Page 26 of Alpha's Heir

My brow furrowed, and I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. "What do you mean?" I asked, but she shook her head, pushing herself up to sit against the headboard.

She didn’t answer, just wrapped her arms around her knees, pulling them tight to her chest. Her gaze was distant, and I knew then that whatever had happened in that forest had changed something in her, something fundamental.

The silence was a living thing, wrapping around us like a shroud. I could hear the faint stir of the wind outside, the occasional creak of the house settling, but it was her voice that cut through the stillness, laced with weariness and defeat.

“I found the guardian,” Cora said, her voice so low I could barely hear her.

My heart skipped a beat. “Is he the one who did this to you?” I asked, eyeing the bruises that marred her skin, the cuts that seemed to have been drawn by a creature’s wild rage.

“No,” she shook her head slowly, pain flickering across her features. “He saved me from a monster. But that was it. He won’t help us. He says it’s not his place. We’re on our own.”

The despair that I heard in her voice echoed in my chest, a hollow thud against my ribs. I reached for her, pulling her close, feeling the tremble of her body against mine. There were no words, just the shared heartbeat between us, the silent acknowledgement of the dire straits we found ourselves in.

We lay in silence, each lost in our thoughts. The room was growing lighter now, the shadows retreating to the corners, as if they too were afraid of the coming day. After a while, when the weight of silence grew too heavy, I broke it.

“What are we supposed to do, Cora?” My voice sounded rough, even to my own ears. “How do we beat an enemy we can’t see, who can disappear and strike without warning, and who has dark, dangerous magic on their side?”

She sighed, a sound that seemed to carry all her sorrow. “I don’t know, Weston. I really don’t know.”

The defeat in her voice was a blow I felt in my gut. We had faced challenges before, but this was something else, something beyond physical enemies and territorial disputes. This was a shadow war, and we were groping in the dark for a light that seemed to have been extinguished.

I lay there, holding her, feeling the rise and fall of her chest, the warmth of her skin against mine. My mind raced, turning over every conversation, every encounter, every piece of lore I’d ever heard. There had to be something, some way to fight back, to protect our pack, our home.

The silence stretched on, filled with the unspoken fear that we might not find a way through this. That this time, the enemy might be too much for us. That we might not be enough.

I could see it in her eyes, the moment the word 'leave' settled between us like a heavy stone, the idea unimaginable, unutterable until now. "We may not be able to beat this enemy," I admitted, feeling the weight of our reality like chains around my limbs.

Cora's face tightened, a mix of fear and defiance sparking in her eyes. "What do you mean?"

I took a breath, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "The Unseen Pack, with whatever deeper, darker magic they've got backing them... it might be more than we can handle." It was the hardest truth I had ever spoken, and it hung in the air between us, thick and suffocating.

"So, what? We just wait around for them to pick us off? To kill us all?" Her voice rose, edged with a sharpness born of desperation.

"No," I shot back, the idea forming clearer now, a desperate gambit in a losing game. "We give up the forest. Let the Unseen Pack have it. Let them wallow in their darkness with no one left to terrorize."

She recoiled as if I'd struck her. "Leave? This is my home—my pack has lived here for generations—"

"And are you willing to let it die here too?" I cut in, the question harsh, necessary.

Cora's body seemed to fold in on itself, the devastation written in every line of her face. "But what if they don't stop? What if us leaving just gives them the ability to expand, to use the forest's magic to grow, to take over... everything? Everywhere?"

"That's the gamble," I said, the plan like a bitter pill. "At least we'll have time. Time to figure something out. But if we stay, the pack will be dead or changed before we can even strike back."

We stared at each other, the unsaid words swirling around us. She knew it as well as I did—we were at the end of our rope, hanging on by a fraying thread.

"You're talking about running," she whispered, the word anathema to everything we'd ever been taught.

"Not running," I corrected with a fierce shake of my head. "Regrouping. Surviving. We need to survive first, Cora. If we don't, there won't be a pack left to save."

I saw the conflict raging within her, the instinct to fight, to defend her home clashing with the knowledge that to stay might mean the annihilation of our kind.

"And the others?" she finally asked, voice barely audible. "Will they even agree to this?"

"They'll follow their Alpha," I said, though I wasn't quite as certain as I sounded. "They'll follow you, Cora. You've led them through so much already."

Her eyes searched mine, looking for the conviction, the hope that I was clinging to like a lifeline. "If we do this, if we leave... we might never come back. You get that, right? We could be giving up our home for good."

I nodded, feeling the finality of the decision like a door closing on an entire chapter of our lives. "I know. But it's better than giving up our lives and our home."

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