CHAPTER TWO – The Alpha’s Human

*Lilah*

Somewhere between the trees and the dark, I pass out.

Cold air. Rough bark scraping my arm. The world tilts as he runs. Then the thunk of a car door and the low growl of an engine.

When I claw my way back to consciousness, my cheek’s mashed against cracked leather that smells like dust and pine and him.

“Sit up,” a deep voice says.

I stiffen. “No.”

A big hand clamps around my upper arm. He doesn’t yank, just lifts, but his grip is iron. My body obeys before my pride can argue.

I push myself upright and slam into the window. The glass is icy against my bare shoulder. Outside, darkness streaks past—trees, rocks, and occasional flashes of pale moonlight.

The front seats are occupied by two big men. The driver stares straight ahead. The passenger keeps glancing at the mirror like it might bite him.

Beside me, Ronan Vale takes up too much space. Again.

His arm lies along the back of the seat, caging me between muscle and cold glass. Up close, the air around him hums with something I can’t name.

“Where are you taking me?” I demand, voice rough.

“Home,” he says.

“You sure as hell aren’t taking me to my home.”

“My home,” he corrects.

I twist to face him. “Turn this car around. I have a life. A job. A mother in the hospital—”

“Your mother is under human care,” he says. “You’re not.”

It hits like a slap.

“You don’t know anything about my mother,” I snap.

“I know you said ‘hospital’ three times,” he says calmly. “I know you’d do something reckless to get back to her. I know recklessness gets you killed out here.”

“Out where?” I throw my hands up. “You haven’t even told me where ‘here’ is. Or who the hell you are besides some Alpha psycho who thinks he owns the bar I work in.”

He turns his head fully now. In the dim, his eyes are still bright.

“Ronan Vale,” he says. “Alpha of the Crimson Hollow Pack.”

“Congratulations,” I say. “You’re the CEO of a wilderness cult.”

The front passenger coughs to cover a laugh. Ronan’s gaze doesn’t leave mine.

“And you,” he says, “are my mate.”

The word punches oxygen right out of me.

“No,” I say automatically. “I’m a waitress, not a dog.”

“Mate is not a pet word,” he says. “It’s a bond. It snapped the moment I saw you.”

“I didn’t feel anything,” I lie.

He looks at my mouth. My pulse stutters.

“Your body disagrees,” he says quietly.

Heat rises in my cheeks—anger and something uglier.

“Even if I did feel…something, it doesn’t mean you get to kidnap me. "”

His jaw tightens. “If I’d left you there, someone would’ve grabbed you the second I walked out. Pups, hotheads, enemies. They’d hurt you to see how far I’d go to stop them.”

“You keep saying ‘they’ like it’s not *your* responsibility,” I shoot back. “You’re their Alpha, right? Tell them no.”

“You don’t understand,” he says. “My wolves aren’t children. They’re predators with politics. If they think their alpha is compromised, they will push until something breaks.”

“Well, great news,” I snap. “You already broke something.”

My heart. My ability to breathe like a normal person when he’s near. My sense of what’s real and what’s a nightmare.

The car slows. Gravel crunches. Trees crowd closer, their branches weaving a roof over the narrow road.

“We’re here,” the driver says.

Ronan gets out first. The back door swings open, and cold air rushes in, cutting across my bare legs.

“I can walk,” I say quickly.

He looks at me, then steps back half a pace. “Then walk.”

I scoot out, careful not to brush against him. My sneakers hit hard‑packed earth. The night is bright with a too‑big moon, silvering everything: clearing, tall dark trees, the cluster of buildings ahead.

There’s a big main lodge—three stories of wood and stone—with warm light spilling from its windows. Smaller cabins ring it, chimneys smoking.

Between us and all of that, the shadows move.

Wolves.

Some four‑legged, hulking shapes with fur that catches the moonlight. Others standing upright, human‑shaped but not quite right—hands with claws, eyes that glow gold in the dark.

All of them stared at me.

My skin crawls.

Ronan steps in behind me, his hand settling lightly at the small of my back. Heat fans out from that spot, my body reacting before my brain can tell it to stop.

“Don’t touch me,” I hiss.

“They’re watching,” he says low. “You’re under my protection now. Let them see it.”

“I didn’t ask for your protection,” I bite out.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “You have it.”

We start walking.

Whispers follow.

“Is that her?”

“Human.”

“He brought a human here?”

“Alpha’s human. Goddess help us.”

“Humans break.”

Anger burns hot over the fear.

I keep my head up and my gaze straight ahead. I won’t give them bowed shoulders and flinches.

We reach the main lodge. The heavy front door swings open before we get there. A tall guy with sandy hair and a scar under his eye nods.

“Alpha,” he says. His eyes flick to me, curiosity and a flash of shock. “So it’s true.”

“Cassian,” Ronan acknowledges. “We’ll talk later.”

Cassian steps aside. We pass into warmth and light.

Inside is big—vaulted ceiling, exposed beams, and a massive fireplace at one end. Couches, tables, people. Wolves. Some are fully human now, some still with gold eyes and tension in their shoulders.

Conversations falter as we enter.

Dozens of eyes flick over us, stopping on me. Scent in the air changes—curiosity, distrust, something sharper.

Ronan’s hand presses a fraction more firmly into my back.

“Don’t stop,” he murmurs.

“Stop telling me what to do,” I mutter back.

We head down a hallway off the main room. My sneakers squeak on polished wooden floors. Closed doors line the walls. From one, I hear laughter. From another, low growls.

