Chapter Five – The Alpha’s Watch

She was there again.

I felt her before I saw her. Like a current in the air had shifted. Like the forest itself exhaled her name.

Ilia.

I shouldn’t have known it. Shouldn’t have remembered a servant’s face. But I did.

I remembered the rag in her hand on the high balcony. I remembered the way she watched the world like she wasn’t part of it. And I remembered the second our eyes met—only a flicker, no longer than a heartbeat—but something rooted in me anyway.

I told myself it meant nothing.

But I still went to the woods that night.

Sleep had become a dangerous thing.

Every night, I saw her.

Ilia, in my bed. Ilia, on her knees. Ilia, wrapped around me like she belonged there. I tried to shake her from my thoughts, but the dreams never let me. They came on like fire—hot, endless, consuming. I woke with her name on my tongue and the phantom feel of her skin on my hands.

I told myself it was coincidence.

But the gods don't deal in coincidences.

And still, I tried to forget her.

Because this was not the time to be distracted.

I wasn’t born for softness. I was raised on steel and silence, forged in the aftermath of war. My father died before I could walk—a traitor to the Elders, they said. My mother raised me in exile, teaching me to bare my teeth before I could speak. I clawed my way into the Hollow’s ranks, earning my title not through lineage, but by blood spilled on the stone floors of the arena.

They call me Alpha because I took it—not because it was handed to me.

The whispers follow me still. That I came from the depths of hell. That I was born of shadow and violence, carved from bone and fire. Some say I slaughtered an entire rival pack in the dead of winter for crossing our border. Others claim I killed a god in the mountains and bathed in its blood. I never bothered to deny any of it.

Let them believe I was more beast than man. Fear is a sharper weapon than truth.

I earned their fear. Their obedience. I gave them order. Gave them peace.

And now, they expected me to give them a Luna.

The moon wasn’t full yet, but it hung heavy in the sky, red-veined and swollen with promise. Its light spilled like blood across the treetops, a warning and a summons all at once. My blood thrummed with that same restless pull, my instincts sharpened to the edge of violence.

Every wolf I passed was tense—bristling with ambition, desire, fear. They knew what was coming. The ceremony. The bond. The claiming of a Luna who would stand beside me and rule.

The Hollow was waiting for the crown to be passed, for tradition to be fulfilled.

So was I.

But what I was waiting for... didn't look anything like Helena.

Three nights until the blood moon.

Three nights until I would place the ancestral mark in Helena's palm and make her Luna before the eyes of the pack and the gods. The weight of it pressed on my shoulders like the jaws of something ancient. Once given, the mark could not be taken back. It was a promise not just to her, but to the laws that shaped our world. To the Elders who watched, to the bloodlines that demanded continuation, to the gods who had given us power in exchange for obedience.

And yet, even with all that looming—Helena’s victory, the trials, the ceremony—I hesitated. Not because I doubted her strength. But because something in me had already begun to unravel. Something older than law, older than ritual.

Something that wore the scent of clove and storm.

She had earned it. The trials had proven her brutal and brilliant. She was strong, respected, feared. Everything a Luna should be.

But she wasn’t the one haunting my dreams.

And that—more than anything—terrified me.

When I found her scent in the underbrush, I followed.

She didn’t hear me at first.

She was standing in a clearing, her eyes searching the trees like she expected ghosts. Or answers. Her body was tense, fragile, a string stretched to breaking.

Something in me ached at the sight of her.

Not because she was beautiful. Though she was.

But because she looked like a storm about to happen, and I couldn’t stop watching.

I stepped on a branch.

She froze, instinct sharp and immediate. She dropped low, tried to vanish. But I could smell her—clove and rainwater and something that didn’t belong in the Hollow. Something older.

I stood at the edge of the clearing and let her feel me.

"You can come out," I said quietly. "I know you’re here."

She didn’t move.

I turned my head toward the shadows. My voice dropped lower.

"Ilia."

And gods, the way her name tasted.

I didn’t chase her when she ran.

I didn’t need to.

Because something told me she’d be back.

And this time, I wouldn’t let her go.