REBORN ALPHA

The Price of a Second Life

"Run!" Sable shouted.

She was already moving. That was the first time I heard her name, thrown over her shoulder as she dragged me by the collar into the trees.

"Sable!" I gasped. "My name is..."

"Not now, Kael!"

Behind us, the forest erupted. Dozens of wolves hit the ground in full pursuit, branches snapping, claws tearing through wet earth. Draven's laughter rolled through the dark, calm and unhurried. He wasn't chasing me. He was herding me.

"Left!" Sable snapped.

I dove left. A wolf the size of a horse crashed through the spot I'd just left, and I felt the heat of its breath on my neck.

"This body can't outrun them!" I yelled.

"Then stop using the body and use the wolf!"

"I've never shifted in this skin!"

"Then die trying!"

A second wolf leaped from the ridge above and slammed into Sable. They went down in a snarling tangle. I turned back without thinking and grabbed the nearest thing, a thick fallen branch, and swung it with everything I had.

Bone cracked. The wolf yelped and rolled away. Sable surged to her feet, blood dripping from her jaw, and stared at me.

"Okay," she panted. "Maybe you are him."

Then the trees ahead of us simply ended.

A cliff. Forty feet of black rock, and below it a river swollen with rain, churning white.

I skidded to a stop at the edge. Sable crashed into my back. The wolves spilled out of the forest behind us and fanned out into a half circle, slow now, because they knew there was nowhere left to go.

Draven walked out of the trees last. He didn't have a scratch on him.

"You always did run toward the river, brother," he said gently. "Even as a pup."

My hands shook. Not from fear. From rage. "Why?" I said. "You had the pack. You had everything. Why come for me again?"

"Because I didn't kill you," Draven said. "Not really."

The words hit harder than the silver had.

"Something pulled you back," he went on, tilting his head. "And I want to know who. Or what." His gaze slid to Sable. "Hand him over, little wolf, and I'll let you walk away."

Sable looked at me. Then at the drop. Then she grinned, the same reckless grin from the clearing.

"Do you trust me?" she asked.

"I met you five minutes ago."

"That's not a no."

She grabbed my hand and jumped.

The fall lasted forever.

Wind screamed past my ears. Then the river hit me like a wall of stone and the world went white and cold. The current dragged me down, spun me over, slammed my shoulder against the rocks. My lungs seized. Water filled my mouth.

I did not come back from the dead to drown, I thought. I will not die twice.

Something in my chest cracked open.

It wasn't pain. It was heat, wild and enormous, racing down my spine and splitting my bones apart. My vision tore into a hundred shades of silver. My hands twisted into paws. My skull stretched. My lungs roared.

The shift tore through me, and for the first time in this stolen life, I wasn't weak.

I broke the surface as a wolf. Huge, black, powerful. The river couldn't hold me. I clawed up the bank, hauled myself onto the stones, and howled.

It echoed off the cliffs and ran through the forest like a war horn.

On the cliff above, every wolf in Brutus's pack stopped moving.

Draven's smile finally faltered.

We didn't stop running until dawn.

Sable led me through a maze of caves behind a waterfall, soaked and limping, until we finally collapsed in a hollow lit by a single dying fire. I shifted back, shaking, and she tossed me a rough blanket.

"You did it," she said quietly. "You shifted."

"You jumped off a cliff."

"And it worked."

"I almost died."

"But you didn't." She poked the fire. "Which means you're even better than I hoped."

I went still. "Hoped?"

Sable didn't answer right away. When she finally looked up, the grin was gone. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and for the first time she looked her age, which was maybe nineteen.

"You asked why you woke up in that body," she said. "Why you got a second chance."

"Draven said something pulled me back."

"Yes." She swallowed. "I did."

The fire popped. Somewhere in the caves, water dripped in the dark.

"I found the old ritual three years ago," she said. "A blood rite. It calls the soul of a murdered Alpha into a living body. I needed someone strong enough to destroy Brutus. Someone with a reason to burn the whole world down." Her voice cracked. "But the rite demands a vessel. A willing one. Someone who agrees to give up their life so another soul can take it."

My stomach dropped. "Sable. Whose body is this?"

She wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Sable."

"His name was Rowan," she whispered. "He was an omega. And he was my twin brother."

The blanket fell from my hands.

"He volunteered," she said. "He begged me to do it. He said he'd rather die for something than live as Brutus's punching bag." Tears slid down her face. "But he didn't tell me the last part. The part that I only found in the final line of the ritual, after it was too late."

"What last part?" I said, and my voice came out hoarse.

Sable finally looked up. Her eyes were wet, and terrified.

"The vessel's soul doesn't die, Kael. It sleeps. And the rite only holds as long as you stay out of the one place that could wake him."

Outside the cave, a wolf howled. Distant, but close enough to hear.

Not Brutus's pack.

A woman's voice, singing in the dark. A voice I would have known in my grave.

Seraphine.

"She found us already," Sable breathed. "And she's not alone."