We stop at the last door on the right.

Ronan opens it.

The room beyond looks like a hotel ad: a big bed with a gray comforter, a simple wooden dresser, a small table and chairs, and thick curtains over a window. A door to the side probably leads to a bathroom.

It looks normal. That makes it worse.

“You’ll stay here,” he says.

“No,” I say. “You’ll drive me back.”

He steps aside, gesturing in. “Inside.”

I plant my feet. “No.”

The air in the hallway changes.

His eyes narrow, gold flaring. The power coming off him intensifies, pressing against my skin like static before a storm.

“Last time,” he says. “Inside, Lilah.”

My name in that voice scrapes something raw in me.

I walk in.

He follows, closes the door, and the noises of the lodge cut off.

“This is kidnapping,” I say. “Illegal, immoral, and insane. You can’t keep me here.”

“I can,” he says. “And I will. Until I’m sure I can let you walk out without my pack deciding to see how fragile you are.”

“Fragile.” I laugh, ugly and sharp. “You mean human.”

“Yes.”

The honesty stings more than a lie would.

“You can’t just decide my life is over because your…pack has anger issues,” I say. “I have a mother. Bills. Friends. A landlord who’s one late payment away from selling my stuff on the curb.”

His expression flickers for half a second at “mother,” then smooths back out.

“You can call the hospital tomorrow,” he says. “You’ll tell them you’re out of town. Emergency job. Whatever humans say to each other.”

“You’re not listening,” I say, voice climbing. “I don’t want an ‘emergency job’ with a wolf cult. I want my old life back.”

He looks at me for a long moment.

“Your old life,” he says, “ended the moment the bond snapped. You just haven’t accepted it yet.”

“I don’t accept it,” I snap. “Reject your bond. Whatever. Cut it. Send me back.”

The words are out before I can stop them. His reaction is instantaneous.

His eyes go cold. Not hot Alpha fury—ice. His wolf is there underneath, snarling quietly.

“Don’t throw around things you don’t understand,” he says softly.

“Enlighten me,” I say. “Explain this great cosmic joke where I get punished for existing on the wrong night in the wrong bar.”

He exhales once through his nose, the only sign of fraying control.

“The Moon doesn’t ask if we’re ready,” he says. “Mates are not chosen like dates. They are given. I walked into that bar, expecting a drunk and a fight. Instead, I got you.”

“Return to sender,” I say. “She can keep the receipt.”

His lips twitch before he kills it.

“You think I wanted this?” he asks. “You think I was waiting my whole life to find a human girl with bar stamps on her hand and rent overdue?”

Anger surges, hot. “What’s wrong with bar stamps and overdue rent?”

“Nothing,” he says. “For a human. For my Luna…” He trails off, jaw tightening.

There it is.

I’m not good enough for him. Or them.

“What am I to you?” I ask, quieter. “Right now. Not in wolf‑saint language. In English.”

His gaze holds mine, steady and unflinching.

“You are my mate,” he says. “The one thing in this world I am least prepared for and least willing to lose.”

The admission lands hard.

It doesn’t erase the fact that I’m locked in a strange room in a house full of creatures who think I’m fragile and wrong.

“If that’s your version of comfort,” I say, “it sucks.”

He huffs out a breath. “Sleep,” he says. “We’ll talk when the sun is up.”

“You’re not leaving me here alone,” I blurt.

His eyes widen a fraction. “You just called this a prison.”

“And now you want to leave?” I throw my hands up. “Pick a lane, Alpha. Either I’m under your protection or I’m a forgotten accessory you store in the guest room.”

Something like heat flickers in his gaze.

“There will be guards outside your door,” he says. “No one will come in.”

“That’s not what I meant.” The words are out before pride can stop them.

He goes very still.

“What did you mean?” he asks.

I clamp my mouth shut. I don’t know. I don’t have a word for the way my chest clenched when he stepped back. For how silent this room feels without his wrong, comforting, terrifying presence.

“Forget it,” I say. “Just go.”

His eyes linger on my face, like he’s trying to read thoughts I won’t let him have.

“Try to sleep,” he says again. “Tomorrow, the pack sees you.”

He opens the door. The hallway noise spills in for a heartbeat.

Then it shuts. The lock clicks.

This time, I keep breathing. In. Out.

I go to the window. The curtains are thick. I push them aside.

Iron bars, decorative and solid, cross the glass. Beyond them, the forest stretches black and endless under the moon.

I slide the latch. The window opens a few inches. Cold air kisses my face.

I wrap my fingers around one of the bars and yank.

It doesn’t budge.

I throw my weight into it. Metal bites my palm. Pain flares.

I let go, sucking in a breath. Blood wells where the edge of a rusted screw sliced my skin.

It burns.

I watch, stunned, as the blood slows almost immediately. The edges of the cut knit together, pink, then pale. Within seconds, the skin is whole again—no scab, no scar. Just drying blood that might as well belong to someone else.

“No,” I whisper.

Footsteps scuff in the hall. Low voices.

“Did you smell that?” a male voice asks. “Blood. Then it stopped.”

“She’s human,” another scoffs. “Humans don’t heal that fast.”

“Smelled wrong,” the first insists. “Like the bite never happened.”

My heart jackhammers. I wipe my palm on my dress, scrubbing the blood away like that will erase what I just saw.

I back away from the window toward the bed.

I don’t sleep so much as black out.

Dreams: golden eyes, teeth, and a hand wrapped around my heart, pulling me deeper into a world I never chose.

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