SHADOWS OF THE ALPHA
On the night of her birthday, Clara receives a crescent pendant and overhears a secret that splits her life in two. Hours later her mother is taken, Ronan—the rogue who collects the broken—calls from the trees, and Jasper drags her behind the walls of the Holdfast. Inside, Clara survives the Trial of Teeth and tastes the edge of the wolf living under her skin—becoming the problem the pack cannot agree on. Vivian sees a survivor; Jason sees a threat; the forest keeps blinking ash eyes while human cameras bloom among the pines.
As a fated pull to Jasper presses closer and Vivian’s missing sister hints at what Ronan does to the taken, Clara must decide what to be: weapon, heir, or something the old laws have no word for. When betrayal leaks through the ranks and the border turns into a stage, mercy may prove sharper than fang—and the story others try to name for her is the one she’ll have to rewrite in blood and moonlight.
A dark, romantic werewolf fantasy about power that refuses to be inherited, love that asks for consent, and a girl choosing the kind of Alpha she will become.
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Chapter: Hunter in the PinesWe moved before the runner’s breath learned how to be a story. East, where the line isn’t a fence but a rumor trees tell each other. Vivian gave us the shape of the errand with five words—“Look first, decide later”—and the kind of look that means a decision can be a weapon if you let it. Jasper, Lyra, two of the quiet ones who translate silence—Edda and Thorn—and me. Jason watched us go with that flat, shiny politeness men use when they’ve already decided what your return will mean.The forest woke around us. Frost a thin scab on dead fern, sun caught in spider silk like a child with both hands in a jar. My cheek throbbed where his elbow had signed its name. The bruise in my ribs turned each step into an opinion. The necklace lay neutral at my sternum, as if it had graded me and found an acceptable answer. Elara’s blue strip warmed where it touched skin, a secret that liked being close to a heartbeat.“Say it,” Lyra murmured from my left, eyes on the ground.“What?”“That you’re think
Last Updated: 2025-09-17
Chapter: Jason’s ChallengeThe knife traced a bright thought between us and the yard inhaled. Frost held to the shaded places; the rest was churned to a damp brown from all the feet that had come to watch something called training and hoped it would turn into something called blood. The drum from last night had found its morning manners but it was still there, a steady pulse barely louder than breath, thud, thud, reminding my body what bodies are for.Jason rolled his wrist and the blade listened. He was beautiful the way weapons are: simple, honest about their uses. He smiled like we were about to do a friendly thing. The pack made a shape around the circle. Vivian at the edge, still as a promise. Lyra had taken the place where the fence makes a shadow. Jasper stood near Vivian but not with her, like a tree that had chosen a piece of weather. Our eyes found each other and looked away in the space of a heartbeat. I didn’t need him telling me to be careful; my wolf had done nothing but whisper care, care, care s
Last Updated: 2025-09-17
Chapter: Vivian’s SecretI didn’t go to the feast after the Trial. The whole Holdfast was thundering—boots on the floor, mugs against wood, the howl-song that always started polite and ended with someone bleeding. Jasper slipped a glance at me across the passage like he wanted to ask if I was all right, like he wanted to reach and didn’t. Lyra lifted a cup in my direction and then remembered she was supposed to dislike me and set it down hard enough to crack the rim. Jason made a show of laughing with his shoulders while his eyes kept counting every place I might be weak.I kept walking.The corridor out of the meeting hall ran cold and narrow, the stone sweating where torches had burned too long. My body was buzzing from whatever the Trial had carved into me—like my blood was full of iron filings and someone had just dragged a magnet over my skin. My necklace—a simple thing, a bit of moonlit metal on a cord—lay hot against my sternum, not burning, but…opinionated. It had opinions now.“Clara,” Vivian said so
Last Updated: 2025-09-17
Chapter: The Trial of TeethBy afternoon the Holdfast had learned how to pretend it wasn’t braced for a storm. People carried buckets as if buckets alone could keep roofs. Children played in a corner of the lower yard and shouted too loud because adults wouldn’t. Someone sang near the kitchens, a work song with no words. It all added up to the kind of quiet that stands on tiptoe.Vivian braided my hair back without asking. “So it won’t get in your eyes,” she said. Her fingers were sure. She kept tucking strays that didn’t want to be tucked. “Don’t be heroic. Be honest.”“Those aren’t opposite?” I tried to joke.“They are on bad days.” She tied the braid off with a strip of leather and thumped my shoulder, gentler than Lyra would’ve. “You come back and I’ll make soup so good Jason will claim he cooked it.”“I heard that,” Jason’s voice carried from the doorway. He didn’t step in. He didn’t have to. His presence pushes through walls. “Don’t embarrass us,” he added to me, tone so flat it would’ve been easy to mista
Last Updated: 2025-09-17
Chapter: Ronan’s MessageMorning wasn’t gentle, but it was honest. The ridge on the west line rose like a knuckle, the pines clenched tight around it. Dew slicked the rocks so every step had to be a decision. Jasper let me go ahead sometimes, then eased past, then fell back, not hovering—mapping. Vivian kept pace with me, talking to the wind the way you talk to skittish animals you want to trust you. We listened more than we spoke. That was the lesson. The ground will tell you things if you stop insisting on your own voice.“Smell that?” Jasper asked without turning.I lifted my head. Pine, wet stone, cold stream. Under it—smoke. Not Holdfast smoke. Bitter, like someone’s fire had been fed the wrong wood. Bitter, and a stitch of rot as thin as a string.“Rogues,” I said, tasting the word. It didn’t taste like fear this time. More like a warning label.“Downwind,” Vivian murmured. “Clever. Or lucky.”“Nothing about them is lucky,” Jasper said, and the way he said it made it sound like a prayer and a warning bo
Last Updated: 2025-09-17
Chapter: Moon DreamsSleep didn’t come so much as it dragged me down by the ankles and held me under. I didn’t fight. After the courtyard, after the heat and the crack and the way my bones had argued with themselves and then agreed on something older, I didn’t have fight left. Vivian helped me to my room—half-carrying, half-chiding—while Jason pretended he wasn’t limping and Lyra pretended she wasn’t satisfied. Jasper walked behind us, a quiet wall. If anyone spoke, I didn’t catch the words. Sound had turned into weather—there, around me, unavoidable, but not for me.My room in the Holdfast had one small window that looked at nothing in particular: a slice of pine and a sliver of sky. I sank onto the bed like the mattress had been waiting for this exact shape of collapse. My fingers could not decide if they were human or not. They curled, uncurled, curled again, nails biting crescents into my palm. I set the staff against the wall and the necklace burned once, a steadying pulse, then cooled to a heartbeat
Last Updated: 2025-09-17
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