REBORN ALPHA

The Luna Who Sang

"How many?" I whispered.

Sable pressed her ear to the cave wall. "I can hear six. Maybe eight." Her face went pale. "And they're not Ashfang. Those are your old pack's trackers."

My trackers. Wolves I had trained myself.

The singing grew closer, soft and sweet, the lullaby Seraphine used to hum when we were children, hiding from storms in the Alpha hall. Hearing it now made my skin crawl.

"There's a back tunnel," Sable said, grabbing my arm. "Move."

We ran.

The tunnel narrowed until we were crawling on our elbows through wet stone. Behind us, boots echoed and a torch flared orange against the walls. Then the singing stopped.

"Kael," Seraphine called.

I froze.

Her voice carried through the rock as clear as if she were beside me. "I know you can hear me. I felt you shift last night. Half the territory did."

"Don't answer," Sable hissed.

"You always did hate being the last to know things," Seraphine went on, almost fondly. "So let me tell you something, Kael. Something your little rescuer left out."

Sable's hand tightened on my wrist until it hurt.

"Keep moving," she breathed. "She's stalling."

A wolf burst into the tunnel behind us.

Not a tracker. A blur of snapping teeth and claws that hit Sable's ankle and dragged her backward. She screamed. I spun, grabbed the wolf by the scruff, and slammed its head against the stone. It went limp.

Two more came through the opening. Then three.

"Go!" Sable shouted, kicking free. "I'll hold them!"

"No."

"Kael!"

"I said no."

I reached for that furnace inside my chest and let it open. This time I didn't ask. I took.

My bones snapped and reformed. The tunnel filled with the sound of my shift, and when the first tracker lunged, a black wolf twice his size caught him in midair and hurled him into the wall.

The others scattered. Not because I was stronger. Because they recognized me.

"Alpha?" one of them whimpered.

I stood over Sable, panting, my fur slick with rain and blood. For one second, the old pack bond flickered between us, the one I thought had died with me.

Then Seraphine stepped into the torchlight.

She hadn't changed. Pale hair braided with silver, a white cloak spotless despite the mud, the same circlet I had never given her. She looked at the black wolf, and she smiled the way you smile at a ghost you've been waiting for.

"There you are," she said softly.

I shifted back, naked and furious, and stepped between her and Sable. "You poured the wine."

"I did."

"You stood there and watched."

"I did." She tilted her head. "Do you want to know why?"

"I know why. You wanted a crown."

"No, Kael." Her smile didn't waver. "I wanted you alive."

That stopped me cold.

"Draven wanted the pack," she said. "I only wanted you to stop trying to hold everything together alone. You were drowning, and you wouldn't let anyone pull you out. So I did what had to be done." Her eyes flicked past me. "And I would do it again, if it meant keeping you from her."

"Don't listen," Sable said hoarsely.

"Ask her where she found the ritual," Seraphine said. "Ask her who left that book in the ruins where she would find it. And ask her why a girl who has hated Brutus for three years would bring you back to fight him, instead of someone who had never been touched by me."

The torch crackled. Water dripped. Nobody moved.

I turned my head slowly.

Sable's face had gone the color of ash.

"Sable," I said quietly. "Tell me she's lying."

Sable opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

And in the silence, a voice that was not mine, not hers, not Seraphine's, whispered inside my skull, soft and shaking and achingly young.

She isn't lying, Kael.

And I'm awake.