Page 15 of Lunar's Ruined Alpha
My skin is crawling. I need to get out of it, need to give in to my instincts and sweep the area. If I can confirm that it’s clear within a mile or so of Alina’s home, maybe I can calm down a bit.
Hopping out of the cab, I shuck off my shirt and tug on my belt roughly. In another area where shifters are less common, it might be alarming that a grown man is undressing on the side of the road, but it’s perfectly normal around these parts. Plus, there’s nobody around to see me. The Whiterose scent hangs in the air, but it’s not strong enough to suggest any of them are lingering nearby.
With my clothes neatly folded on the passenger seat, I step back into the cover of the trees and release the hold on my inner wolf with a full-body shudder. Warmth tingles from the crown of my head down to my toes, and a familiar pleasure-pain takes over as my bones, muscles, and ligaments reform into the deep gray wolf that I was born to be.
My senses sharpen in this form. Half a mile away, a hawk screeches as it descends on its dinner. I can smell the festering carcass even from here.
For a moment, I pad slowly across the moist loam of the forest. I keep a wide berth between me and Alina’s house, but my honed eyesight allows me to catch glimpses of the faded white siding and blue shutters through cracks in the trees.
Not only that, I can scent her. Stronger than ever before, her scent spears into my lupine heart and burrows deep, calling me to her. With a low growl, I choke back the urge to bound back to her house and snarl at the front door until she opens it.
I need her. I want her.
But I need to protect her more than I can dare to desire her.
I’m methodical and precise in my movements, not wanting to disturb the territory of a pack that has been nothing but friendly to us for decades now. I keep low, tracing a path around the perimeter of Alina’s property. There’s nothing but Whiterose scent and the pleasant headiness of lilacs that marks the nearby presence of my Mate.
I can smell my son, too. His scent is more watered down than a typical Greenbriar scent might be, due to his youth and his lack of contact with his rightful pack, but noticeable nonetheless. Noticeable in the way that I would recognize my own hand. He is mine. My blood. My heir.
I continue my patrol, careful not to brush too much of my scent offonto the dense flora. It’s only polite that I don’t stink up this place with a foreign aroma.
Just when I’m about to complete the loose circle around the property, a gust of wind blows in from the west.
I freeze, hackles rising on instinct. A low snarl rips out of me before I can clamp my jaws shut.
Blackburn. The smell is slick and oily, tinged with the metallic scent of blood and carnage. Smoke and fire. It’s a cruel, merciless scent.
But as soon as the wind dies down again, it fades. And, after a while during which it takes all of my strength to resist going after the scent and abandoning Alina, it occurs to me how weak it was. It’s far off, carried to me only thanks to the blustery air and my particularly potent Alpha senses.
There are no Blackburns nearby, but they are still closer than I’d like them to be if I can smell them.
The threat is real. It’s imminent.
I run back to the truck and shift back into my human form, yanking on my clothes quickly. I haul myself back into the driver’s seat, breathing hard from barely contained fury triggered by the mere memory of the Blackburn stench.
Swallowing hard, I yank my phone out of my back pocket and call Cal.
My Beta answers on the second ring.
“How’s it going?” he asks in lieu of hello.
I open my mouth, then quickly close it. My first impulse had been to tell Cal everything, to relay every detail of what I’ve discovered from the moment I set foot in West Pond.
But, even though Cal is loyal to me, I’m not Alpha yet. He still answers to my father. Whatever I tell him, he has to relay to the Alpha of the pack.
For some reason, I don’t want my parents—or anyone else, for that matter—to know that I found Alina, let alone that I have a son. This feels like a battle that I need to fight on my own, a trial that I need to navigate without guidance.
Also, if my father is made aware of the fact that my Mate and thesecond heir to the bloodline is in Whiterose territory, he won’t hesitate to turn this into a political situation. In any other situation, Alina might be left alone, but because my son exists…there’s just no way that my father and the elders would agree to do anything other than bring the boy back to Greenbriar territory as soon as possible.
I don’t want to uproot his life that suddenly and drastically.
And, anyway, I don’t even know his name. There is so much I want to learn and understand before I introduce him to his pack. Because, no matter what Alina says, he will be a Greenbriar Alpha one day. None of that bullshit about starting his own pack.
“Rowan?” Cal asks on the other end of the line. “You good?”
“Sorry,” I blurt, trying to force my voice to remain as casual as possible. “There’s a bad signal out here.”
It’s not technically a lie, but I still feel guilty for avoiding the truth. I’ve never lied to my Beta before.
