The Alpha Who Was Never Meant to Love Me

rest of me did. She noticed things instead - the particular quiet of a forest that had emptied itself of birds, the mineral taste the air took on an hour before we crossed back over Silverpi

g on another, the girl who'd fled the ceremony grounds three n

drian, mostly to fill the silence, my voice s

y in its own land if you know how to listen for it." He glanced at me sideways, something wistful

ived in, grieving land I'd never touched, mourning a version

I turned it over in my hand, and once, near midnight, she stopped dead in the middle of the trail like something h

s it?"

ernative was asking a question neither of us had the strength left to survive the answer to yet. I noticed, though,

there and then not there, the way a thought disappears the second you try to hold it still. My wolf went rigid inside me, not with fear exactly. With re

see that?

s voice didn't sound as certain a

feel like

the small silences that meant more than what got said out loud. There had been too many o

, and my mother sat close beside me while the warriors kept watch further up the bank. "You're d

ike I'm doing w

touched the pendant at my throat, the one that had been mine since the forest, careful not to touch the one my f

something in the careful way she held herself told me she wasn't ready to answer that y

the particular copper edge that meant blood, and my mother's steps slowed until she

ne," she

that blotted out the last of the fading stars. Wolves fought in the streets below in colors I didn't recognize - not rogues, not the Council's rebels, something more or

rs are thos

ular stillness of a man doing arithmetic he d

n wh

every promise he'd made me in that tunnel about no more secrets, I felt the old fear creep back in - that there was still something

king, her grip tightening with every seco

go down th

's down there - whoever's down there - I

ha

, you let me explain it befo

ecause a man who trusts the truth doesn't usually need to ask for a head start on it,

ria

turned at once, fighting forgotten, toward a shape stepping out of the smoke at the broken gate - a man in chains, flanked by warriors, his face raised tow

her make before, something between a sob

," she

and even from that distance, even

Exactly

hteen years to say my name out loud, and every plan I had for that night - every ca

nning before any