Cast Out, Claimed By The Silver Alpha

CHAPTER 5 THE MARK NO ONE WAS SUPPOSED TO SEE

Wren Hale POV

The name hit the room like a thunderclap.

Kane Voss. Alpha of Ashwood, the pack three territories over the pack with the biggest army north of the mountains, the pack every Beta in the region owed favors to, whether they admitted it aloud or not. I had heard his name whispered in Ashgrove meetings, always with fear stitched into the sound of it, always followed by a warning never to cross Ashwood's borders without an escort, as if the very name carried enough weight to keep unruly pups in line for weeks after hearing it.

And he had just called me his.

"Alpha Voss," the enforcer repeated, bowing so fast he nearly stumbled over his own boots, his three companions dropping into similar bows a half second behind him, as though the mark on Kane's arm had physically pulled them down. "We we didn't know. Beta Cole only asked us to retrieve the girl, he never said"

"He never said what," Kane cut in, voice flat and cold as winter stone, "that the omega he rejected in front of his whole pack turned out to be worth more than his entire bloodline?"

I flinched. Worth more? I didn't understand what he meant, and from the enforcer's face, neither did he not fully. But something in his eyes had shifted from fear to a different kind of caution. Calculation. The look of a man already imagining how this news would be received back home, already weighing what it might be worth to whoever heard it first and I understood, with a fresh wave of dread, that word of this would reach Damian before the sun rose regardless of what Kane did next.

"She's still pack property until formally released," the enforcer tried again, weaker this time, his earlier confidence draining out of his voice with every word, his eyes darting between Kane's face and the silver brand on his arm like he couldn't decide which one to be more afraid of.

"Then release her," Kane said, "or explain to Damian why you provoked an Alpha over a technicality."

The tavern was silent except for the crackle of the fire and the faint, nervous shuffle of the card players in the corner. I stood frozen between them, one hand still pressed against my throbbing shoulder, feeling like the ground beneath me had turned to smoke, like one wrong word might send the whole room up in flames.

The enforcer's eyes flicked to me one last time and stopped.

I don't know what happened in that moment. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was the ache still radiating from the bond that Kane's touch had lit inside my chest, spreading warmth through limbs that had felt cold for three straight weeks, ever since the night Damian's bite tore that thread out of me. Whatever it was, I felt something c***k open behind my own eyes, a heat I had never felt before, rushing up from somewhere buried so deep I hadn't known it existed until this exact second, like a door I never knew was locked had finally swung open.

The enforcer's mouth fell open.

"Her eyes," he whispered, taking an involuntary step backward.

I didn't understand until I caught my own reflection in the dark tavern window behind the bar, faint and ghostly against the black glass.

My eyes weren't brown anymore.

They were silver bright, burning silver, rimmed in gold, glowing like twin moons in the dim light of the room, so bright I could see their reflection flickering against the wood of the bar itself.

The enforcer stumbled backward like he'd been struck, knocking into the man behind him, who caught him by the shoulder without ever looking away from me. "That's not possible," he breathed. "That bloodline was wiped out generations ago. The Moonfire line is extinct."

"The Moonfire line," Kane repeated slowly, and when I turned to look at him, his face had gone paler than I had ever seen it, gold eyes wide with something that looked disturbingly close to grief, something old and unhealed.

"You know what that means?" I asked him, voice shaking, my own reflection still burning silver in the glass behind me.

He didn't answer right away. And that silence frightened me more than the enforcers ever had more than Damian's rejection, more than the cold woods, more than three weeks of running with nowhere safe to land, more than the golden eyes that had watched me from the tree line that first terrible night.

"Get out," Kane finally said to them, not looking away from me, his voice carrying an authority that left no room for argument, an authority that seemed to settle over the whole room like a held breath finally releasing. "Tell Damian his omega is under my protection now, and if he sends anyone else, I'll consider it a declaration of war."

The enforcers didn't argue. They fled the tavern so fast the door slammed twice against the frame, boots pounding away into the dark until the sound of them faded completely, leaving only the fire's crackle and the ragged sound of my own breathing.

I turned to Kane, my silver eyes still burning, my whole body trembling with a power I couldn't name, couldn't control, couldn't even begin to understand.

"Tell me what you know," I said. "Tell me what the Moonfire line has to do with you."

Kane's jaw tightened. For the first time since he'd walked into the Rusty Fang, the Alpha of Ashwood looked like a man cornered, like whatever he was about to say cost him something he wasn't sure he could afford to give, something that had clearly been sitting unspoken in his chest for far longer than the last hour.

"Not here," he said quietly, glancing at the wide-eyed faces still watching us from every table in the tavern, the card players and merchants and even Mabel herself frozen mid-motion. "Not where anyone can hear it."

"Kane"

"My family," he said, the words dragged out of him like they cost something, like each one was a stone he'd carried a very long time, "is the reason your bloodline was hunted to extinction in the first place."