Alpha Rising

Chapter Twelve

Alvira's P.O.V.

In the early hours of the following day, I woke to hushed whispers outside my bedroom door. Almost instantly, I could smell Nikolai. He wasn’t with me in the room, and his scent was far from strong enough to indicate that he’d visited me overnight. But that had to have been him outside my door. 

There was a growing need that was pooling in the core of my stomach. My wolf was up and alert in a way that had me more wired than the most robust coffee ever could have. And by the shifting outside the door, Nikolai had felt it too. 

We were unquestionably drawn together, even though it felt like he was trying his best to keep me at arm's length. He was avoiding almost all conversation last night after I’d talked with Alban, and what short answered he did give me were curt and one-note. His Beta was far more open, though, and had come up to check on me around midnight when I had trouble sleeping. He said that he’d just been wandering, but there was a substantial part of me that felt like Nikolai assigned him to sit outside my door. 

My eyes shot to the door handle as it jiggled just before the door swung open. Before me, my father stood as an imposing wall between me and the hallway. His eyes narrowed on me for just a moment in an emotion that I couldn’t quite place. But as I went to speak, he seemed to soften.

“You did great, Vira,” He said to me. “A few of the other Alphas still aren’t fully understanding,” My father looked over his shoulder to the hallway. Around him, I could faintly see the form of my Mate brooding in the doorway. “But I think that we’re making headway.” 

“What do you mean, headway?” I asked him, not fully understanding what seemed to be ticking in his mind. “I thought you just needed me to give them an account of the attack.”

“I did,” he replied. “But it’s more than that.” His heavy hand fell gently on my shoulder before he ran his knuckle over my cheek. “I can’t tell you everything yet. But I need you and your brother to trust me on this.” 

The inherent distrust marred the comfort I still felt from him and my mother. True, we had gone through an extreme amount of trauma over the past few weeks, and we needed our family there to support us. But they had sowed that seed of doubt in my mind, and I couldn’t look at him anymore without seeing twenty years of lies all in one. “I don’t want to be in the dark again,” I said low, somewhat pointedly too. 

My father’s jaw clenched, and he gave a short nod. “And I don’t blame you,” he started. “I don’t like what we had to do. But this is the path we have to walk until I can make the right changes.”

Much like him, my jaw tightened, and I felt my teeth grind for just a moment. “But now I’m-” and I vaguely gestured towards the door. I was mated to another Alpha. If the Goddess-given powers were still locked in me, and I was going to move to a new pack.

“I know.” He let his chin fall, and his eyes looked as though they held a deeper meaning. “But the walls have ears, Vi.” Dad leaned in closer to press a doting kiss to my cheek. “There’s going to be an announcement in an hour. Be in the main hall then.”

I think he could sense that I didn’t know what to believe because one minute, my father looked calm and collected, and the next, he seemed to fade with this pang of guilt and hurt. A part of me hoped that he genuinely did feel bad. I’d been losing my mind and wrestling with unending self-doubt for weeks now, thanks to them. He straightened, gave me one last reassuring look, and then turned to leave me to my thoughts. 

Behind him, Nikolai stood at the top of the stairs. He was hovering there but not breaking his line of sight on my movements. My eyes instantly fell to the column of his throat, where his pulse raced as I moved closer. 

“Was that you outside my door?” I asked, taking another step closer. His eyes shone even brighter in the daytime. I hadn’t fully gotten to realize just how beautiful they were in the early evening’s fading light yesterday. 

"Was it that obvious?" He replied. My shoulders dropped, and I gave a soft shake of my head. Nikolai cleared his throat and clenched one of his hands tightly at his side. The way he tensed and shook was a testament to his restraint, or so I thought. 

My throat felt dry as I nodded, and I felt my legs moving me slowly towards him all on their own. The vague trance of magnetism resonated momentarily in me before I inhaled deeply and caught myself only inches from him. I had been so close to his lips that I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek.

Nikolai only grunted in response, stepping back with every move I made. He looked almost scared. Like I’d lunge forward and hurt him. When it was clear that he wasn’t going to give me much of an answer, I sighed and turned away from him. Only then did he step forward to grab for my shoulder. The connection felt like a blazing fire in the best of ways, and I turned instantly to face him. 

