Alphas’ Little Brat

The rain started at exactly 3:17 AM. I know because I was awake, counting the cracks in my ceiling again. The fifth night in a row. The therapist called it anxiety. I called it survival instinct the part of me that never forgot what it was to run, to hide, to become someone else entirely.

When the knock came, it wasn't a sound. It was a memory.

Not the friendly tap-tap of Mrs. Henderson returning my casserole dish. Not the cheerful rat-a-tat of the mailman with a package. This was solid. Final. Like a judge's gavel striking the wood of my safe, ordinary, human life.

My feet were cold on the hardwood floor, each step a betrayal of the instinct screaming at me to flee out the back door. But I'd stopped running five years ago. I'd promised myself.

The peephole showed a distortion of darkness and gold. Gold eyes. The color of aged whiskey, of sunlight through autumn leaves. Of him.

My breath fogged the glass. Five years. Five years of pretending to be Elara Mitchell, freelance graphic designer who liked herbal tea and knitting and quiet Sunday mornings. Five years of learning to make coffee without my hands shaking, of forgetting what my own wolf felt like beneath my skin, of bleaching the scent of pine and power from my memory.

It all evaporated in that single heartbeat.

He stood on my porch like a storm given form. Kael. Even through the fisheye lens, he was broader than I remembered, shoulders straining against leather that probably cost more than my car. Rain sluiced off him, darkening his hair to the color of wet soil. In his arms, a bundle shifted.

No. Not a bundle.

A child.

A boy, maybe four or five, with dark curls plastered to a forehead that held a widow's peak I knew from my own father's photographs. The boy slept, his face pressed against Kael's neck, one small hand curled against the Alpha's collarbone.

My uterus contracted with a phantom memory. A sharp, physical pain that doubled me over, hand flying to my lower stomach. A memory I'd been told was a miscarriage. A late, painful, devastating loss in a clinic bathroom. They'd given me pills for the pain and papers to sign.

A lie. The taste of it was copper and bile in my mouth.

Kael's voice came through the wood, low and urgent, vibrating in my bones where my wolf used to live. "Elara. Open the door."

I didn't move. Couldn't. My fingers traced the deadbolt I'd installed myself, the chain I checked every night.

"They're coming," he said, and the words weren't a plea. They were a verdict. "Your hiding ends tonight."

Behind him, headlights cut through the curtain of rain. Not one pair. Three. Black SUVs with windows tinted to emptiness, sliding into the quiet suburban street like sharks.

My hands found the locks. They moved without my permission, the old obedience no, the old fear kicking in. The deadbolt slid back with a click that echoed like a gunshot. The chain rattled.

The door opened six inches, stopped by the security chain. Cold, wet air slapped my face, carrying his scent. Pine and snow and something darker, something fundamentally Alpha that made my knees weak. It hadn't changed. God, it hadn't changed at all.

"Step back," I whispered, my voice a stranger's.

He did. Just enough for me to see the full picture. The boy was taller than I'd thought, legs dangling past Kael's waist. He wore dinosaur pajamas, faded at the knees. One sock was missing.

"What have you done?" My question was barely audible over the rain.

Kael's eyes met mine through the gap. Gold flickered with something raw. Not anger. Something worse. "They took him from the clinic. Paid off a nurse. He's been in a private facility upstate. I only found the records yesterday."

The words landed like stones. "Who?"

"Everyone." His jaw tightened. "Your pack. Mine. The Eastern Clans. He's a Prime, Elara."

The world tilted. Prime. The word wasn't just a title; it was a seismic event in werewolf society. A Prime Alpha wasn't born from lineage alone but from a convergence of bloodlines so rare it happened once a century. A living, breathing claim to power that could unseat every established Alpha on the continent.

My eyes dropped to the sleeping child. My child. The son I'd wept for, mourned for, blamed my broken body for losing.

He's why you ran," Kael said, and it wasn't an accusation. It was a realization dawning in his own voice. "You felt it. Even dormant, you felt his potential. Your wolf knew."

I had. In those first weeks of pregnancy, before the morning sickness, there had been dreams of golden forests and howls that shook mountains. I'd thought it was anxiety. The fear of being found. Now I knew it was him. His tiny, formidable spirit calling to mine.

The lead SUV's engine cut off. A door opened.

Kael shifted, blocking my view of the street with his body. "We have sixty seconds. Grab three things. Nothing sentimental. He can't afford your nostalgia."

"My--" The word son caught in my throat. "What's his name?"

A muscle jumped in Kael's jaw. They called him Subject Seven. I've been calling him Liam.

Liam. A human name. A safe name. It shattered something in my chest.

Movement in the street. Figures emerged from the SUVs, silhouettes against headlights. Too tall, too still to be human.

Forty seconds,Kael barked, his Alpha command slamming into me despite the years of separation.

I turned. My apartment the one I'd painted sea-foam green, where I'd hung prints of landscapes that had no wolves in them blurred. Three things. My go-bag was already in the closet. I'd packed it five years ago and never unpacked it. Fake IDs. Cash. A hunting knife I'd never used.

