BRED BY THE ALPHA KINGS

Elera:

The town didn't exist on any map.

Elara had checked three times....once on her phone before the signal died somewhere between the last gas station and the mountains, once on the printed directions her grandmother's lawyer had sent, and once more on the GPS that had given up entirely twenty minutes ago, its screen frozen on a blank stretch of road that supposedly didn't lead anywhere.

But she was here. Wherever here was.

The forest pressed in on both sides of the narrow road, trees so tall and thick they blocked out most of the afternoon sun. The air smelled different up here....cleaner, sharper, like rain and pine and something else she couldn't name. Something wild.

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, her ancient Honda groaning as it climbed another steep incline. The road was barely wide enough for one car, riddled with potholes and cracks that made her teeth rattle. No signs. No houses. No indication that anyone had driven this way in years.

Her phone buzzed in the cup holder....one bar of signal flickering to life for half a second before disappearing again. No service. No GPS. No way to call for help if she got lost.

You're not lost, she told herself firmly. The lawyer said it was remote. You knew this.

Remote was an understatement.

She'd left the city at dawn, driven for six hours through increasingly desolate stretches of highway, and now she was somewhere deep in the mountains, following directions to a property she'd inherited from a grandmother who'd passed away two months ago. A grandmother she'd loved fiercely but hadn't seen in person since she'd graduated college a year ago.

Guilt twisted in her chest. She should've visited more. Should've made time. But Grandma had always insisted she focus on her life, her career, her independence. She'd been so proud when Elara got the job at the zoo, so excited to hear about the animals she worked with.

"You've always had a way with them, Elara," she'd said during their last phone call, her voice warm and affectionate. "They see something in you. Something special."

Elara had laughed it off. Animals liked her, sure...it's why she'd chosen to work with them....but "special" felt like a stretch. She was just... good at reading body language, at staying calm, at understanding what they needed.

Nothing special about that.

The road curved sharply, and suddenly the trees fell away.

She hit the brakes.

A town sprawled out before her in a small valley, nestled between jagged mountain peaks that looked like teeth biting into the sky. It was tiny....maybe a few dozen buildings clustered around a central square, with more scattered up the surrounding hills. Smoke rose from chimneys. Lights glowed in windows despite the fact that it was barely four in the afternoon.

It looked... wrong.

Not in any way she could put her finger on. The buildings were charming....old-fashioned stone and wood construction, flower boxes in windows, cobblestone streets. It should've felt quaint. Cozy.

Instead, it felt like the town was watching her.

She shook off the creeping unease and eased her foot off the brake, letting the car roll forward. The directions said to drive through the town and continue up the hill on the far side. Her grandmother's cottage was supposedly another mile past the town limits.

As she drove down the main street, she didn't see a single person.

Curtains twitched in windows. Doors stood slightly ajar. But no one walked the streets. No cars were parked along the curbs. The shops, a general store, what looked like a pub, a bakery, were all dark.

It was like everyone had vanished.

Or like they were hiding.

Her heart rate picked up. She pressed harder on the gas, suddenly desperate to get through this place and reach the cottage. Something about this town made her skin prickle, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

The buildings thinned out as she reached the far edge of town, and the road narrowed again, climbing steeply into the hills. She glanced in her rearview mirror.

For just a second, she could've sworn she saw someone standing in the middle of the street, watching her car disappear.

But when she blinked, they were gone.

The cottage appeared around a final bend in the road like something out of a fairy tale.

It was small....maybe three rooms total....with stone walls covered in creeping ivy, a sharply pitched roof, and flower boxes overflowing with wildflowers that had gone slightly wild in her grandmother's absence. A white picket fence enclosed a tidy front yard, and beyond that, she could see the forest pressing in close on three sides.

Isolated. Private. Beautiful.

She parked in the gravel driveway and sat for a moment, staring at the cottage. This was hers. This was where her grandmother had spent the last five months of her life, alone up here in the mountains.

Why? she'd asked the lawyer. Why did she move back here?

He hadn't had an answer. Just said her grandmother had left the property to her in the will, along with a small savings account and instructions to "take care of the cottage, and it will take care of you."

Cryptic. Just like Grandma.

Elara grabbed her duffel bag from the passenger seat and climbed out of the car. The air was cold up here.....much colder than it had been in the valley and she pulled her jacket tighter around herself as she walked up the stone path to the front door.

The key the lawyer had given her slid easily into the lock, and the door swung open with a soft creak.

The inside smelled like lavender and dust.

She stepped inside, her shoes echoing on the hardwood floors. The cottage was exactly as she'd imagined it...cozy and cluttered in the way only a grandmother's house could be. Floral curtains. Knitted blankets draped over a faded couch. Bookshelves crammed with old paperbacks and framed photographs.

