An Alpha like me

Violet:

The metallic scent of blood still lingered in the air when I finally made my way toward him. The pack was reorganizing, settling into that disciplined rhythm that followed violence—checking wounds, redistributing patrols, restoring order—but Alec stood slightly apart from it all. Not distant. Never distant. Just elevated in that quiet way Alphas often are, carrying the weight of every life under their protection without ever visibly shifting beneath it.

Asher stepped aside when he saw me approaching, a knowing look flickering across his face before he moved off. I didn’t ask what that expression meant. My attention was already fixed on Alec.

He was mostly clean now, the worst of the blood washed from his skin. Damp strands of dark hair clung near his temples, and his shoulders were squared in that effortless posture of command. From a distance, he looked steady as stone. Up close, I could feel the difference. Something beneath the surface wasn’t sitting right.

“You’re hurt,” I said as I stepped in front of him, my eyes scanning him for injuries he might have dismissed.

“I’m not,” he replied.

I arched a brow at him.

“Not physically,” he amended after a moment.

That made me still. Emotional imbalance was harder to admit and harder to see. Through the link, I brushed against him lightly, careful not to intrude. There it was—a subtle tension under his shields. Not pain. Not fear. Something more internal. Disquiet. Like standing in a familiar room and realizing the walls had shifted slightly overnight.

“Something feels off,” he said quietly, jaw tightening as if he didn’t like the admission. “Not the fight. Not the wounds. Just… off.”

The word lingered between us.

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

His gaze sharpened immediately, instinctive and certain. “Yes.”

No hesitation. No calculation.

Good.

“Do you want to see something cool?” I asked.

The corner of his mouth twitched faintly despite himself. “Is this where you threaten to stab me again?”

“Only if necessary.”

A faint exhale of amusement slipped from him, subtle but real. “Yes,” he said finally. “Show me.”

His shields were formidable. Layered, disciplined, reinforced by instinct and raw power. I had tested their edges before, brushing against them lightly, but this would require something different. It would require invitation.

I stepped closer until I could feel the warmth of him, steady and grounding. “Don’t fight me,” I murmured.

“I won’t.”

I didn’t reach with my hands. I reached with that quieter part of myself that understood boundaries and silence and the delicate architecture of thought. I traced along the edge of his shields, not pushing, not prying, searching instead for the seam already shaped by trust.

I found it.

It wasn’t a crack or weakness. It was simply a place where he had already chosen to let me stand.

I slipped through.

His breath caught softly—not in pain, not in resistance, but in surprise. Inside his mind there was no chaos. It was vast and structured, disciplined and powerful, built from command and restraint. Energy coiled everywhere, held tightly under control. I didn’t disturb any of it.

Instead, I built something within it.

Darkness came first, soft and expansive. Then stars began to appear—pinpricks of silver scattered across an endless sky stretching far beyond the limits of perception. Cool night air drifted across invisible plains. A horizon formed. Then, slowly, at the edge of that sky, light bloomed.

The aurora unfurled in ribbons of green and blue and violet, moving in slow, liquid waves overhead. It rippled and folded in silence, luminous and steady, painting the darkness in shifting color. I layered it carefully, letting it grow rather than burst into existence. There was no demand in it. No urgency.

Only space.

Only breath.

His shields didn’t snap shut. They stilled. Through the link I felt the shift in him, subtle but undeniable. His breathing slowed. The tight coil beneath his ribs eased without him consciously willing it to.

“No one,” he said quietly within the shared space, his voice stripped of projection and command, “has ever done that.”

“I didn’t break anything,” I told him gently. “I just borrowed the sky.”

The aurora brightened slightly, casting its glow across the imagined landscape. I added the faintest whisper of wind, cool and steady, brushing over the mental terrain. He stepped forward in awareness, testing it as though he half-expected it to collapse.

“It feels…” he began, trailing off.

“Big?” I offered.

“Yes.”

His shields shifted again, but not defensively, just curiously. He was studying it, studying me.

“You walked through my barriers,” he said, and there was no accusation in it—only quiet wonder. “I didn’t feel you force anything.”

“I didn’t,” I replied softly. “You let me.”

That truth settled deeper than anything else.

He turned slowly beneath the imagined sky, watching the lights ripple and bend above him. The tension that had lingered since the fight softened, not erased but steadied.

“You carry everything,” I said quietly within the space. “Every decision. Every risk. Every life.”

“It’s my responsibility.”

“I know. But you don’t have to carry it alone every second.”

The aurora pulsed once more, then softened again, like a heartbeat easing into calm. Silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t heavy. It wasn’t strained. It was peaceful.

When I withdrew, I did it gently, letting the stars dim and the lights fade naturally back into the disciplined structure of his mind. I slipped past his shields without disturbance and returned fully to myself.

