Betrayed by my Alpha

Chapter 1 - Decay

Five Years Later

The Ironpeak clan was not what it used to be.

Anyone who had visited five years ago and returned today would have noticed it immediately. The difference was not something you could point to in one place. They were in the empty houses where families used to live, and in the training yard where only a handful of wolves went through their drills each morning instead of the dozens that used to fill it with noise and movement, and in the way the remaining clan members walked through the village with their heads slightly down, not in respect for anyone but just because keeping your head down had become a habit with all that was going on.

The Ironpeak clan was shrinking and everyone knew why.

It had started the night their Alpha came home alone from a run in the woods in tattered clothes. His bond mark went dark on his wrist. Tahla was dead, he told them. Rogues in the forest. He had barely escaped himself. The clan had grieved, some more than others, and then barely a week later Varek Navar stood before them with Soraya on his arm and announced that life had to continue.

The first to leave was Zorah.

Tahla's mother had not said a single word to Varek at the announcement. She had looked at him for a long moment with eyes that gave nothing away and then she had turned around and walked back to her house and by the next morning she was gone.

No farewell, no explanation left behind for anyone. She had simply slipped away in the dark. She did not believe her daughter had been killed by rogues and she did not trust the man who was telling her so. Not when he had spent the better part of their marriage making her daughter's life miserable and had managed to find a replacement before Tahla was even cold in the ground.

Word spread the way it always does among wolf clans, quietly at first and then all at once.

The Ironpeak Alpha had lost his mate and taken one chosen by himself and not the fates in her place. To those who respected the old ways and the gods who had bound Varek and Tahla together, it was a disgrace. To the rogues scattered across the surrounding territories it was something else entirely. It was an opportunity.

The attacks began three months after Soraya moved into the Alpha's house.

At first they came in small groups, testing the borders, pulling back when the Ironpeak warriors pushed them off. But the warriors were fewer than before because some clan members had already started leaving, disgusted by what Varek had done or simply afraid of what was coming. Every attack that followed was a little bolder than the last and every bold attack cost the clan soldiers they could not easily replace. The rogues that Varek himself had once hired to do his dirty work in the woods had turned on him too. He finished them off before they could utter a word of what truly happened.

Even the gods seemed to have turned their backs on him.

Soraya was not helping. That was perhaps the kindest way anyone put it and even that was being generous. She had come into the Ironpeak clan expecting to be treated like the Alpha female she technically was and she had arranged her life there accordingly. She gave orders to pack members and expected them to be followed without question. She attended clan gatherings dressed finely and accepted the greetings of clan members with the grace of someone who had always believed she deserved exactly this. But she did not train with the younger wolves the way Tahla once had. She did not check on the elderly or sit with the families who had lost someone in the raids. She did not do any of the unglamorous work that actually held a clan together from the inside.

She also did not give Varek children.

Five years and not once. He had noticed the herbs she kept in a small pouch tucked behind her other things and he had said nothing about it yet but the knowledge sat in his chest like a stone. She had wanted to be an Alpha female but apparently not badly enough to do everything that came with it. In the rare moments she allowed him close she was distant in a way that reminded him uncomfortably of how he had once treated Tahla and he did not enjoy that particular thought so he pushed it away every time it surfaced.

He was running out of things to push away.

On a grey morning that looked like every other grey morning Ironpeak had seen lately, Varek sat at the head of a long table in the meeting hall and looked at the four clan leaders who had accepted his invitation to come. Daren of the Ashfeld clan, broad and unsmiling, who had lost two of his own border wolves to rogue activity and was not in a forgiving mood. Lysan of the Mirefall clan, older and sharper eyed, who said very little but missed nothing. Corra of the Dunveil clan, the only female leader among them, who had brought two of her senior warriors and positioned them near the door without being asked. And Bren of the Stonewall clan, youngest of the four, who kept his expression carefully neutral. Varek knew he was someone who had not yet decided how much he trusted the man who had called this meeting. Himself.

Varek let the silence sit for just a moment before he spoke.

"I appreciate you all making the journey," he said. "I know it isn't a small thing to ask."

"You said it was urgent," Daren said, not unkindly but not warmly either. "So let's hear it."

Varek nodded. "The rogue activity in this region has been building for years and I think we all know it isn't slowing down. My clan has taken losses. Significant ones. I suspect some of you have felt pressure on your own borders too."

Lysan tilted his head slightly. "Some," he said in a bored tone. This annoyed Varek, but he held back. The others weren't suffering the brunt of it all as his pack was.

"I'm proposing a joint response," Varek said. "A coordinated effort across all five clans. Shared information on rogue movements, combined raiding parties to clear out the larger groups before they grow bold enough to become a real threat to any of us."

Corra leaned forward slightly. "And what does Ironpeak bring to this arrangement? Because from what I've heard your numbers aren't what they were."

The words landed flatly in the room, but nobody looked away.

Varek kept his expression steady even though the question stung in a place he didn't show. "Ironpeak brings its position. We're the central clan in this region. Any coordinated effort needs us at the table or it has gaps in it."

"That's true enough," Bren said carefully. "But, there are those who would say Ironpeak has had a difficult few years."

"Every clan has difficult years," Varek replied.

"Not every clan loses its fated Alpha female and replaces her in a week," Corra said quietly.

The room went very still.

Varek looked at her for a long moment. She held his gaze without flinching and he respected that even as he resented it.

"My personal life is not what I called you here to discuss," he said.

"No," Lysan agreed, speaking properly for the first time. "But your personal life has consequences for your clan and your clan's consequences have a way of spilling onto your neighbours." He folded his hands on the table. "We are willing to listen, Varek. But listening is not yet agreeing and that's all we're giving you. You'll need to give us something more concrete than a proposal before any of us commits to anything."

Varek looked around the table at four faces that were not hostile but were not convinced either and felt the full weight of everything he had spent five years trying not to examine too closely pressing down on him all at once.

He had built this problem himself, brick by brick, and now he was sitting inside it asking others to help him find the door.

"Then let's discuss further," he said, hoping deep within him that whatever he had left was enough to sway them.