired and steady, people who had been on the Lunaris lands when their leader first arrived in its earliest days and had never left. They stepped back slightly when they saw his expression.

The person between them turned.

She was not what most visitors expected when they heard the word leader, which was something she had long since stopped finding amusing and had simply accepted as their problem to correct. She was not tall but she carried herself in the way of someone who had learned very early that height had nothing to do with authority and power. Her hair was pulled back in a neat, long plait and her clothes were practical and her face, at twenty seven, had the steadiness that came not from ease but from surviving things that should have broken her and choosing every single morning to get up anyway. She was beautiful and strong.

Her eyes found his face and read as she read everything else.

"He came," she said. It was not a question.

"He did," he confirmed. "Lysan of Mirefall accompanied Varek Navar of Ironpeak here seeking help."

The elders exchanged a look.

Tahla said nothing for a moment. She looked past him at the middle distance, thinking through something she had not yet decided to say aloud. Then she looked back at him and her expression had settled into something calm and unreadable.

"And?" she asked.

"I sent them away."

She nodded once, slowly.

Outside the window the sounds of the Lunaris continued around them, the drills and the voices and the ordinary noise of a place full of people living their lives, and Tahla stood in the middle of it all and said nothing else for a long moment.

Then one of the elders spoke quietly.

"He will come back," the old woman said.

Tahla looked at her.

"They always come back," the elder said simply, "when they have nowhere else to go."