Alpha's Forbidden Frequency

Chapter 4: First Lesson

Evening arrived with a summons.

Lena appeared at my door just as the chronostatic lamps in the corridor shifted from pale violet to deep amber, signaling the transition from day cycle to night cycle. She had brought a different dress this time, charcoal grey with silver buttons, finer than the blue wool I had worn all day. A uniform, I realized. They were dressing me for presentation.

"My lord requests your presence in the training hall," she said. "He instructed me to tell you that this is not optional."

"Nothing in this Spire seems optional."

A flicker of something crossed her face, not quite a smile, not quite sympathy. "You learn quickly. That will serve you well here. Come."

She led me upward through corridors that grew progressively more ornate. Servant passages gave way to main hallways with high arched ceilings and windows that looked out over the city's upper tiers. Neovictoria spread below us like a map come to life, its iron spires and gear-driven airships rendered miniature by distance. The Low District was invisible from this height, hidden beneath layers of smoke and shadow and the deliberate blindness of the wealthy.

The training hall occupied a wing of its own at the Spire's northern end. Its doors were made of reinforced iron banded with the same silver runes I had seen on the Finch gates, and they swung open at Lena's touch as if recognizing her presence. She stepped aside and gestured for me to enter alone.

"You will find him inside," she said. "I am not permitted beyond this point during training sessions."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever he tells you. Whatever you do, do not run. Running triggers his hunting instinct. I have seen what happens when his hunting instinct awakens." She closed the doors behind me with a resonant thud that echoed through the vast space beyond.

The training hall was a cavern carved from black stone, its ceiling lost in shadow, its floor covered with padded mats that bore the scars of countless claws. Weapons lined the walls. Swords and axes and spears designed for hands and paws alike. Targets stood at the far end, their surfaces shredded by what looked like wolf strikes. Torches burned in iron sconces, their flames casting dancing shadows across the stone.

Caspian Finch stood in the center of the room with his back to me.

He wore training clothes rather than formal attire, a simple grey shirt and dark trousers that did nothing to diminish the power coiled in his shoulders. His silver hair was damp, as if he had already been working. His hands hung at his sides, and I noticed the tremor in them had worsened since the auction hall. A faint, constant vibration that he was clearly fighting to control.

"You took longer than I expected," he said without turning.

"Lena had to find me an appropriate uniform."

"Lena is efficient. You were hesitating."

"I was preparing myself."

Now he turned. His pale eyes swept over me with the same clinical assessment Doctor Parrish had used, but where her gaze had been professional, his was something else entirely. Evaluation. Calculation. A predator measuring prey. I forced myself to hold still under that stare.

"Preparing yourself for what?" he asked.

"Whatever happens next."

"What happens next is that I test your Resonance properly. Doctor Parrish's Detector confirmed what you are. Now I need to understand what you can do. Take off your shoes."

I removed the shoes Lena had given me, simple black flats with thin soles. Cold stone bit into my bare feet.

"Walk toward me," Caspian instructed. "Slowly. When you feel the urge to hum, do not suppress it. This room is shielded. Nothing you do here will be detected beyond these walls."

I walked. My bare feet made no sound on the padded mats. Caspian watched me approach with an intensity that made my skin prickle. Ten feet away. Eight. Six. The hum stirred beneath my ribs, responding to his proximity in a way it had never responded to anything before.

"Why does my frequency react to you?" I asked.

"That is what I am trying to determine. Keep walking."

Four feet. Three. The hum was no longer a stir but a pressure, pushing against my breastbone, demanding release. My throat tightened. My teeth ached. I stopped walking because another step felt like it would crack me open.

"I cannot get closer," I managed. "Something is pushing back."

"That something is my curse." Caspian's voice had dropped, rougher now, less controlled. "Temporal Dysplasia creates a field around my body. Your Resonance is reacting to that field. They are connected, your frequency and my condition. I want to know why."

He stepped toward me instead.

One stride closed the distance between us. His hand caught my chin and tilted my face upward. Cold skin. Trembling fingers. His pale eyes burned into mine from inches away, and I felt the hum surge with a force that nearly knocked my knees out from under me.

"Sing," he commanded.

"I do not know how."

"You have been suppressing a frequency since childhood. That is not absence of ability. That is refusal. Stop refusing."

Anger flared through the pressure in my chest. This man had purchased me. This man had threatened my sister's care if I resisted. This man now gripped my chin in his shaking hand and demanded I perform for him like a trained animal. I had been swallowing the hum to survive. Perhaps survival required something different now.

I opened my mouth and let the wrong frequency pour out.

Sound filled the training hall unlike anything I had ever produced before. Not the accidental four point seven seconds that had fractured the Low District. Not the response to Doctor Parrish's Detector. This was intentional. Directed. A note that came from somewhere beneath my lungs, somewhere older than memory, shaped by a bloodline I did not understand and a song composed by a dead man I had never met.

