Chapter 9
Alistair
I have to get away from her. Put distance between us. Get her out of my head.
Fuck.
How can she not have a heat cycle? How can any shifter survive without one?
It’s rare for males to go through a heat but more common for alphas if they go too long without completing a mating bond.
My brother had one before he died, and if I’m not careful, this woman—burning so hot that she feels like wildfire in my veins—will pull me into one.
My mate doesn’t go into fucking heat.
The primal urge to bend her over my lap and prove that not only can she go into heat, but I can force her into one was so strong—so dangerous—that I had to leave.
I had to run.
A laugh cuts through my throat like jagged glass. Running from my mate was never supposed to happen. Alphas don’t run from anything! We fight and we fuck and figure shit out—together, with our mates.
How could my life have gone so horribly wrong in one single day?
I tear down the dirt path leading up to the mountain, my paws heavy as they pound against the frozen earth.
I don’t care about the other first-year students trailing behind me or about this stupid run, not when I already know who my true mate is.
But if what my father says is true, not only is she wild, but she’s a cold-blooded murderer.
The first is regrettable, but the second?
Un-fucking-forgivable.
Viserys Dire was a compassionate alpha and an even better older brother.
He would have been the change that our pack—and all of shifterkind—sorely needed, in a time when our species is on the verge of collapse.
Ever since the rot appeared in the wilds, fewer shifters have been finding their mates, and without a mate, without offspring, bloodlines die out.
Entire packs dissolve once their population dwindles.
Even the Dire pack has been absorbing lost souls from the wilderness—a kindness that my father abhors as a show of weakness.
But with one heir dead and the other unmated among a litany of options, even he can’t deny the irrefutable fact that something is upsetting the natural balance of our world . . . of everyone’s world.
We aren’t the only magical species suffering.
Tonight, however, I don’t give a damn about the rest of the world. I only care about my own.
If I can’t have her, if I can’t claim her, the gods sent her to ruin me. I can still taste that hint of her desire calling to me like a siren’s song. I don’t even know what turned her on—my presence or his—and that’s the worst fucking part.
They kissed right in front of me, in front of everyone, and the bond between them was palpable, stirring every fiber of my heart, my soul, into chaos.
My mate may not have claimed him yet, but he’s definitely claimed her.
It’s written all over his body—and hers.
A bitter taste coats my tongue as I picture the scar on her neck.
Revyn’s bite may not have settled into a mating bond, but the evidence is there for all to witness.
He tried to mate with her, and the magic didn’t take.
I’m as grateful as I am furious.
Thinking of the two of them together—kissing, fucking, laughing—gods, I want to scream.
When I approach a cliff’s edge, I skid to a halt and throw my head back with a howl that rattles my bones.
The others respond in kind, more than a few wolves howling while others snort or whinny.
A few birds chirp, and a wolf attempts to squawk in response.
Cornelius huffs at me as he runs by, his fur as bright as sun-soaked wheat, and I know that the others are close behind.
But is my true mate?
As I pick up the pace and snap at Cornelius’s heels, I roll her name across my tongue.
Sienna. Like the leaves of autumn or the topsoil in the valleys between the Dire pack’s mountains.
I wonder what her parents were thinking when they named her—and if they loved each other.
Were they fated, or were they chosen? The Dire line prioritizes true mates over chosen ones, making our Alphas and our pack the strongest of them all.
It’s forbidden to mate another once you’ve found your fated .
. . yet my father thinks that I have a choice.
I scoff aloud, earning Neels’s attention.
He bumps my shoulder with his, slowing his pace as though he wants to talk.
But I’m in no mood for words. I push my body to its limits, my muscles burning as I run faster and harder than I ever have before.
My friend disappears in the shadows behind me as I climb the mountain one curve at a time, kicking rocks and ice in my wake and carving a path in the snow.
Every year, the shifters make this run, and every year, the strongest Alpha-to-be wins the race to the top.
I will be no exception to tradition.
