Betrayed by my Alpha

Chapter 3 - The Journey

The raid lasted less than an hour but it left marks that would take much longer to fade.

Two soldiers were dead by the time the last rogue retreated into the darkness beyond the border. Good wolves, both of them. One had been with the Ironpeak clan since before Varek's father had passed the title down to him and the other was barely twenty three with a mate who was expecting their first child before the next full moon. Varek stood over their bodies in the cold and said the old words because someone had to and then he went back inside and sat in the dark for a long time without lighting a single candle.

The injuries were few at least. That was the only thing that could be said in favour of the night.

In the days that followed, the mood in the village was the worst it had been yet. People moved through their routines quietly, checking over their shoulders more than they used to, speaking to each other in low voices that dropped further whenever Varek walked past. He noticed. He had always been good at reading his clan even when he did not particularly want to know what they were feeling and right now what they were feeling was afraid.

A family left two days after the raid. He heard about it from one of the remaining soldiers who had seen them loading their things onto a cart before dawn, a husband and wife and their three children moving through the village like they were trying not to be seen. He couldn't blame them. He wanted to but he couldn't.

Three of his people stopped him near the training yard on the third morning with careful expressions. They did not want to cause Varek to be angry, so they approached carefully.

"Alpha," the oldest of them said. A woman named Brida who had been part of the clan her entire life and whose sons had both fought in the raids. "We want to know if it's going to keep happening. T‐ the attacks."

Varek looked at her steadily. "We are doing everything we can to secure the borders."

"That's not what she asked," the younger man beside her said, he didn’t intend to sound rude, but he couldn't stand the fear any longer. "She asked if it's going to keep happening."

Varek held the man's gaze for a moment, holding back. "I don't know," he said, because lying to them felt worse than anything else at this point.

Brida nodded slowly like she had expected that answer and had come anyway just to hear it from his mouth. They dispersed without another word and Varek watched them go and felt something in his chest that he was not accustomed to feeling and did not have a comfortable name for.

The clan needed something to hold onto. That was the truth of it. They needed something that looked like a future and right now nothing in Ironpeak looked like a future. What they had talked about quietly for years, was an heir. A child. Something that said the line would continue and the clan would outlast its current troubles. Children had a way of doing that; making people believe in the next season when the current one felt unbearable.

But there would be no child. He knew that now with a certainty that sat in his gut like a stone he had swallowed.

He had not raised the subject of the herbs with Soraya again after the raid interrupted them. There had not been a right moment and he was honest enough with himself to admit that he had not gone looking for one either. What would it change? She had made her position clear without saying it directly and he had made the mistake of believing that wanting her for so long meant she would want the same things he did once she had them. He had been wrong about that the way he had apparently been wrong about a great many things and the list was beginning to feel very long.

On the fifth day after the raid he sat at his desk in the early morning before the rest of the house had stirred and he wrote a short message to Lysan and sent it with his fastest runner.

He was ready.

Lysan arrived a day later with a smug smile on his face. It was as though he was expecting the summons, which he was, and had not wasted time once it came. He came with two of his own soldiers and very little ceremony and Varek received him in the meeting hall with Gaelan present and the door closed.

"You've made a decision," Lysan said. It was not a question.

"I have," Varek replied. "Tell me what I need to know about making this journey."

Lysan settled into the chair across from him and folded his hands on the table. "Two days if you move well and keep your stops few. Longer if you camp more than necessary. The territory is not difficult to find once you are heading in the right direction but the Lunaris does not advertise itself. You will know when you are close."

"How?"

"You'll feel it," Lysan said simply. "Most visitors do."

Varek chose not to pursue that particular line of questioning. "How many do I bring?"

"Keep it small. A large party moving toward their border will not be received well. Two soldiers of your own. I will bring two of mine. Six in total including ourselves." Lysan looked at him evenly. "We go as visitors seeking an arrangement, not as a force. That distinction matters."

Varek nodded once. He looked at Gaelan who had been standing to the side with his arms crossed and his expression calm.

"You'll be in charge while I'm gone," Varek said.

Gaelan met his eyes. "I'll keep them safe."

"I know you will."

There was a pause that held more than either of them said and then Gaelan nodded and looked away toward the window and the moment passed.

Varek leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a moment. Less than two hundred wolves remained in a clan that had once been one of the strongest in three territories. He had done the count himself the previous evening because he had needed to see the number plainly rather than feel it as an impression. One hundred and eighty four. That was what Ironpeak had come to. Families gone, soldiers dead, young wolves drifting toward clans that felt more stable, and at the centre of it all a leader who had made choices he could not take back sitting in a hall that felt too large for the people left to fill it.

Where had it all gone wrong?

He knew the answer to that. He had always known it. He just had not been ready to look at it directly for very long at a stretch.

He left the following morning before Soraya was awake.

The journey took a little over two days.

Lysan was good company, though Varek would never admit it to the man. His ego was already big enough.

They ran as wolves through forest and open land, ran beside a very long and endless river, and a stretch of rocky terrain that slowed them toward the end of the second day and made camp once when the light ran out completely. The four soldiers ran behind them and spoke amongst themselves when they camped. Varek was glad not to be required to perform anything for anyone.

He thought more than he spoke which was not unusual for him but the thoughts were less comfortable than they used to be.

On the morning of the third day the trees began to change. He could not have explained it precisely, they were still trees, still the same kind of forest they had been moving through, but something in the quality of the air shifted and the light came through the branches differently and he found himself standing straighter when they shifted and dressed.

Then the feeling came.

It started at the back of his neck. A slow creeping awareness, like the feeling before a storm when the air pressure changed and every instinct in the body quietly stood up. He scanned the trees on both sides of the path and saw nothing. No movement, no shapes between the trunks, nothing his eyes could settle on. He could not smell wolves nearby. The wind was not giving him anything useful.

And yet…

"We're close," Lysan said from beside him without being asked.

Varek did not answer but he slowed his strides and the others followed his lead. The path ahead was quiet and the forest on either side was very still.

They had walked perhaps another hundred paces when they came out of the trees at once.

Five wolves in their shifted form stepped from the tree line on both sides of the path, large and unhurried, placing themselves in a loose formation that was not aggressive but was very clearly intentional. They did not growl. They simply appeared and stood and watched with the calm of animals that had nothing to prove. The situation felt dangerous.

Behind them, three figures in dark cloaks emerged from the shadows between the trees and came to stand at the centre of the path.

Varek decided it was in his best interest not to shift again. They might feel threatened otherwise, but their presence made his wolf scratch at the surface.

The figure in the middle was taller than the other two by enough to notice. He moved without urgency and when he reached the edge of the path he reached up and lowered his hood and looked at the visitors with an expression that gave very little away.

The first thing Varek noticed were the eyes.

Each one was a different colour. The left was brown, deep and earth looking. The right was as green as the leaves in the trees. Together they created the unsettling impression of a man who was seeing two different things at once and understanding both of them completely. His hair was short and his jaw was set and the aura that came off him was intimidating. He gave off the presence of an Alpha, though Varek felt he was not one. He could not put his finger on what he was feeling.

The silence stretched for a moment.

Then the man spoke.

"You've come a long way," he said, his voice was deep and carrying easily through the still air. "State your names and your business."