Is She Alive

ALERIC

The day of the Moon Ball had arrived like a sentence I didn't want to serve. I had every intention of arriving fashionably late or not at all, but Axel was clawing at the walls of my mind. My wolf was acting like a compass needle locked onto a storm, and I was being dragged along for the ride.

​When I first told my inner circle, Jason, Ben, and Ian, that we were actually attending, the silence in the room was deafening.

​"Please tell me you’re joking," Ben had whispered, his face pale.

​"Do I look like a man who tells jokes, Ben?" I’d countered. ​That had shut them up. They knew about the invitation left on my desk; they knew about the slaughtered messenger and the rogue we’d hunted down in retaliation. They thought the debt was settled with blood. They never expected me to actually honor a "request" from a pack as insignificant as the Rufous Moon.

​They hadn’t expected me to dress for it. When I walked out in full formal black, the silence had been absolute. Gobsmacked was the word. I hadn’t worn anything like this in years, not since Lily, not since I stopped pretending civility mattered. The coat fit like armor. The shirt hid scars most people never saw. I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror and almost didn’t recognize the wolf staring back, sharp, controlled, dangerous in a way that didn’t need to shout. I ignored their stares. They ignored mine. We all pretended it wasn’t strange.

The van hummed along the dark highway now, headlights cutting through the night. Axel was calmer, still alert, but no longer tearing at the cage of my ribs. Curiosity had won. The invitation had been too clean, too deliberate, too personally delivered. Someone had risked everything to get that card onto my desk and then silenced the messenger before she could talk. That kind of effort deserved an answer.

I didn’t care about the politics of the ball. Alliances, mates, drunken posturing, none of it interested me. Rufous Moon’s alpha, Sebastian Hiddlefield, was a rumor to me: ruthless, opportunistic, the kind of wolf who climbed over bodies and called it leadership. As long as he stayed out of my territory, he could rot in his own pack for all I cared.

Rumors had started leaking lately. Quiet ones. Members slipping away in the night. Wolves who’d rather defect than stay under his rule.

Ian, my Gamma, perpetual mouth, couldn’t resist.

“Hey,” he said from beside me. “You guys hear that some Rufous Moon wolves have been quietly jumping ship to other packs?”

​“Deserting?” Ben asked. As the Delta, he was usually the last to catch wind of anything that wasn't a direct order.

Ian nodded, pleased with himself. “Yeah. Word is they can’t stomach their alpha’s… hobbies anymore. They just kinda leave.”

​“And he lets them go?” Ben leaned back, genuinely curious. “Without a hunt?”

I snorted. “What’s he supposed to do, hunt down every dissenter and kill them? That’s how you end up with no pack left.”

Silence for two glorious minutes. Then Ian again. “There’s also this rumor he turned his own niece into the pack slave. Like, full-on servant status. No one’s seen her, though. Might be bullshit.”

Daniel, warrior and driver, glanced in the rearview mirror. “How many times have you actually been to Rufous Moon, Ian?”

“I… uh… never. But Zack and Tim heard it from an ex-member who...”

I let my aura slip, just a thread. Enough to make the air taste metallic. Enough to make Ian’s spine straighten like wire.

“So you’re repeating secondhand gossip,” I said quietly, “as fact. In front of me.”

Ian swallowed hard. “I was just—”

“Next time you want to spread stories, verify them first.” My voice stayed level. My eyes didn’t leave the window. “Or don’t speak at all.”

The van went quiet again. The kind of silence that follows a warning no one wants to test twice.

Minutes dragged. Then Ben, never one to let silence linger, cleared his throat.

“So… what kind of she-wolves do you think show up at these things?” he asked, voice deliberately light. “Heard Rufous Moon has some real stunners.”

Ian latched onto the distraction like a lifeline. The conversation veered into safer, stupider territory: rankings of pack beauties, rumored mating prospects, who might be wearing what. I tuned it out. Their chatter was background noise; my mind was elsewhere.

I didn’t come here for rumors or drama or gossip. I came because something or someone had reached into my territory, left a message, killed to keep it secret, and then vanished. That deserved a look. And if the answer waited inside Rufous Moon’s glittering ballroom. Then tonight, curiosity would get its due.

Sebastian Hiddlefield was a problem I’d never bothered solving. Shady deals, quiet disappearances, families slipping across borders rather than stay under his thumb, I’d heard it all. None of it touched my territory, so none of it mattered. I didn't want the burden of a broken pack. Taking over a territory means taking over its people, and I had no desire to play nursemaid to hundreds of damaged, traumatized wolves.