Something barrels over the side of the mountain, suddenly lunging through the air and slamming into my side. I lose my balance and tumble into a snowbank, my jaw snapping as I lash out at my attacker. Whoever—or whatever—has made a grave mistake.
No one attacks an alpha and lives.
I shake the powder from my coat and snarl, my gaze snapping toward a lean wolf—no, not a wolf.
A fox? My eyes narrow as I quickly assess its features.
Smaller than a wolf but larger than a fox, its coat a mixture of rich browns and deep blacks with specks of vibrant red woven throughout.
Thin facial features, smaller teeth to fit its mandible, and its eyes—
Glowing the same golden hue as mine.
Sienna?
She pins her ears back and stomps her front paw, baring her teeth at me and making it clear as fucking day that she isn’t a purebred wolf shifter.
She’s a fucking hybrid.
I rear my head back as a wave of disgust triggers inside my heart and then .
. . disappears. My next breath comes easy, and I blink through my confusion.
Hybrids are against shifter law, and yet here she stands.
My true mate—a mixed breed that shouldn’t exist, yet my soul makes peace with it immediately.
Any reigning pack alpha, my father included, will kill her when they find out, which is exactly why he and the others can never know.
What the hells is she doing at Heartsflame Academy? It puts her directly in contact with people who will kill first and ask questions later. How fucking stupid.
Now I’m the one who has to do something about it.
I should hate her for what she’s done to my brother. My family. My fate. But as furious as I am with her for being reckless, I can’t let anyone kill her for something she has no control over. Being wild is enough of a curse on its own, and she’s . . . my fated.
I’m fucking screwed.
Lowering my head, I take a small step toward her.
I have to get her off the mountain or the other first-years will learn her secret.
Students are allowed to kill each other on the first night, and more than one falls every year.
A few even die after unknowingly fucking a Black Widow: a student who uses their charms to seduce then kill their victims. It’s safest for Sienna to leave the academy altogether, but that wild fucker will follow her anywhere.
It’s better to keep her within my sight on campus.
I’ll decide what to do with her later.
She lunges again, this time going for my throat. A tuft of fur catches between her teeth, and I growl low in my throat. What is she thinking, attacking an alpha?
Is she always this fucking reckless?
Heavy footfalls curve up the path, and I make a split-second decision to throw my body against hers.
My weight shoves her back toward the cliff’s edge, but she digs in her claws and holds fast. It’s a sheer drop, at least thirty feet until the next landing, but there’s a massive pile of snow at the bottom.
She’ll be fine so long as she doesn’t tense up before the landing.
Sienna snaps at me again, aiming for my leg this time.
I let her latch on, feeling the tear of her teeth in my flesh, then push her whole body with mine a second time.
Her back paws slip on the snow and tip over the edge, her eyes flashing bright gold as she doubles-down, sinking her teeth to the bone and dragging me with her.
We tumble into the freezing night air together, our bodies colliding as we free fall. She yelps as she hits a rocky outcrop, the sound of snapping bone making me flinch. A whimper catches in her throat, and her body shifts back to human form, woefully unprepared for the crash below.
It wasn’t thirty feet to the next landing.
It was fifty.
And she’ll break every bone in her body if the snow doesn’t soften her fall.
I move on instinct, whipping out my legs and snatching her from the air, tucking her body against my chest as we drop like stones. My claws scrape her delicate skin, making her bleed, and a furious howl echoes in the night.
Her wild mate.
Growling, I curl my body around hers as best I can and wait for the impact, knowing that it’s coming and unable to stop it.
Sienna stares into my wolf eyes, the pink flush on her cheeks radiant and the flecks of gold in her eyes taking my breath away. Even though we aren’t mated—even if we never take that step—I’m glad for this one moment together.
I tuck this piece of her into my heart and bury it deep, deep down where no one else can find it. Where it’s all mine and only mine.
And then we crash, disappearing in a blanket of snow so deep that it blots out the moon, the stars, and the rest of our miserable world.
All that’s left is Sienna’s warmth and an insatiable urge to keep her here, tucked away where no one—not my father, not her wild wolf, not even I can ever find her again.