34. Sneak Peek of Book 3 Fated to the Scarred Alpha
The snow had stopped falling an hour ago, but Nadia still couldn’t get warm from the freeze.
She pressed her back against the rough bark of a pine tree, her fingers numb inside gloves she’d stolen from a gas station in Wyoming. The fabric had holes worn through both thumbs. Not that it mattered. Nothing had been warm in weeks.
Four months. Four months of running, and she’d finally hit the edge of the last territory on her mental map. Blackridge. The pack everyone whispered about but no one really knew.
What she did know: no other alpha pushed at Blackridge’s borders. Whatever held this pack together held it hard enough that Thornwood would think twice before crossing the ridge. That was the only kind of protection she could afford to gamble on.
Strong enough to shelter her, maybe. Strong enough to break her without even trying.
Nadia’s stomach cramped, hollow and angry. She’d eaten half a protein bar yesterday morning. The wrapper still crinkled in her pocket, a reminder of how far she’d fallen.
Six years ago, she’d had a life. A job. An apartment with actual furniture and a refrigerator that ran through the night.
She’d been stupid enough to trust the wrong person.
She pushed the memory down, buried it under the more immediate concern of not freezing to death. The temperature had dropped below zero. Her breath came out in white clouds that hung in the still air and dissolved slowly.
She might die out here, but she’d die free.
The thought steadied her, the way it always did. She’d survived Thornwood’s Beta and his pack of bastards who thought omega meant property.
Who thought her designation gave them rights to her body, her will, her very breath.
She’d survived. She’d escaped.
And she wasn’t going back.
Nadia shifted her weight, her bad hip catching her up short. She’d twisted it three days ago, scrambling down a rocky slope when she’d caught the scent of a patrol too close for comfort.
If it got better. She tried not to count on it.
Movement flickered at the edge of her vision. Her hand went to the knife in her belt before her brain caught up, her wolf snapping to attention, hyperaware and ready to bolt. Two figures moved through the trees about fifty yards out.
Patrol wolves. She could tell by the way they moved, purposeful and alert, noses lifted to catch any foreign scent on the wind.
Her scent.
Nadia’s heart slammed against her ribs. This was it. The moment when they’d catch her trail and come running. When they’d drag her to their alpha and demand explanations she couldn’t give without revealing what she was.
What she’d been.
Her shoulders braced for the shout. The chase. The inevitable violence that came with crossing pack boundaries without permission.
The wolves kept walking.
Nadia blinked, confusion cutting through the panic.
They’d passed downwind of her position. She’d scrubbed in the creek at dawn, ice water numbing her fingers raw.
Frigid water and motion thinned a wolf’s scent.
She’d been counting on that. But they still had to have caught something.
Had to know an outsider had crossed their border.
But they just kept walking. No sudden stops.
No alert barks. No sprint in her direction with teeth bared and dominance rolling off them in waves.
Blackridge ran perimeter on a rolling four-mile arc, and the lead scout had been thirty yards upwind of her position the whole time.
He’d caught the omega scent before the rest of the patrol crossed visual range and given the silent signal: register, do not engage.
Nadia couldn’t see any of that. She only saw the patrol walking past her cave without breaking stride.
They disappeared into the trees, and silence settled over the forest like a blanket.
What the hell?
Nadia stayed frozen for another five minutes, counting her heartbeats, waiting for the trap to spring. When nothing happened, she carefully shifted her position, scanning the area for hidden watchers.
Maybe they were playing with her. Maybe this pack liked to let their prey think they’d escaped before closing in for the kill.
Thornwood’s Beta had liked games like that.
But the forest gave nothing back. Empty. Just her and the silence and the desperate gnawing in her gut that told her she needed food soon or her body would start shutting down.
Nadia braced against the tree as she stood, testing her weight. She needed to move. Find better shelter. Maybe scavenge something to eat if she got lucky.
She’d seen a creek about a mile back. If she could catch a fish...
The next hour passed in a blur of careful movement and constant vigilance. Nadia picked her way through the forest, avoiding open spaces, staying low. Every instinct screamed that they were exposed.
Vulnerable.
But no one came.
She found a shallow cave carved into a hillside. It cut the wind and hid her from casual eyes. Nadia crawled inside, her body past sensation.
