THE NIGHT MY ALPHA THREW ME OUT

Chapter 4

Nora POV

I didn't answer her that night. I couldn't. Some doors, once you open them, you can't control what walks through.

I stayed up long after Talia went upstairs, listening to the radio drone about search parties and curfews and an "animal problem" the sheriff's department clearly had no real answers for. I knew what they were dealing with, even if they didn't. I felt it the way you feel a storm coming before the sky changes old instinct, wide awake after five quiet years.

I thought about every option I had. Extra locks. Keeping Finn home from school. Running even further away. But rogues didn't usually push this deep into human territory without a reason, and reasons like that didn't stop just because you ran.

There was only one place within reach with wolves strong enough to stop an incursion this size before it reached a school full of children. Redthorn territory sat sixty miles east. Close enough that if these rogues kept pushing this direction, Redthorn's own patrols had probably already noticed. Which meant there was a real chance, if I swallowed five years of pride and asked for help, that I could keep my son safe.

It also meant walking that son directly into the one territory on earth where his face would answer every question I'd spent five years making sure nobody asked.

I sat with that a long time, one hand flat on the cold table, the old scar over my heart aching in a way it hadn't in years. I thought about three hundred wolves watching me break and not one of them moving to help. Then I thought about Finn asleep upstairs with his father's exact eyes, and none of my pride mattered next to keeping him breathing.

I made the decision around two in the morning, alone in the dark.

I told Talia the next day I had a sick relative to check on out east the first real lie I'd told her in five years, and it sat heavy in my stomach even as I said it. She frowned, clearly not fully believing me, but didn't push. She just hugged me tight at the door and made me promise to call.

We left Millbrook on a Tuesday morning, Finn's small backpack stuffed with two changes of clothes and his worn-out stuffed rabbit, his forehead pressed to the window as the only town he'd ever known shrank behind us. He slept most of the drive, one hand curled around his backpack strap even in sleep, and I spent the hours trying to build a version of the truth small enough for a five-year-old to hold without it crushing him.

We're going somewhere Mama used to live. There might be people there who don't like me very much. If anyone asks, your name is Finn Vance and you don't know your father's name. Can you do that for me?

He nodded, solemn as always, like he was memorizing lines for a play he didn't fully understand. Then he asked, "Is it because they hurt you?"

I hadn't expected that from a child. I should have Finn always saw more than I gave him credit for.

"A little bit, yes," I said, eyes on the road so he wouldn't see my face.

"Then I don't like them either," he said, with total five-year-old loyalty, and reached over to hold my hand on the gearshift the rest of the way, like he could protect me just by trying hard enough.

We crossed into Redthorn territory just after sundown, five years to the week since I'd walked out of it in the mud with nothing but a bag and a broken bond. The old pull hit me the second we crossed the border stream, not painful this time, just present, an ache of familiarity in land that had never once been kind to me.

The patrol found us within ten minutes. Of course they did. I recognized the man leading them instantly, even in the dark. Broader now, a fresh scar along his jaw that hadn't been there five years ago, but the same steady eyes.

"Wes," I said.

Beta Wes Calder went completely still. His gaze flicked from me to the small boy half-hidden behind my leg, gripping my hand tight enough to hurt, and I watched the truth land on his face in real time the grey eyes, the set of the jaw, five years of arithmetic solving itself without a single word said.

"Nora," he said slowly. "Whose"

"Rogues are hunting near a human town sixty miles west," I cut in, before he could finish that sentence in front of my son. "Multiple kills. Getting closer to school every week. I need to speak to whoever's handling border security. That's the only reason I'm here, Wes."

Wes stared at Finn a moment longer, jaw tight, clearly biting down on questions he didn't yet have the right to ask. Then he nodded once. "Follow me."

He led us not to the gathering circle where I'd once been humiliated in front of three hundred witnesses, but to the smaller war room at the pack house, maps covering every wall. My chest tightened walking those halls again. I hadn't set foot in this building in five years, and every surface still seemed to remember me.

"Wait here," Wes said, positioning himself in the doorway. "I need to get the Alpha. He'll want to hear this directly."

My whole body went cold.

"Wes, no"

"Nora." His voice was gentler than I'd ever heard it. "Rogue movement this size, this close to human land he has to know. And you're the only one who can point exactly to where it started."

He left before I could argue, footsteps fading down the corridor, and I stood alone in a room full of maps with my son's hand gripping mine, both of us about to face the one man with every reason in the world to finally ask the question I'd spent five years refusing to answer.

I heard the footsteps first. Heavy, unmistakable.

Finn tugged my hand and whispered, "Mama, who's that?"

The door opened, and Damian Cross stood in the frame taller than I remembered, harder around the eyes, five years of running a pack alone carved into a face that had once, just for two days, looked at me like I mattered.

His gaze found me first. I watched recognition hit him like a blow, watched the old bond-wound flare behind his eyes before he could stop it.

Then his gaze dropped to the small boy at my side. To grey eyes that matched his own exactly. To a face that could have been carved from his own boyhood photographs.

The room went completely silent.

"Nora," Damian said, voice barely above a whisper, every ounce of Alpha authority gone from it. "Who is this?"

I felt Finn's small hand tighten around mine, and I knew there was no version of tonight where I walked back out that door without finally giving him an answer.