Chapter 15: The Alpha's Trail

Delph's POV

The smell of smoke never really leaves you, it clings to the soul longer than it does the skin.

The courtyard still smolders. Charred beams lie like bones across the stones, embers flickering in the wind. The wounded are gathered near the well, healers working with shaking hands and hollow eyes. Wolves move slower now,broken, uncertain, glancing at me as I pass, as though my presence alone might stitch the ruins back together.

I give orders quietly, one after another. “Stabilize the northern line.” “Send food to the families.” “Burn what’s tainted, bury the rest.”

My voice sounds like someone else’s. I’ve said these words before, in other wars, but this time every command feels like a lie.

Because the nursery is empty.

The cradle carved from whitewood, the one I could never bring myself to destroy even after rejecting her lies overturned. The air still carries her scent. Faint herbs. Milk. And underneath it, something sharper, fear, and the wild tang of determination.

She was here. She took them.

I kneel and press my fingers to the cold floor, tracing the faint marks where small boots once stood. The bond stirs inside me like a half-healed wound, a pulse deep in my chest that answers to her name.

Afnan.

Corin’s voice cuts through the silence. “Alpha.”

I rise, turning. His face is lined with fatigue, soot streaked across his cheek. Behind him, the pack watches half loyal, half lost. They whisper in the shadows, wondering if their Alpha has already abandoned them.

“You should stay,” Corin says. “We need you here. The pack is bleeding.”

I meet his gaze, and for a heartbeat, I almost believe him. But the empty nursery burns behind my eyes, and I can still hear the Elders’ laughter echoing in the smoke.

“If the Alpha can’t protect his Luna,” I say quietly, “what throne is there to sit on?”

He flinches but doesn’t argue. He knows I’ve already chosen.

I saddle my horse before dawn. The cold bites through my coat, the sky pale with the first hint of morning. As I ride out of Bloodstone, the bond thrums faintly in my chest, a thread of warmth guiding me north.

Draven, my wolf, prowls beneath the surface, restless. Let go, he urges. Shift and run. We’ll find her faster.

But I hold the reins tight. Control is the only thing standing between me and ruin. The Council is still out there, and if they sense me unrestrained, they’ll follow like vultures.

Hours stretch into miles. The forest rises around me, ancient, green, and cold. Shafts of sunlight pierce the canopy like blades. I follow her scent along the riverbank: crushed herbs, faint bread crumbs, and the light, fleeting fragrance that has haunted me since the day she left.

Then another scent, familiar yet wrong. Wolf. Male.

Ruhn.

So, she didn’t run alone.

Draven snarls low in my mind. He helped her.

“I know.” My jaw tightens. “But if he keeps her safe, I’ll owe him. If he didn’t…”

The thought doesn’t finish itself. It doesn’t need to.

By midday, I find the first sign she’s still ahead, broken reeds near the stream, a bootprint no bigger than my palm. Hope and fury twist together inside me. She’s alive. She’s close.

“She’s always been the braver one,” I murmur under my breath. “I just never saw it until she was gone.”

A branch cracks behind me. Instinct flares, I turn, blade half-drawn. It’s only a scout, breathless, mud streaking his face.

“Alpha, news from the southern ridge.”

I nod for him to speak.

“Council enforcers,” he says. “Headed north. Maybe a dozen. Tracking fast.”

North. Toward her.

I curse under my breath. Afnan’s safety depends on speed and silence now. If the Council reaches her before I do…

I swing into the saddle again. “Return to Corin,” I ordered. “Keep the pack behind the borders. No one follows me.”

The scout hesitates. “But”

“That’s an order.”

He bows, then vanishes into the trees.

I ride harder. The air grows colder, sharper, until my lungs ache with every breath. My thoughts flicker between past and present, her laughter echoing in the old halls, the day she left, the moment I chose the pack over her. Fool. I thought I was protecting her from my world, not realizing she was strong enough to face it.

By dusk, I find a clearing where the air still hums with warmth. A campsite fresh. The ashes of a small fire, still faintly glowing.

I dismount, crouch, and inhale deeply.

Her scent. Faint but undeniable.

But woven through it, another. Female. Unfamiliar. Wild.

Draven stirs uneasily. She’s not alone anymore.

I glance at the sky, where the first stars pierce through the fading light. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” I murmur. “Maybe someone’s watching her back this time.”

But the truth burns in my gut. If someone found her, they could just as easily betray her. And that possibility turns my blood to ice.

The bond flickers again, weak but steady. I can almost feel her exhaustion, her heartbeat slowing beneath layers of fear and courage. She’s close. So close I can taste the herbs she used to mask her scent.

Then howls.

Distant but unmistakable. Council trackers.

I look toward the sound. South-east.

If I follow them, I can strike first. End this. Save the pack, end the war before it begins again.

But the bond pulls me north. Her path. Her scent. Her heartbeat.

Draven growls impatiently. Decide.

I already have.

“No Council. No crown.” I mount again, the leather reins creaking under my grip. “Only the path that leads back to her.”

The moon climbs above the trees, a pale wound in the sky. I dismount and strip away the last of my torn clothes, the cold biting deep. The air thickens, electric, ancient.

Then the change begins.

It starts with the bones, cracking, reshaping, a symphony of pain and power. My muscles stretch, twist, reform. The world sharpens every scent, every heartbeat a note in the song of the hunt. Silver fur ripples down my arms; my vision floods with light. The forest glows under the moon’s gaze, and I stand in it no longer man, not entirely a beast, but something between.

Draven howls once, and the sound splits the night.

Then we ran.

Through trees and shadows, through breath and memory. Every stride is a promise. Every heartbeat is a prayer. The scent of her leads onward north, always north and I chase it with everything left inside me.

Because there is no throne without her.

No peace without her.

No Delph without Afnan.

Only the path that leads back to her.