This was stupid. She should keep moving. Put more distance between herself and the border.
But her body had other ideas. Her hip stiffened with every movement. Her fingers had gone past numb into that dangerous territory where she couldn’t feel them at all.
Just a few hours. She’d rest for a few hours, then move deeper into the territory. Find a town. Steal some supplies. Figure out her next move.
If Blackridge let her live that long.
Nadia’s eyes drifted closed despite her best efforts. Sleep pulled at her, heavy and insistent. She fought it, knowing what unguarded sleep had cost her before.
But her body had reached its limit. She had no more to give.
She slipped into an uneasy doze. Sleep came in thin, broken pieces.
The scent woke her.
Nadia’s eyes snapped open, her wolf lunging forward with a snarl. Someone was close. Too close.
She could smell them, pine and snow and something else. Something that made her go still for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.
Male. Definitely male. But not aggressive. Not dominant in that crushing way that made her want to crawl out of her skin.
Nadia pressed herself against the back of the cave, her chest rising fast and shallow. She couldn’t see him yet, but she knew he was there. Watching. Waiting.
“I’m not.” A pause. Like he was working out what he could say without making it worse. “Going to hurt you.” The voice came from outside the cave, low and a little rough at the edges. “I’m going to leave something. Food. Water. Don’t come out until I’m gone.”
She counted the breaths out, slow, even. Not a twig under her boot.
This was the trap. Had to be. They’d lured her in with their strange non-reaction to her presence, and now they’d spring it. Force her out. Make her submit.
“I know you’re scared.” The voice continued, steady and calm. “I know you don’t trust me. That’s all right. Trust takes time. Just... eat something. Please.”
Footsteps crunched in the snow, moving away from the cave. Nadia waited, and let the silence stretch until the woods felt empty again.
Outside, the man had moved twenty paces past the cave entrance and turned to scan the tree line, checking for a second scent, a second wolf, a second trap.
Nothing. Just the lone omega hidden against the rock.
He left a small cloth marker tucked under a stone at the trailhead so Declan’s scouts would steer clear of this path tonight.
Then he turned back toward Blackridge to report what he’d seen.
When she finally crept forward, her body protesting every movement, she found a bundle wrapped in cloth sitting just outside the entrance.
She stared at it, her mind struggling to process what she was seeing.
Food. He’d left her food.
Nadia grabbed the bundle and retreated into the cave, her fingers stiff with cold as she unwrapped it. Bread. Cheese. Dried meat. A bottle of water. More food than she’d seen in weeks.
This didn’t make sense. Packs didn’t just feed rogues who crossed their borders. They didn’t leave offerings like this was some kind of sanctuary.
Packs took. That was the rule.
But the food was real. Solid. The bread held heat in it yet.
Nadia tore into it, her body overriding her brain’s protests. She ate too fast, her stomach cramping in protest, but she couldn’t stop. The taste of real food, food that wasn’t half-rotten or stolen, overwhelmed everything else.
She finished half the bread and most of the cheese before her stomach forced her to slow down. The water was frigid and clean, and she drank it in careful sips, her throat raw from disuse.
When she’d eaten enough to quiet the worst of the hunger, Nadia wrapped the remaining food carefully and tucked it against the cave wall. Then she crawled back to the entrance, searching the forest for any sign of the male who’d left it.
Nothing. Just trees and snow and the fading light of late afternoon.
But his scent lingered. Pine and snow and something underneath that left her unsettled.
Curious.
Nadia turned away, retreating into the cave. She couldn’t afford curiosity. Couldn’t afford to wonder about a male who left food instead of demands. Who talked to her like she was a wolf, not a thing.
She’d learned that lesson six years ago.
The memory surfaced without permission. The weight of a collar against her throat.
The stone-bare concrete under her knees.
The way her ribs had ached for weeks after.
Her wolf flinched away from the images, and Nadia’s hands curled into fists inside her sleeves.
But sleep refused to come. That scent set off every alarm bell in her head.
Who talked like that?
Nadia wrapped her arms around herself. For the first time in three nights, her fingers belonged to her again. She should leave. Should take the food and run, put as much distance between herself and this inexplicable kindness as possible.
But as she drifted toward sleep, her wolf quieted in a way it hadn’t in months.
She let her eyes close, knife within reach.