Claimed By The Hidden Alpha

Chapter Ten

LYRA

The herb garden exists in that liminal space between night and dawn, where shadows pool like spilled ink between the rows of medicinal plants. Dew clings to every leaf, transforming ordinary greenery into something crystalline and otherworldly. I breathe in the mingled scents—sharp sage, bitter feverfew, the dangerous sweetness of wolfsbane that makes my fingertips tingle even through gardening gloves.

My hands know this work by muscle memory, moving through the ritual of harvest without conscious thought. Snip. Bundle. Tie with twine that smells of beeswax and old magic. The plants respond to my presence, leaning into my touch like affection-starved cats. They feel what I feel, respond to the restless energy that's been building under my skin since last night.

Since Riley finally stopped running and let me touch him again.

The memory sends heat pooling low in my belly—his jaw under my thumb, rough with stubble, the way his whole body went still when our skin made contact. That impossible silence where chaos should live, the perfect peace of connection I've never experienced with another living soul.

"Sweet moon, you're practically glowing."

Sam materializes from the morning mist like a weapon given form. Her patrol gear carries the night's story—pine resin sticky on her boots, mud splattered up her calves, the metallic scent of adrenaline not quite faded. Something happened at the borders. Something that put that sharp edge in her dark eyes.

*I don't glow.* My signs come out defensive, but heat crawls up my neck.

"Liar. You've been pumping out omega pheromones since sunset yesterday." Alex emerges from the opposite direction, her distinctive copper braid swinging. Where Sam is all sharp angles and barely leashed violence, Alex flows like water—deceptive grace that hides beta strength. "Poor Peter walked straight into a door frame this morning. Dylan tripped over his own feet. Even Tom's been distracted."

Not my problem if they can't control themselves.

"Isn't it, though?" Sam drops onto the carved bench, wood creaking under her weight. "Hunter's been running his mouth since the challenge. Says Riley's victory was luck, that an untrained alpha has no business claiming what he calls 'pack property.'"

The pruning shears snap closed harder than necessary, severing a feverfew stem with prejudice. I'm not property.

"We know that. You know that. Hell, even Hunter probably knows that somewhere in his thick skull." Alex stretches like a cat, each vertebra popping in sequence. "But wounded pride makes wolves stupid. And stupid wolves make dangerous choices."

The truth of it settles uneasily in my chest. I've felt Hunter's eyes following me these past days, the weight of his regard different now. Less entitled desire, more calculating resentment. Like I'm a prize unfairly withheld rather than a person with agency.

"Ready for morning training?" Sam rises, all coiled energy. "You missed yesterday."

Because I'd been painting until my fingers cramped and my eyes burned. Canvas after canvas attempting to capture something essential about Riley—the exact shade of green his eyes go when the wolf surfaces, the way firelight plays across his skin, the devastating gentleness in his hands when he thinks he might break me. My cottage looks like a shrine to obsession, but I can't stop. Each painting feels like a prayer against forgetting, against losing these details when reality inevitably shifts.

The training grounds stretch empty in the early light, packed earth still damp with dew. Most wolves are on patrol or sleeping off last night's celebrations—Riley's victory gave them excuse to break out the good whiskey, to howl at the moon until their throats went raw.

"Basic forms first." Alex's teaching voice emerges, patient but firm. "You're thinking too much again."

We move through the familiar dance—block, strike, dodge, repeat. My body knows these patterns, carved into muscle memory by years of Sam and Alex refusing to let their omega friend be helpless. But this morning, my mind drifts.

He wakes up covered in blood, I sign during a water break. Can't control his shifts. Actively avoided me for eight days.

"And yet nearly killed Hunter for touching you." Sam wipes sweat from her brow, leaving a smudge of dirt. "That's not lack of control, Lyra. That's an alpha recognizing his mate and reacting accordingly."

"Plus," Alex adds, rewrapping her hands, "have you seen how he looks at you? Like you're water and he's been dying of thirst for years."

Heat floods my face. I have noticed. Those green eyes track my every movement when he thinks I'm not watching. The way his nostrils flare when I pass, catching my scent. How his hands clench like he's physically restraining himself from reaching out.

"Circle up. Let's work combinations."

They come at me from opposite sides, a choreographed assault designed to overwhelm. I manage three blocks before Alex's leg sweep sends me sprawling. Sam follows up with a pin that would be lethal in real combat, forearm across my throat, knee in my spine.

"You're distracted." She helps me up, brushing dirt from my shoulders. "In a real fight, distraction equals death."

I know.

"Do you? Because those rogues are still out there, and they're not going to wait for you to sort out your love life."

Before I can respond, high voices carry across the grounds.