Her chest tightened.

She set her bag down and moved through the space slowly, taking it all in. The kitchen was small but well-stocked, herbs hanging from the rafters to dry. The bedroom had a wrought-iron bed frame and a patchwork quilt she recognized from her childhood. The bathroom had a clawfoot tub and a window that looked out over the backyard.

And everywhere....everywhere....there were reminders of her.

Her reading glasses on the side table. Her favorite teacup in the sink. A half-finished knitting project in a basket by the fireplace.

It was like she'd just stepped out and would be back any minute.

Elara sank onto the couch and let herself cry.

***

By the time the sun started to set, she'd pulled herself together enough to unpack and start cleaning.

The cottage wasn't dirty, exactly, but two months of sitting empty had left a layer of dust over everything. She opened windows to air the place out, swept the floors, wiped down surfaces. It felt good to move, to do something productive instead of sitting in her grief.

She found more of her grandmother's things as she worked. A journal tucked into a desk drawer. she didn't open it, not yet. A locked wooden box on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. Photographs she didn't recognize, showing Grandma as a young woman standing in front of this very cottage.

She looked happy. Peaceful.

Had she always planned to come back here? Had she been waiting for something?

Elara shook off the questions and kept cleaning.

As the light faded outside, she realized she was starving. She'd stopped for fast food hours ago, but that had long since worn off. She rummaged through the kitchen and found tea, crackers, some canned soup that was still good.

Good enough.

She made herself a simple dinner and ate it standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the backyard. The forest was dark now, the trees looming like silent sentinels. But the sky above was clear, and as she watched, the moon began to rise.

It was huge.

Bigger than she'd ever seen it, hanging low and golden over the mountains. A full moon. Beautiful and strange and impossibly bright.

She couldn't look away.

Something about it made her chest ache. Made her feel... pulled. Like she was supposed to be outside, under that light.

Don't be ridiculous, she thought. It's just a moon.

But she found herself setting down her bowl and moving toward the back door anyway.

***

The backyard was overgrown but charming, wildflowers and tall grass, a vegetable garden that had gone to seed, and in the corner, a hammock strung between two trees.

She'd always loved hammocks.

Elara grabbed a blanket from inside and the book she'd packed for the trip, a ridiculous impulse buy from the airport bookstore titled How to Train Your Dog and settled into the hammock. She wasn't getting a dog anytime soon, but she'd been thinking about it. Something for company, now that she was living alone.

The moon rose higher, bathing everything in silver light.

The forest was alive with sound....crickets, the rustle of wind through leaves, the distant hoot of an owl. It should've been soothing.

Instead, it felt like the forest was breathing.

She tried to focus on her book, but her eyelids were heavy. The drive had been long. The grief had been exhausting. And the hammock was so comfortable, swaying gently in the breeze.

Just a few minutes, she told herself. Just a quick rest.

She let her eyes drift closed.

***

She woke to the sound of something moving in the dark.

Her eyes snapped open, her heart immediately racing. The moon was directly overhead now, so bright it was almost blinding. The book had slipped from her lap onto the grass.

And there.....just at the edge of the tree line, were two glowing eyes.

She froze.

The eyes moved closer. Slowly. Deliberately.

A shape emerged from the shadows, and her breath caught in her throat.

It was a dog.

No—not just a dog. The biggest dog she'd ever seen. Easily the size of a small bear, with thick black fur and muscles that rippled under its coat as it stalked toward her. Its eyes glowed amber in the moonlight, fixed on her with an intensity that made her stomach flip.

She should've run. Should've screamed. Should've done something.

But she couldn't move.

The dog stopped a few feet away, its massive head tilting to one side. Its gaze dropped to the book on the ground.

How to Train Your Dog.

The dog made a sound.....low and rumbling, almost like... laughter?

No. That was insane. dogs didn't laugh.

Elara swallowed hard, her hands gripping the edges of the hammock. Her voice came out shaky, barely above a whisper.

"G-good... dog?"

The wolf's eyes snapped back to hers.

And for a moment....just a heartbeat....she could've sworn she saw something human in those eyes.

Something wild and furious and utterly, devastatingly amused.

***

[KIERAN]

She just called him a dog.

A. DOG.

Kieran's wolf snarled inside his head, torn between rage and disbelief. Tear her throat out. Show her what we are. Make her understand....

But he couldn't move.

Because beneath the insult, beneath the sheer audacity of this tiny human girl sitting in a hammock in the middle of their territory with a book about training pets....

She smelled like heaven.

Like home.

Like his.

And he had absolutely no idea what the hell that meant.