REBORN ALPHA

The Packless Lands

Three nights.

That count hammered inside my head all day as we crossed the forest, avoiding the roads and the rivers, following only deer trails. Sable walked ahead, one hand pressed against her side, pretending she wasn't limping.

"Stop looking at me like that," she said without turning.

"I'm not looking at you any way."

"You're looking at me like I'm already a gravestone."

You are thinking it, Rowan whispered.

Shut up.

I'm only saying what she already knows.

At dusk we reached a ravine thick with ferns. Sable whistled two low notes, and the earth seemed to open. Figures emerged from between the rocks: packless wolves in patched clothes with tired eyes. The outcasts of the borderlands. A dozen. Then thirty. Then more.

And at the front, leaning on a staff of bone, stood an old woman with white hair, watching us with eyes that never blinked.

"You're late, girl," she said.

"Maren." Sable tried to smile. "I brought someone."

The old woman looked me up and down, and I felt her strip my soul bare.

"No," she said. "You brought me two."

Rowan went very still inside me.

The camp was hidden beneath a roof of giant roots. There were small fires and pots of broth, children asleep in blankets, injured wolves bandaged with clean rags. People Draven had banished. People Brutus had hunted. People nobody had wanted.

"They'll fight for you," Sable said, lowering her voice. "If you ask them."

"I can't ask that of them."

"Kael." She grabbed my arm. "You were an Alpha. These are your people now. Don't forget it."

Maren led us to a separate tent. Inside it smelled of herbs and smoke. She ordered Sable to sit and opened her shirt without asking. The silver veins had already reached almost to the center of her chest.

The old woman studied them in silence for a long while.

"The Broken Moon's mark," she said at last. "I haven't seen it since I was a child."

"How long does she have?" I asked.

"Until the full moon." She didn't look up. "When the moon touches the sky, the mark will reach her heart. And it will claim what it is owed."

"A life," Sable said flatly.

"A soul," Maren corrected. "One of those the ritual bound. Yours, your brother's, or the Alpha's."

"Then let it be mine," Sable said. "It's only fair. I performed the ritual."

"No!" I said, louder than I meant to.

Maren's eyes fixed on me.

"There is another way," she said slowly. "The mark can pass to another body, so long as that person accepts it willingly. But whoever takes it will die in her place."

A heavy silence fell.

Me, Rowan said, so softly I barely heard it. I'll do it. I'm already dead, Kael. It's the cheapest bargain in the world.

No.

Think about it. You have a fight to finish. She has a life to live. I only have...

I said no.

Kael.

I'm not going to lose both of you!

I shouted it so loudly that Sable flinched.

"Who are you talking to?" she asked.

"No one. Everyone." I rubbed my face. "Give me a moment."

I left the tent. I needed air. I needed to think.

I didn't sleep that night.

I sat by the smallest fire with the rusted key in my hand, staring at the Moon Stone's symbol. Draven wanted it. Seraphine had betrayed him to give it to us. And in three nights, that stone would decide who lived and who died.

I have a plan, I said at last.

Tell me.

We attack the Alpha hall before the full moon. We take the Stone. We destroy it, and the ritual breaks without anyone having to die.

And if we destroy it and the ritual collapses, you and I vanish anyway.

If Seraphine's theory is true.

Kael. Rowan paused. There's something I haven't told you.

My hand closed around the key.

What?

Seraphine lied about one thing. Just one. The ritual doesn't break if no one gives up their place. It breaks if both of us join. If your soul and mine merge into one.

Merge?

We'd be one person. Neither Kael nor Rowan. Something new. His voice trembled. But I don't know whether either of us would survive as we are.

The fire crackled. Far off in the forest, a wolf howled and another answered.

It was an option. A terrible one, but an option.

I stood, resolved to tell Sable at dawn.

I went to her tent. The blanket was folded on the cot. Her spear was gone. So was her bag.

On the pillow lay a strip of bark with a single line written in charcoal, in the hurried handwriting I was beginning to recognize.

Forgive me. I started this, and I'll finish it.

Kael! Rowan cried. The key... it's gone!

I thrust my hand into my pocket. Empty.

I had been so absorbed in my thoughts that I never felt her take it from my hand.

I ran out of the tent just as, on the horizon, the first light of dawn tinted the distant silhouette of the Alpha hall red.

And above its towers, small and clear against the pale sky, burned a signal I knew far too well.

Draven's war fire.