I grabbed it, my hands steady in a way that surprised me. Survival, it turned out, was a muscle memory.

From the bathroom, I snatched the first-aid kit. From the kitchen, the protein bars from the pantry.

When I returned to the door, Liam was awake.

His eyes were open, blinking sleepily. Not gold like his father's. Not brown like mine. They were a strange, shifting hazel green near the pupil, bleeding into amber at the edges. Prime eyes. He stared at me with a calm, unsettling focus.

"Mommy?" he whispered.

The word was a knife to the gut. He didn't know me. Couldn't. He was guessing, reaching for the only female presence, hoping.

Before I could answer, Kael snapped the chain with one brutal pull. The door swung open, and the full force of the night hit me the rain, the threat, the terrifying reality of the man and child on my threshold.

Inside. Now.Kael pushed Liam into my arms.

The boy was solid, warm, smelling of baby shampoo and something electric, like ozone after lightning. His small arms wrapped around my neck, trusting, instinctive. My own arms closed around him, and a sound escaped me a choked, wounded thing that was part sob, part howl.

Kael stepped inside, filling my small foyer. He closed the door, locked it, and pressed his back against it as if he could hold back the coming storm with his body alone. His eyes scanned my apartment, assessing exits, threats, weaknesses.

"They'll surround the building," he said, pulling a phone from his pocket. "There's an exit through the basement laundry room. Leads to the alley."

"You planned this." My voice was flat.

I planned for every scenario since I saw his birth certificate yesterday. This was scenario three." He typed a message, then shoved the phone away. "We go out the back. My car is two blocks over. They're watching this address, not the perimeter."

Liam nuzzled against my neck, his breath warm. "The bad men are here, Mommy."

My eyes flew to Kael's. "He knows?"

"He knows too much," Kael said grimly. "They tested him. His senses, his intuition. He's five going on fifty."

A heavy thump sounded from the front porch. Then another. Not knocks. Bodies hitting the wood.

Kael's hand went to the gun at his hip a sleek, black thing that looked both alien and natural in his grip. "Change of plan. We're not going to the alley."

"What"

Window. Your bedroom." He was already moving, herding us down the hallway. "Second story drop to the backyard. Can you make it with him?

I haven't shifted in five years, Kael. I don't even know if I can anymore.

You'll make it, he said, and it wasn't encouragement. It was an order. "Because if you don't, they take him. And they kill you. Not necessarily in that order."

My bedroom was a shrine to normalcy. Floral sheets. A knitting project half-finished on the chair. A diffuser pumping out lavender scent to mask any lingering trace of wolf.

Kael shoved the window open. Rain sprayed in. Below, a dark yard, a fence, freedom.

Another thud at the front door. Wood splintering.

"Now!" Kael barked.

I climbed onto the sill, Liam clinging to me like a little monkey. His heart hammered against my chest, a frantic bird. Close your eyes, baby," I whispered.

Don't call me baby, he murmured, but he buried his face in my shoulder.

The drop was farther than it looked. The ground rushed up. I bent my knees, rolled, came up with Liam cradled against me. He didn't make a sound.

Kael landed beside us a second later, silent as a shadow. He grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the fence. Run. Don't look back. Don't stop.

We ran. Through my neighbor's vegetable garden, over a low fence, into the alley. My lungs burned. Liam's weight was both a burden and an anchor the reason I couldn't collapse, couldn't give up.

Kael's car was a nondescript sedan, beige, forgettable. He shoved me into the backseat with Liam, slammed the door, and was in the driver's seat before I could buckle the seatbelt.

The engine roared to life.

As we pulled onto the street, I saw them. Figures emerging from my apartment building. Three men, moving with the liquid grace of predators. One turned his head, and streetlight caught his eyes. Silver. Not Kael's pack. Not mine.

Rogues. Or worse, mercenaries.

The one with silver eyes smiled, lifted a phone to his ear, and watched us drive away.

Kael hit the accelerator. "They'll follow."

"Who are they?" My arms tightened around Liam.

"Who isn't after him?" Kael's eyes found mine in the rearview mirror. Gold meeting brown for the first real time since he'd shattered my door. "He's not just our son, Elara. He's a key. A weapon. A throne. And every Alpha with ambition just felt him wake up."

Liam shifted in my arms, looking up at me with those ancient, hazel eyes. "Don't be scared, Mommy. Daddy's here now."

The word Daddy hung between us. Kael's knuckles went white on the steering wheel.

Five years ago, I'd run from him. From the cold political marriage, from the life as a bargaining chip, from the man who'd looked at me and seen a suitable womb for an heir, not a mate.

Now I was in his car, with the child we'd made, running for our lives.

And the only thing more terrifying than the monsters chasing us was the realization dawning in Kael's eyes the same realization icing my veins.

We weren't just running from something.

We were running toward a war.

And Liam was the prize every wolf would kill to claim.