His eyes opened slowly.

There was something new in them.

Not dominance. Not command.

Vulnerability.

“How?” he asked quietly.

I shrugged lightly. “I’ve always liked the sky.”

“That wasn’t just imagination.”

“No,” I admitted. “It wasn’t.”

He studied me for a long moment, something deep and unguarded flickering behind his gaze. “You walked through my shields like they weren’t there.”

“They were there,” I corrected gently. “They just weren’t closed off to me.”

Something shifted again between us, quieter than before but far more significant. An understanding he wasn’t ready to name.

“You surprise me,” he said.

“You were the one who said yes.”

A faint smile touched his mouth, softer than most people would ever see.

“I did.”

Around us, the pack continued moving, unaware that anything unusual had occurred. But I knew. Because no one had ever let me into their mind without fear, and no one had ever trusted me enough to let me stay.

Alec:

Night settled over camp in layers.

The fire burned low after dinner, embers cracking softly while the pack drifted into smaller conversations and then into silence. Patrols rotated out. Wounded lycans lay stretched near the warmth. The Badlands wind carried dry earth and distant stone, but the tension from earlier had dulled to something manageable.

On the surface, everything was steady.

Inside me, it wasn’t.

I’d led hundreds of hunts. Faced enemies stronger than myself. Made decisions that cost blood and sleep. I knew the shape of pressure. I knew how to carry it.

This was different.

I rose from the fire without announcing it. No one stopped me. They rarely did.

I didn’t need the link to know where she was.

I tilted my head slightly, scanning the dark canopy above the perimeter, and there she was.

Violet.

She’d chosen height again. A hammock strung between two thick branches, barely visible unless you knew what to look for. The moonlight caught the faint outline of her form, one arm tucked beneath her head, the other resting loosely across her middle. Even asleep, she looked deliberate.

Prepared.

As if she could wake and move in the same breath.

I exhaled slowly and walked to the base of her tree.

I told myself it was tactical. Elevated positions were exposed. If anything moved through the perimeter, she’d be the first silhouette against the sky.

That was the reason.

I leaned back against the trunk and folded my arms, gaze drifting upward again.

She had entered my mind like it was nothing.

Not forced.

Not shattered.

Stepped through.

No one had ever done that. Not my father. Not the pack elders. Not enemies who specialized in mental manipulation. My shields had always held.

Until she didn’t even need to test them.

I closed my eyes briefly, and I could still see it.

The sky she built.

The vastness of it. The quiet. The way the aurora moved like breath across darkness. It hadn’t felt like an illusion. It hadn’t felt like something foreign pressing against my thoughts.

It had felt… natural.

Like something that had always belonged there, and I simply hadn’t known how to access it.

The strangest part wasn’t that she could do it.

It was that she had chosen to.

She hadn’t used it to pry, she hadn’t searched for weakness, hadn’t tested the limits of my control.

She had soothed me.

Me.

I huffed quietly under my breath, almost amused at myself.

An Alpha shouldn’t need soothing.

And yet, when she withdrew, the tightness in my chest had been gone.

Replaced with something steadier.

I shifted slightly against the tree, listening to the rhythm of her breathing above me. Even from here, I could hear it — slow, even, deep in sleep. She trusted the height. She trusted the perimeter.

She trusted me.

That thought settled more heavily than anything else.

Asher’s words drifted back into my mind whether I wanted them to or not.

She doesn’t belong to you.

I knew that.

Violet wasn’t something to claim. She stood where she chose to stand. She fought because she decided to fight. She stepped into my space because she wanted to — not because she was pulled there.

And yet the idea of someone else beneath this tree instead of me tightened something possessive and irrational in my chest.

It wasn’t about authority.

It wasn’t about dominance.

It was about the way she had looked at me when I opened my eyes after the stars faded.

Like she’d seen something no one else ever had.

I tilted my head back again, watching her silhouette shift slightly in sleep. A breeze moved through the branches, making the hammock sway gently. One of her hands slipped over the edge, fingers dangling loosely toward the ground.

Without thinking, I reached up and caught them.

Her skin was warm despite the night air. Her fingers twitched once in reflex before relaxing around mine.

She didn’t wake.

I stared at our joined hands for a long moment, baffled not by her power, not by the fight, not even by the rogues.

But by the fact that the most unsettling thing that had happened today was a sky.

A sky she had built inside me.

I had spent my life reinforcing walls that she had walked through and planted stars.

I exhaled slowly, tightening my grip just enough to ensure she wouldn’t slip if she rolled in her sleep.

I wasn’t sure what this was.

Wasn’t sure what it meant.

But I knew one thing with absolute clarity.

If she ever chose to leave—

The space she’d created would not remain, and I wasn’t certain I wanted to know what my mind would feel like once the lights were gone.