THE ALPHA’S GHOST

KAYE”S POV

The coffee pot is burning my hand but I cannot let go because Mrs. Henderson at table four needs her third refill and she tips in quarters when she is happy. My shift started eleven hours ago. My feet stopped hurting around hour eight, which probably means something bad, but I do not have time to think about what. The truck stop diner smells like grease and diesel and the kind of exhaustion that settles into your bones and never leaves.

I am wiping down table seven when I feel it. Eyes on me. Not the normal trucker stare or the lonely salesman hoping for a smile. This is different. Predatory. My wolf stirs for the first time in months, pressing against my ribs like she is trying to claw her way out through my chest.

Don't shift. Don't shift. Don't shift.

I keep my head down and spray more cleaner on the table even though it is already clean. The chemical smell burns my nose but it is better than the alternative. Better than letting my wolf's senses take over and confirm what I already know in my gut.

They found me.

I glance up through my eyelashes, keeping my movements slow and normal. Booth six. Three men. They are not eating. They are not looking at menus. They are looking at me with the kind of focus that makes prey animals freeze before they run. Two of them are big, built like enforcers, with that military stillness that comes from years of training. The third is leaner but somehow more dangerous, like a knife wrapped in a smile.

My hand tightens on the spray bottle. The plastic creaks.

The lean one tilts his head, and I watch his nostrils flare slightly. He is scenting the air. Looking for confirmation.

I am wearing contacts that turn my green eyes brown. I dyed my hair black three weeks ago in a motel bathroom in Idaho. I have been working here for two months, long enough that the other servers know my fake name but not long enough that anyone will remember me when I am gone. I have been so careful.

But careful does not matter when you are standing fifteen feet from wolves who are trained to hunt.

The door to the kitchen swings open and Danny, the night cook, yells that order twelve is up. I force my feet to move, walking toward the counter like nothing is wrong, like my heart is not trying to punch its way out of my throat. I can feel their eyes tracking my movement. I pick up the plate, turn toward table twelve, and that is when the lean one stands.

He does not rush. He does not have to. He just moves into my path with the kind of confidence that says he knows I cannot get past him. Up close he smells like pine and cold air and something underneath that is all wolf. My wolf whimpers, recognizing pack, recognizing danger, recognizing that we are about to die.

"Kaye Muani," he says quietly. Not a question.

I could lie. I could say he has the wrong person, that my name is Sarah or Jennifer or whoever is on my fake ID this month. But lies do not work on wolves. They can hear your heartbeat spike. They can smell fear sweat. They know.

"I don't know what you are talking about." I say it anyway because what else can I do.

His smile does not reach his eyes. "Yes, you do."

The plate is still in my hand. I think about throwing it at his face and running for the back exit, but the other two are already moving, flanking me on both sides. They are not trying to hide what they are doing. The few humans in the diner are not paying attention, buried in their phones or their food, and even if they noticed they would just see three men talking to a waitress. Nothing unusual. Nothing wrong.

"You need to come with us," the lean one says. His voice is calm, almost kind, which makes it worse somehow. "Alpha Rivers wants to see you."

Alpha Rivers. Ethan Rivers. The name hits me like a fist to the stomach. Blackwater Pack. The pack my father supposedly ordered destroyed six years ago. The pack that has every reason to want me dead.

"I am not going anywhere," I say, but my voice shakes and we both know it does not matter what I want.

"You really want to do this here?" He glances around the diner, at Mrs. Henderson pouring sugar into her coffee, at Danny visible through the kitchen window, at the truck driver sleeping in booth two. "Because we can do this here if you want. But it will get messy. People will get hurt. Is that what you want?"

My wolf snarls inside me, all rage and terror, begging me to fight, to run, to do anything except go quietly. But there are humans here. Innocent people who have nothing to do with pack politics or six-year-old massacres or the fact that I was born with the wrong last name. If I fight, people die. If I run, they chase me, and people die. There is no version of this where I win.

I set the plate down on the nearest table. My hand is shaking so badly that the silverware rattles. "Let me get my stuff from the back."

"No," the lean one says. "We leave now."

"My bag—"

"You don't need it."

He is right. Everything I own fits in a backpack I keep in my car, and my car is parked three blocks away where I always park it, far enough that no one connects it to me. Everything I need to run is already waiting. Except I am not going to make it to my car. I am not going to make it three steps outside this diner.

The enforcers move closer, boxing me in. I can feel their body heat, smell their wolves pressing close to the surface. One of them is looking at me like he wants to rip my throat out right here. His hands are clenched into fists and there is something in his eyes that is more than just following orders. This is personal for him.

"Let's go," the lean one says, and his hand closes around my upper arm. Not hard enough to bruise but firm enough that I know struggling is pointless.

They walk me toward the door. I think about screaming, about making a scene, about doing anything that might help. But what would I say? These men are kidnapping me? They would be gone before the police arrived, and they would take me with them. Help, I am a werewolf and these are werewolf enforcers here to drag me to an Alpha who wants revenge? Yeah, that will go great.

Mrs. Henderson looks up as we pass and frowns slightly, like something is off but she cannot figure out what. I try to smile at her. I think it comes out more like a grimace. Then we are through the door and outside in the parking lot and the cold Montana air hits my face like a slap.

There is a van waiting, dark and windowless, the kind of vehicle that screams nothing good happens inside. The back doors are already open. I can see silver chains hanging from hooks welded to the interior walls, and my stomach drops.

Silver burns werewolves. Weakens us. Keeps us from shifting. Those chains are not just restraints. They are torture devices.

"Please," I hear myself say, and I hate how small my voice sounds. "Please, I didn't do anything. My father—"

"Your father ordered the slaughter of sixty-three wolves," the enforcer on my right says, and his voice is full of so much hate that I flinch. "Men, women, children. He burned them alive in their own packhouse while they slept. And you think you didn't do anything?"

"I wasn't there! I was at college, I didn't even know—"

"Shut up," the lean one says, but there is no heat in it. He almost sounds tired. "Just get in the van, Kaye. Don't make this harder than it has to be."

I look at the chains and then at the three wolves surrounding me and I know I am out of options. I could try to fight but there are three of them and one of me and I have not shifted in six years which means I am weak, slow, pathetic. My wolf is screaming at me to try anyway, to go down fighting, but what is the point? They will just hurt me worse and drag me into that van anyway.