His lips parted, and he let out a breath like he was about to speak. But his throat bobbed with a hard swallow, and he let me go. I didn’t have the energy to fight for conversation this morning, so I took the freedom with grace and set about prepping myself for this all-important second meeting. Whatever that was all about. As soon as my door shut, the sensation of not being alone was right back there, and I knew Nikolai was outside waiting. 

What was wrong with him? Didn’t he feel the draw and the magnetic pull in the same way I did? Or maybe I hadn’t been what he was expecting. The thought sent a pang of pain through my chest, and I pushed it away as best I could. I would have to unpack that feeling later when I didn’t feel so helpless.  

That helplessness didn’t fade when I joined the hectic pot of testosterone and stubbornness in the meeting hall. Alphas, Betas, and Lunas all filed in alongside a select number of fighters and generals. My father and Alban stood near the front, going over a large mountain range map alongside Alpha Jeremy. Alban looked so nervous standing there and nearly fainted in relief when I showed up at last. 

‘Vira help,’ he said through our mind link as I slipped around a few chattering women. ‘I don’t know the trails like you do. They’re asking all kinds of things I can’t answer.’

‘To the rescue,’ I replied with a wink. ‘I’ll take it from here.’ 

He always had this way of boosting my confidence like that, honestly. Alban knew when I needed a hand and knew how to make me focus on literally anything other than what was on my mind. I snaked through the crowd and ducked under the raised arms of a few angrily gesticulating Alphas. 

“No, no,” I said as I came up on the trio over the map. “You’re looking far too north for where we were. That’s closer to the peak of Star Garnet.” I nudged my way into the space between my father and Jeremy. Tapping the map with my pointer finger, I looked between the both of them. “We were here at this lake.” 

It was a lake nestled lower, near the Ohio border. There was a considerable breadth of unclaimed territory just a few dozen miles from the campground, so it made some logical sense for them to have branched out in the way they did. “And the attacks that you talked about, Alpha Jeremy. Those were the ones nearer to Bloodstone, along the southern Virginia border.” 

“Correct,” he said with a fierce undertone, though it sounded slightly warmer than last night. “My intelligence brought back five attackers there, and you mentioned three. With the time between the attacks, they may be the same group.”

He was right in that regard. And it felt good on a deeper level to be told that my information was helpful. I had a better knack for landscapes and maps than my brother did. 

“Which brings me to my next point,” Dad said before straightening up to his full height. He let out a booming order for the crowd to settle down, much to the surprise and mild annoyance of some of those further back from the actual plotting. “As many of you know now,” he announced. “We cannot let this threat continue any more than it already has.”

The general vibe of the room had tensed, and a few solid murmurs of agreement rippled out through the crowd. “We’ve suffered much loss,” Dad’s eyes fell to the table in a moment of silence before he managed to continue. “But we have to start fighting back. We have to flush out these rogues and rebels,” a low growl left his chest, and I could feel the power radiating from him. “And I will not allow anything to harm any of our families again.”

The crowd met this admission with whoops and whistles of approval and support, and Alpha Jeremy stepped up to the plate after the group settled back down. “We’re looking to institute a task force,” the aging Alpha said. “A group of skilled fighters and tacticians who want to hunt these individuals down and protect our alliance.”

My ears perked right up, and my wolf was already at attention. I felt the rise in power and adrenaline coursing through me already. And the second Alpha Jeremy broke for input, my hand shot to the sky. “I volunteer, Alpha Jeremy.”

Instantly, I felt all eyes on me. But this was one thing that I was optimistic about, especially given the last few weeks. This task was something that the alliance needed me to spearhead. So I repeated myself and stood tall with my chest out firm. “I want to help keep anyone else from experiencing what I went through.”

You could have heard a pin drop with how quiet the room fell. I could see a glimmer of pride in my mother’s eyes and a shocked blank stare in my father’s. But I didn’t care. I did this for myself and the good of the packs.  And that's all I needed right now.