Page 38 of Alpha Unchained
Color shimmers in the mist as it dissipates, revealing skin, warmth, breath. Luke retrieves the bundle of clothes, tossing them to me with an easy flick.
“Still fast,” he says, watching me from the corner of his eye as I pull on the oversized hoodie and leggings.
“Still bossy,” I tease, raking a hand through my hair.
His smile is lazy, but there’s heat behind it. “You like it.”
I step into him, brushing my mouth against his. “You’re not wrong.”
He cups my jaw, holding me there. “I love you, Elena. Always have; always will.”
I lean in until our foreheads touch. “I know. That’s why I’m still here. I love you, too.”
This time, the words don’t feel like surrender. They feel like a beginning. Not a fragile truce—but a vow we’ve both bled for.
The morning sun spills over the ridge, gilding the valley in quiet gold as we stand together, skin still humming from the shift. For a long moment, we stay like that—wrapped in each other, in breath and heartbeat and the kind of stillness that only comes after walking through fire and coming out whole on the other side.
He kisses me then. Slow, deep, reverent. Not because he wants to claim me. Because he already has.
When we finally pull apart, I reach for his hand and lace our fingers together. “This is home now.”
Just below the ridge, the faint sound of voices drifts up through the trees—Rawlings and McKinleys arriving with tool belts slung low, arms full of lumber, and the easy cadence of people who know their way around a build. We watch as they move in small clusters, laughing and calling out to one another, already picking up where they’ve left off. No one waits for instructions. They just get to work, patching siding, installing new window frames, reinforcing beams.
The house isn’t finished. Not yet. But as more and more figures emerge from the woods, falling into a rhythm that is part labor, part shared hope, I know we aren’t building it alone.
Luke’s fingers tighten around mine, and this time, I don’t just feel his warmth.
I feel the future.
“Yeah.” He glances out over the hills, where smoke from morning cook fires already curls through the trees. “And it’s ours.”
I tip my head back and laugh—low and full, letting the sound spill out across the ridge like a vow made of sunlight and breath.
Luke’s voice joins mine a breath later.
It isn’t a warning. It’s a vow. A declaration of joy, of strength, of everything we’ve fought for and won.
And no one—no one—is ever taking it from us again. Not without a fight. Not while there’s breath in our bodies or the teeth in our wolves.