"Lyra!" Mia bounds toward us, all coltish limbs and uncontained energy. Marie follows at a more sedate pace, trying to project teenage sophistication despite the basket swinging from her arm.

"Mom says you're going mushroom hunting." Mia skids to a stop, sneakers throwing up dust. "Can we come? Please? We know all the best spots where the chanterelles grow, and that hollow where the oyster mushrooms get huge, and—"

"We'll be helpful," Marie interrupts her sister's stream of consciousness. "And quiet. Mostly quiet."

"We'll talk about Riley sometimes," Mia clarifies with devastating honesty. "Because he's interesting and you get this look whenever someone says his name."

What look?

"Like this." She demonstrates—eyes going soft and distant, lips parting slightly, a perfect mimicry of besotted yearning.

Sam coughs suspiciously while Alex suddenly finds the sky fascinating.

"We should come with you." Alex recovers first, beta instincts kicking in. "The borders have been... unsettled lately."

Unsettled how?

"Scent trails that dead-end. Sections where the birds go silent for no reason." Sam's hand drifts to her hip where a blade would rest during official patrols. "Tom thinks someone's testing our defenses."

Let me guess. Started right after Riley humiliated Hunter?

"The timing is suggestive," Alex agrees.

We gather supplies in efficient silence—woven baskets, water bottles, the ritual knife Nana blessed for me three summers ago. The bone handle fits my palm perfectly, blade sharp enough to slice shadow. For harvesting, she'd said, but we both knew the truth. Omegas who survive learn to carry sharp things.

The forest embraces us as we move beyond the compound's immediate borders. Morning light filters through the canopy in cathedral rays, transforming ordinary woods into something holy. Mia chatters about starting eighth grade, while Marie practices the dignified silence of impending high school.

"Mr. Rodriguez says we might get to dissect frogs this year," Mia announces, stepping over a fallen log with exaggerated care. "But Holly—she's in tenth grade—says they don't do that anymore because it's gross and some parents complained."

"They do virtual dissections now," Marie corrects. "On tablets. Less mess."

"Less fun," Mia counters.

The mushroom grove occupies a natural hollow where ancient oaks create perpetual twilight. The air hangs thick with the scent of decomposition and new life—that particular forest perfume of things dying and being reborn. Chanterelles glow like scattered gold coins against the dark earth. Oyster mushrooms cascade from rotting logs in frozen waterfalls of cream and grey.

I lose myself in the meditative rhythm of harvesting. Knife slides beneath tender flesh, separating fruiting body from mycelium with practiced ease. The girls watch intently as I sign one-handed instructions about identification, which ones heal, which ones kill, which ones the kitchen prizes for tonight's stew.

"These smell like apricots," Mia observes, cradling a perfect chanterelle. "Why do fungi smell like fruit? That seems evolutionarily misleading."

The forest answers before I can—with silence.

Not the peaceful quiet of woods at rest, but the held-breath tension of prey sensing predators. Birds cut off mid-song. Insects stop their droning. Even the breeze dies, leaves hanging motionless as if nature itself has frozen.

Sam reacts first, body shifting from casual to combat-ready between heartbeats. "Behind us. Now."

Alex herds the girls toward the massive oak at the grove's center, muscle memory taking over. Her voice drops to that particular tone that makes even alphas listen: "Don't run. Don't scream. Don't move unless we tell you."

They come from three directions simultaneously—shadows given hunger, sliding through boundaries that should have held them. Should have screamed warnings to every patrol in the territory.

Five rogues. Maybe six. Hard to count when they move like smoke, like nightmare logic where physics becomes suggestion rather than law.

The largest steps into the clearing, and wrongness radiates from him in waves. His clothes might have been normal once—jeans, flannel shirt—but now they hang in tatters over a frame that moves independently of human anatomy. Muscles slide under skin like serpents, bones jutting at angles that speak of shifts gone wrong, of letting the wolf reshape you until nothing human remains.

"Well, well." His voice sounds like gargling gravel and glass. "The silent omega. Grendel will pay handsomely for you. Enough to buy safe passage to territories where pack law doesn't reach."

"You'll have to go through us first." Sam's already shifting, the change rippling through her in waves. Woman to wolf to something caught between—deadly and beautiful and wrong.

She hits the closest rogue at the throat, momentum carrying them into the underbrush in a tangle of claws and snarling. Alex shoves Marie and Mia deeper into the oak's shadow.

"Whatever happens, you don't move. You don't run. Running triggers chase instinct." Her shoulder dislocates with an audible pop as she forces the shift. "Understand?"

Wide-eyed nods. Mia clutches her sister's hand hard enough to leave bruises.