​But my patience was fraying. If the Council of Elders was in his pocket, as I suspected, then the "Law" was a lie. And if the stories about his niece were true... well, retribution has a way of finding people, even when the Council looks the other way.

The van slowed as the pack gates came into view, lit torches, banners fluttering in the night wind, the distant throb of music already leaking through the trees.

I straightened my cuffs once. Axel surged forward, eager.

We’re here.

I exhaled through my nose. Let’s see what they wanted so badly they were willing to kill for it.

As the van rolled past the perimeter, the patrol stopped us. They looked like boys playing soldier, their eyes widening the moment they saw the Howling Moon emblem. To my surprise, they didn't stall. They ushered us through with a frantic, trembling haste.

​The moment we crossed the threshold of the pack lands, the air changed.

​Axel didn't just fidget; he roared. My wolf began pacing the cage of my ribs, his claws digging into my psyche.

“Stop the van,” I said. Daniel pulled over immediately. The others turned to look at me.

“I’m walking the rest of the way,” I told them. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

​Ian was out of the van before I could even stand, his jaw set.

“I’m staying with you.”

I shot him a look. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

"Alpha—” He swallowed whatever argument he’d been about to make when my gaze sharpened. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

I almost laughed.

He wasn't going to let me wander alone—not because he was worried about my safety, but because he was terrified of what I’d do to the Rufous Moon if I was left to my own devices. I felt a grim spark of amusement. He was right to be afraid. If Axel decided to let the hunter loose, this entire pack would be nothing but a memory by sunrise.

​

“Fine,” I said. “But stay out of my way.”

He nodded, relief flashing across his face. The van pulled away, taillights fading down the drive toward the arena. Music drifted on the breeze, strings, laughter, the low pulse of celebration.

But as I began to walk, my feet didn't take me toward the lights and music of the party. I was being pulled, like a needle to a magnet, toward the pack house.

The building was a sprawling, shabby eyesore, a testament to Sebastian’s greed and neglect. But its appearance didn't matter. What mattered was the sudden, intoxicating surge of peppermint and lemongrass that hit me like a physical blow. It was the most alluring scent I had ever encountered, but as I drew closer, it was tainted by the metallic tang of fresh blood.

​My heart hammered against my ribs. Axel surged forward so hard my vision tunneled.

Go. Now.

I broke into a run. Ian cursed behind me, boots pounding to keep up.

​“Alpha, wait! The party is the other way!” Ian shouted, his boots thudding behind me. “It’s a bad idea to go in there uninvited!”

​I didn't give a damn about protocol or "snooping." The scent was a siren song, and the blood was a call to war. I reached the front doors and didn't bother with the handle, I kicked them inward with enough force to splinter the frame.

​I followed the trail through the hollow foyer and into the kitchen, my boots echoing like thunder.

The scene that met me nearly stopped my heart. ​In the center of the kitchen, a girl lay coiled in a fetal position on the cold tile. She was a ruin of raven-black hair and bruised skin, her clothes tattered and soaked in crimson. Standing over her were three teenagers, trash masquerading as wolves. Two girls, painted in so much pink cosmetic filth they looked like caricatures, and a boy with the glazed, bloodshot eyes of a drunk.

​The girl in the pink dress actually had the audacity to preen. She abandoned the stove and sashayed toward me, batting her lashes through layers of caked-on "paint."

​“Hey, handsome,” she slurred, trying to project a charm she didn't possess. “Did you lose your way, Alpha?”

​I didn't even see her. I moved past her as if she were a ghost, my eyes locked on the broken form on the floor.

​‘Is she alive?’ Axel’s voice was a frantic, ragged scream in my mind.

​The realization hit me with the force of an avalanche. This girl, this bloodied, broken shadow of a person, was my mate. My second chance. And she was dying at the feet of children. I felt a surge of cold, murderous rage toward the Moon Goddess. Why, Selene? Why give me a mate only to let her be destroyed before I can even touch her?

​“Don’t go near that jinx,” the bloodshot boy barked, his voice cracking with a false bravado. “She’s bad luck."

Ian’s mind-link brushed mine, urgent.

Alpha?

I didn’t answer, I couldn’t.

All I could do was stand there, two steps away from her, watching the shallow rise and fall of her ribs, counting each one like it might be the last. Fragile and beautiful.

Mine.

​I stepped closer, my shadow falling over her. She looked so fragile, a delicate bird crushed by clumsy hands. The peppermint scent was overwhelming now, fighting against the smell of the blood pooling around her. My vision began to tunnel, the edges turning red.

​They had touched what was mine. And they were about to find out exactly why they called me the Devil.