Chapter 4 - The Alpha's Arrogance
Back in Crescent Falls, Alpha Cassian was fighting a losing battle against his own mounting paranoia.
For three weeks, the pack’s hunting parties had reported strange anomalies along their borders. Game had vanished entirely from the northern forests, migrating south as if fleeing some unseen terror. Several scouts sent out to monitor the neutral zones had returned pale, shaking, and utterly incoherent, babbling about colossal silver beasts and eyes that burned like twin suns.
Cassian stood at the head of the long oak dining table in the pack house, slamming his fist down so hard the heavy silver flagons rattled against the wood.
"I will not hear another word of this cowardice!" Cassian roared, glaring at his gathered war council. The senior warriors and elders sat around the table, their expressions grim and anxious. "We are Crescent Falls! We are the strongest pack in the western territories! We do not cower in fear because of ghost stories and cowardly scout tales!"
"Alpha," Marcus ventured quietly, standing at the edge of the room. "The scouts aren't lying. Something is moving through the northern peaks. Something massive. The feral packs have stopped fighting among themselves and started migrating south in an organized formation. That doesn't happen naturally."
"Then we slaughter them," Cassian snapped, his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle ticked in his cheek. "Double the patrols along the northern ridge. Any beast—man, wolf, or rogue—that crosses our border without authorization is to be put down immediately. I want heads on pikes if necessary. Let them know what happens when they test Crescent Falls."
He projected absolute confidence, but deep down, a cold spike of dread pierced his chest.
Ever since the night of the Blood Moon, the phantom ache of the severed mate bond had not faded; it had mutated. It felt like a necrotic scar, burning him from the inside out every time he thought of the broken, bleeding human girl he had cast out into the dark.
May you like
She's dead, he told himself for the hundredth time, gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. She had no wolf. She couldn't have survived.
Yet, as a sudden, violent gust of wind rattled the heavy iron windowpanes of the pack house, howling through the timber frames like a chorus of vengeful ghosts, Cassian’s wolf whimpered deep within his chest, terrified of a darkness it couldn't quite see.