Then Alex is gone, meeting the second wave with beta precision. But there are too many, and they're not fighting to win. They're fighting to separate us. To create openings.

One circles wide, yellow eyes fixed on me with intent that makes my skin try to crawl off my bones. I back against the oak's rough bark, hand finding the ritual knife that suddenly seems pathetically small. Marie and Mia press against my sides, their terror sharp as copper in my nostrils.

"Pretty little thing," the rogue croons, advancing slowly. "Grendel likes them quiet. Says they scream prettier when they finally find their voices."

My hand tightens on the knife handle. One chance. Throat or eyes, Nana always said. Soft targets on hard creatures.

The rogue lunges.

The world explodes into fire and fury.

Riley hits the rogue mid-leap, and they roll across the clearing in a tangle of claws and flame that defies natural law. But this isn't the controlled fighter from last night's challenge circle. This is pure protective rage given form, consequences be damned.

Fire races along the rogue's skin, supernatural flesh no protection against flames that burn hotter than any earthly fire should. The sound he makes—high and thin and utterly inhuman—cuts off as Riley's claws find the sweet spot between third and fourth vertebrae.

The head rolls away from the body, expression frozen in terminal surprise.

More patrol members pour into the clearing—Tom, Kyle, others drawn by the commotion. But Riley's already moving, tracking the rogue who got too close to me, who dared reach for what his wolf has claimed.

"Riley, no!" Tom's shout comes too late.

The rogue makes one critical error. In his desperation to escape, his hand brushes my arm. Just a touch, barely contact through fabric, but enough.

Riley's roar shakes leaves from ancient oaks.

He doesn't just kill the rogue. He unmakes him.

One clawed hand catches the rogue's reaching arm while the other finds purchase on his opposite shoulder. Riley pulls in opposite directions, and the wet tearing sound will live in my nightmares forever. The rogue splits like overripe fruit, viscera painting the grove in abstract patterns of red and worse.

But Riley isn't finished. Fire pours from his hands, reducing flesh to ash before it can hit the ground. When scattered pieces try to reform—because some rogues are harder to kill than others—he burns those too. Methodical. Thorough. Terrifying.

When nothing remains but ash and the memory of screaming, he turns.

I see the exact moment humanity crashes back into those green eyes. See him register the c*****e, the blood painting his hands and chest, the ash still falling like grotesque snow. His gaze finds Marie and Mia, huddled against the oak with tears streaming down their faces.

Then me. Blood-splattered but breathing. Alive because of what he's done. What he's become.

"Oh god." The words come out broken, barely human. "What did I—I didn't mean—"

He looks at his hands like they belong to a stranger. Claws still extended, still dripping. The remaining rogues have fled rather than confront whatever stands in our clearing, wearing Riley's face but radiating power that predates pack law.

"I'm sorry." He backs away, movements jerky with shock. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't stop. When he touched you, I just—"

Riley, wait— My signs feel desperate, too small for what needs saying.

But he's already running. Not the graceful lope of a wolf but the desperate crash of a man fleeing himself. Branches break in his wake. The scent of copper and char lingers like an accusation.

"Let him go." Tom's hand on my shoulder keeps me from following. "He needs to run it off. Process what he's capable of."

He saved us.

"He did." No judgment in Tom's voice, just acknowledgment. "But that kind of violence... it changes you. Especially when you don't expect it from yourself."

Sam limps back, blood matting the fur along her flank but moving steadily. Alex follows, left arm hanging at an unnatural angle but eyes sharp with adrenaline.

"We need to move." She scans the tree line, cataloguing threats. "If they got through the boundaries—"

"Inside job," Tom confirms grimly, examining scuff marks in the dirt. "Someone gave them a way in. Temporarily nullified the wards."

The implications chill worse than mountain wind. A traitor in Moonhaven. Someone who knew exactly when I'd be vulnerable, exactly where to send the rogues.

We make our way back in defensive formation, the mushroom harvest forgotten in scattered baskets. I feel Riley's absence like a severed limb, the space where he should be aching with phantom pain. The bond between us stretches thin with distance and his emotional turmoil, but doesn't break.

He saved me. Saved all of us. But the cost—

I remember his face in that moment of recognition. The horror at what instinct had driven him to do. He's spent so long fearing the monster that he can't see the protector. Can't distinguish between necessary violence and mindless brutality.

But I can. I've lived with visions my whole life, learned to parse the difference between destruction and protection. What happened in the clearing wasn't loss of control.

It was perfect control aimed at a single purpose: keeping me alive.

Now I just need to find him before guilt drives him to do something stupidly noble. Like leave to protect us from himself.

Because the only thing more dangerous than Riley learning what he's capable of would be facing what's coming without him.