Chapter Four

Alex POV

My phone buzzed on my nightstand, shattering the rare stillness of the room. Beside me, Aretha rested peacefully, her chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm I hadn’t seen in weeks. The silver light of the full moon slanted through the curtained window, turning her pale skin an eerie glow.

After I was sure she wouldn’t wake, I crawled out from under the furs and tiptoed lightly across the hardwood to junior’s bedroom. I picked up, the wolf inside me bristling at the intrusion.

Speak,” I said, my voice intentionally low.

"Alpha Moore?" The voice that came over the line was clinical, detached. "This is Dr. Rogers."

I recognized the man—a beta from a nearby pack with a medical expertise in species of all kinds. Not one of my pack, but he knew our kind’s peculiar physiology.

“I’ve got news about your pack member—the female brought in after the territorial dispute.

I willed the phone, her not my pack just the fucking phone. "What's her condition?"

The doctor hesitated. "Critical. The attack by the rival alpha did a lot of damage — cranial bleeding, four broken ribs, a destroyed hip socket and a punctured lung as one of the breaks stabbed into the lung. Her wolf is fighting, but..."

"Prognosis?" I interrupted his medical lingo, demanding facts.

“If she makes it till the morning — and that’s a very big if — she has a long recovery ahead. Her wolf must retrain all its functions. It’s likely there are breathing complications. You will almost certainly lose your memory. Some people I work with think — “

“Your colleagues don’t matter,” I said through gritted teeth. It was an unspoken message in his tone — some believed it kinder to let her pass over to the other side. "Has her wolf retreated?"

"No, but—"

“Then she fights, and so will we.” My decision was final. "I'll cover any expenses. Use all the resources, blood from our private reserves, the moon-herbs, anything you need. If she survives, your pack gets hunting rights in the western quadrant for three seasons.”

A sharp intake of breath on the other end. It was a significant territory offer.

“But hear me, doctor,” I added, now intending my Alpha undercurrent to slip into my words, “should I learn of any attempt on your part to accelerate her departure so you can harvest her parts or for any other reason, I will not abide your punishment by any pack boundary protecting you or your family from my wrath.”

Everyone knew of the underground network — renegade packs scavenging organs from dying wolves to sell to desperate human billionaires in search of the gift of our longevity. I was appalled by the black market trade.

“I would never — ” he stammered.

"See that you don't. Dawn report." I ended the call.

And with exhaustion heavy as silver chains, I returned to our chamber. Before I could reach the bed, Aretha’s perfume turned, the sweet honeysuckle stinging with pain. Her spine twisted and arched, a tormented whimper escaping her throat as the moon-sickness set in once more.

I stuck my hand against her forehead and felt the fire-bright heat that came with her painful half-shifts. The respite had been nothing more than a cruel illusion. Without speaking, I went to gather the special herbs from our private stock, bracing for another long night of watching my mate endure a curse even my Alpha status could not break.

I invaded the Darkhaven Pack Council’s meeting room an hour late, the doors of oak unyielding as I shoved them open. The smell of disapproval suffocated the air, blending with pricey cologne and the lingering scent of the blood-coffee they provided before I arrived.

After a night of wrestling Aretha through her partial transformations, I’d hardly had the chance to splash my face with water, much less to change out of yesterday’s rumpled clothes. The clothes reeked of wolf, whiskey, and worry—and that last made the human members of the council shift uncomfortably.

Hendricks, an ancient human who had earned this station through decades of loyal service, adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Alpha Moore, your recent… conduct is becoming an issue. You come to this vital meeting disheveled, smelling of alcohol and with an attitude that says these proceedings are beneath your concern.”

The wolf inside me growled its gears at the challenge. “Those walls are standing because I let them,” I said flatly.

He turned his gaze, and his face drained—the human equivalent of exposing the throat.

The other council member — Taylor, I remembered vaguely — leaned closer. “What we’re trying to say here is that if the northern packs sense weakness or instability in your leadership, they’ll never agree to the alliance. Your personal problems are impacting the pack’s status.

"My 'personal issues'?" I glared at him, letting my eyes shift a bit to wolf amber. "And you are?"

The insult of failing to remember his name was not lost on any of his guests.

"Unacceptable!" Fitzgerald, the oldest human councilman, pushed away from the table.

One by one they got to their feet and made their way toward the exit, muttering something about protocols and propriety. Jameson the financial advisor sniffed as he walked by with emphasis.

“The hunting grounds are no longer open to you,” I called after them, which was to say, they had to wait for today’s pack needs to be met before footing was open to them again.

As they finally closed the door, I stole Hendricks’ vacated seat, staring at the empty seats that surrounded the huge oak table covered in the history of our pack. The unused crystal decanters of ritual wine glinted in the morning light, witnesses to a fresh diplomatic failure.

The staccato tap of claws on wood heralded Kelly’s arrival, though she had not yet appeared at the door. My beta hadn’t bothered to keep her human form, unlike the others. The gray wolf dropped her head, her gold-flecked eyes glittering with disappointment as she flowed smoothly back into her human shape, leaving clothes folded and ready by the door.

“Look at that great showing of leadership,” she responded, sarcasm dripping from her voice as she slid on a plain dress. “Decades of careful negotiations went up in minutes. “The northern alliance, the trade routes, the safe passage agreement — all ruined, because you couldn’t be bothered to change your shirt or remember the names of council members.”

Ten years as my beta, and Kelly never called me anything less than the respectful “Alpha.” Her deliberate failure to include the title spoke volumes.

I should have explained. Should have told my second-in-command the truth. Instead, I stood in stunned silence, plotting how to salvage whatever remained of our standing without exposing Aretha’s condition.

The moon-curse had tainted her shift after the rival pack attack six months ago, but no one knew about her affliction. How with every full moon cycle, she was forced to endure more excruciating partial transformations that left her halfway between forms. I kept it to myself, ordered the pack doctor not to write it down, unwilling to show what could be seen as weakness in my blood.

Instead of hiring specialized healers who might spread information about her to the other packs, I’d been tending to her personally, gradually withdrawing from pack leadership to spend nights assisting her through the painful transitions. The pack business had suffered our standings had fallen, but mate-bonds superseded all other pack laws.

Last night had been the worst of all. Aretha’s half-morphed body writhed and twisted for hours, her still-human voice mixing with wolf howling into a sound that lodged itself in my soul. When her suffering became unbearable I had dulled my heightened senses with rare mountain whiskey from our ceremonial stores. Her pain reverberating inside me as I tried to drown it out with one glass after the other, until the entire bottle was gone.

Then, when her heart rhythm had turned dangerously erratic, I had rushed her to our medical center. I’d rushed here after the emergency team stabilized her condition because Kelly had beamed an urgent moon-message: representatives from the Northern Alliance had gathered to finalize territorial agreements, and they were growing impatient with every passing hour.

I’d utterly forgotten to tell my gamma, Eric, where I was off to after sending him for the sacred soothing herbs.

If Kelly hadn’t called me, I wouldn’t have come at all. Now she was staring at me not as her Alpha, but as a let down to the pack.

“And as you seem to have no intention to justify yourself,” she said, unanswered by my ongoing silence, “you should start looking for a new beta. I resigned formally.”

And she walked away, her naked feet mute on the old floorboards, leaving behind the ritual beta pendant on the table.

That's right, Kelly. Leave like the council left the meeting. Like Aretha’s wolf will soon leave behind its human nature when the magic has run its course.

Even a flagging Alpha gets the cold shoulder eventually.

I leaned back into the throne-like chair, letting the mask of strength slip now that there were no pack eyes to bear witness.