Caspian's hand fell from my chin. His whole body shuddered. His eyes, those winter-pale eyes that had held nothing but cold calculation since the auction hall, went wide with something that looked almost like recognition.

His form blurred.

I stumbled backward as the Alpha of the Finch Pack shifted in front of me. Not the controlled transformation I had read about in forbidden texts, the graceful slide from human to wolf that pack members trained for years to master. This was violent. Unpredictable. His bones cracked and reformed. His skin rippled. Silver light bled from his pores. He dropped to his hands and knees, and when the light faded, a wolf stood where Caspian Finch had been.

A pup.

Small. Silver-furred. Pale blue eyes that were far too large for its face stared up at me from a body that could not have been more than a few months old. It whimpered. The sound cut through the fading echo of my hum like a blade through silk.

I stopped singing.

Silence crashed back into the training hall. The pup, Caspian as a pup, took a wobbling step toward me on legs that could barely support its own small weight. Its tail wagged once, twice, then tucked between its legs. It was afraid. The cursed Alpha, the cold monster who had purchased me for five thousand chrono-marks, was a terrified infant wolf cowering on the training mats.

I knelt. The pup flinched, then crept closer, drawn by something it clearly did not understand. Its cold nose pressed against my outstretched palm. A whine escaped its throat.

"You are still in there," I whispered. "Somewhere inside that small body, you are still Caspian Finch."

The pup licked my fingers. Its tongue was warm and rough and utterly trusting. Whatever had just happened, whatever my frequency had triggered, this small creature did not see me as property. It saw me as safety.

Footsteps echoed from the corridor beyond the iron doors. Lena burst through, her face pale, a silver-medic kit clutched in her hands. Behind her came a woman I did not recognize, tall and scarred and radiating authority from every line of her warrior's frame.

"Back away from him." The scarred woman's voice was a blade. "Slowly. Now."

I did not move. The pup had curled against my knee, its small body trembling, its cold nose pressed into the fabric of my charcoal dress. It was seeking warmth. Seeking comfort. Seeking me.

"I said back away."

"Your Alpha is still conscious inside that pup," I replied. "He recognized me. If I move, he may panic."

The scarred woman's hand moved toward the sword at her hip. "I am Darian, Beta of the Finch Pack. If you have harmed my Alpha through whatever witchcraft you just performed, I will open your throat myself."

"Darian." Lena's voice was quiet but firm. "Look at him. Look at his eyes."

Darian looked. The pup lifted its head from my knee and met its Beta's gaze with pale blue eyes that held an awareness no true animal pup could possess. Those eyes were still Caspian. Trapped inside a form that could not speak or fight or command, but still present. Still aware.

"What did you do to him?" Darian demanded.

"I sang," I said. "He told me to. He wanted to understand why my frequency reacts to his curse. I opened my mouth and let the hum out, and he shifted into this."

"This has never happened before. His shifts are random. Unpredictable. He has never shifted into a pup. Never."

"Perhaps his shifts were random because he had never encountered the right frequency before." I gathered the small wolf into my arms, cradling it against my chest. It weighed almost nothing. Its heartbeat fluttered against my palm, rapid and fragile. "Perhaps I am not what he expected."

Darian stared at me for a long moment. Her hand remained on her sword, but her fingers had relaxed slightly. "Lena, fetch Doctor Parrish. Tell her the Alpha has shifted into a neonatal form. Tell her the Resonant is still singing, or was. Tell her we need answers."

Lena vanished through the iron doors.

Darian crossed the training hall with the deliberate stride of a predator who was choosing not to attack. She stopped three feet from where I knelt with the Alpha-pup cradled against my chest. Close enough to kill me. Close enough to see the truth.

"If you are what I think you are," she said quietly, "then my Alpha just purchased the only weapon in existence that could destroy every pack in Neovictoria. Including his own."

"And if I am not?"

"Then you are a dead woman walking, and Caspian Finch just wasted five thousand chrono-marks on a corpse." She extended her hand. "Give him to me. He needs medical attention."

The pup whined when I tried to transfer him. Small claws dug into my dress. His cold nose pressed harder against my collarbone, seeking something only my presence provided. Darian's expression flickered. For just an instant, the warrior's mask cracked and revealed something beneath it. Fear. Not for herself. For her Alpha.

"Keep him," she said reluctantly. "But you will carry him to the medical wing yourself. You will answer every question Doctor Parrish asks. And if he does not shift back within the hour, I will hold you personally responsible."

She turned and strode toward the doors. I followed, the Alpha-pup warm and trembling in my arms, its small heart beating against my palm. Somewhere deep in my chest, the wrong frequency hummed a note that felt almost like satisfaction.

It had found something it recognized. And whatever that something was, it had no intention of letting go.