REBORN ALPHA

Two Souls,One Skin

She isn't lying, Kael. And I'm awake.

The voice in my head was soft and young, and it was shaking. It was also familiar, the way a song you heard once in a dream is familiar.

My knees nearly buckled. "Rowan," I breathed.

Sable's head snapped up. "What did you say?"

Seraphine's smile sharpened. "So he's stirring. Good. I hoped he would."

"Get out of my head," I growled, and for a second I wasn't sure who I was talking to.

I can't, Rowan whispered. It's my head too.

Pain tore through my skull, white-hot, and my vision split in two. One half saw the tunnel. The other saw a memory that wasn't mine: a girl with Sable's face kneeling in firelight, an old book open on her lap, and a pale hand sliding the book into her bag the night before.

Sable didn't find the ritual, Rowan said, rushed and desperate. It was handed to her. I watched it happen. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn't listen. She wanted Brutus dead too badly.

"Kael," Sable whispered. Tears were already falling. "Whatever she's telling you, whatever he's telling you, I swear I didn't know."

"Then why didn't you tell me about the book?" I said.

"Because I thought it was a gift!" she cried. "Three years of nothing, then suddenly the answer shows up in the ruins. I thought the moon finally took pity on us!"

"The moon had nothing to do with it," said Seraphine.

She raised one hand.

Behind her, a dozen trackers stepped into the torchlight, and each one held a silver-lined net.

"Take the girl alive," she said. "The Alpha, too. Gently. I'd like him able to talk."

They came at us all at once.

I shifted mid-leap and hit the first tracker so hard his net tore in half. Silver sizzled across my shoulder and I snarled through the burn. A second wolf hit me from behind. A third clamped onto my leg.

Sable fought like something feral. She'd grabbed a tracker's fallen spear and was swinging it in tight, brutal arcs, but they were wearing her down, one scratch at a time.

"Too many!" she shouted.

I knew it. I'd known it since they came through the entrance. Even with Kael's skill, Rowan's body gave out fast. My lungs burned. My legs were shaking.

Let me, Rowan said.

"No."

You're losing. She'll take Sable, and then she'll take you. Please, Kael.

"I don't trust you."

I'm not asking you to. His voice cracked. I'm asking you to let me save my sister.

A net slammed across my back. Silver burned through my fur. Sable screamed my name.

I stopped fighting.

It felt like falling backward off a cliff. My vision folded, my hands changed, and something warm and strange pushed through the wall in my mind and took the wheel. I felt Rowan's presence unfold around me, gentle but strong, and for the first time since I woke, I was a passenger in my own body.

He tore the net away with one hand.

He stood up straight. The tunnel went silent.

He didn't use the Alpha's roar. He didn't need to. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, steady, and nothing like mine.

"Back away from my sister."

The trackers hesitated. Even Seraphine's smile slipped.

She stared at the face she knew was supposed to belong to a dead omega, and something unfamiliar crossed her expression. Not anger. Not triumph.

Fear.

"That's impossible," she whispered. "You were supposed to be gone."

Rowan tilted his head, and in his eyes, for just a moment, I saw something ancient and calm, like a river that had been waiting years for rain.

"Hello, Seraphine," he said. "You and I need to talk about what you promised me."