Page 4 of Alpha Unchained
I freeze, every muscle pulled tight. Pack sentries—my own cousins, probably, making their late-night rounds. If they catch my scent as a human, word will spread through the Hollow before dawn that I’m back. But the scent of one of their own, a wolf-shifter, will not raise an alarm. I crouch behind a downed log; the moonlight splintered through twisted branches. My skin prickles, the wolf under my skin snarling to be free.
I glance around, making sure I’m alone, and strip down, stashing my clothes in a hollow beneath the roots of an old maple. Shifting destroys anything you’re wearing—a hard lesson learned young. Once I’m down to bare skin, I flex my fingers—one last tether to the man—and let go, surrendering to the pull in my blood.
Mist swells up from the ground, thick and charged, swirling around me in a living current. It crawls up my legs, seeping into my bones, until the entire world contracts to the thud of my heartbeat and the wild urge straining under my skin. The air snaps with color—shards of blue and gold, jagged and bright, flickering through the fog. I don’t fight it. I open to it, every muscle loosening as the animal takes over.
There’s no pain—only a jolt, like lightning breaking through a storm. Flesh and bone go weightless. For one suspended breath, I am nothing but hunger and instinct, senses flaring open. Every sound is sharper. Every scent floods in: earth, leaf mold, the musk of distant deer, the sharper tang of my bloodline nearby.
As the mist thickens, my body changes—a surge of sensation under the skin, heat spilling down my spine. In the space of a breath, shape blurs. My hands are gone, with paws in their place. My jaw lengthens, lungs expand, the world expanding with me. It’s over almost before it starts, the shift near-instantaneous as the mist wraps and then releases. When it fades, I am wolf—huge, dark, every nerve alive and burning with life. The world explodes into vivid detail: the tick of beetle legs in the moss, the wingbeat of an owl overhead, the distant thunder of hooves far off in the hollow.
But it’s the scent I care about—two wolves, close, upwind. I crouch lower, pressing myself into the damp moss. My heart pounds so loud I swear the ground vibrates with it.
But underneath the familiar scent of moss and pine, something else slithers through the air—gun oil, sweat, fear. Not from my cousins. Uninvited outsiders don’t belong on these mountains. The wolves pass, oblivious. I catch a snatch of their low voices, one laughing about the moonshine run, the other grumbling about the cold. My cousin Jerry and some kid I don’t know. They’re hunting for trouble and have no idea it’s about to find them.
I let the wolf in me bleed into the shadows, masking my scent, becoming nothing but mist and forest. I wait until their voices fade, then ease out of the hollow, keeping low.
Shifting back comes with a rush—skin, bone, breath, all tumbling into place. I stagger upright behind the old fence, naked, adrenaline pulsing through every fiber of my being. For a moment, I stand in the cold, sucking in sharp air, every nerve raw and exposed. Then I kneel, digging out my clothes from under the roots and pulling them on. The familiar fabric grounds me; the act of getting dressed is one of the only things that reminds me I’m still human enough to need it.
For a moment, I just breathe. The air is sharp and alive. I feel more animal than man.
It isn’t the Hollow alone that strips away every pretense—it’s Elena. No one has ever made me feel so raw, so exposed, so hungry to be seen for what I am, good and bad. She gets under my skin the way the Hollow does, only deeper, leaving me bare and wanting in ways I can’t hide from, no matter how hard I try.
I press forward, hugging the tree line. My mind spins: Elena. The woman I claimed, the one who carries my mark at her throat, my wolf in her blood now—because of me. My baby. My family. My sister Kate, always trying to fix what’s broken. Waylon, grinning like the devil at a poker table, stirring up pack politics. And in the middle of it all—Elena. Pregnant. Changed. Alone. The knowledge is a blade, twisting deeper every time I breathe.
I reach the edge of town just as the sky shifts from bruised purple to gray. A thin veil of mist hugs the ground, streaked with gold, catching the first hint of sunrise. I lean into the familiar scent of earth and rain, memory and longing thick in my blood.
A memory claws its way forward: Elena’s voice—sweet and sharp—laughing as she tossed her keys onto the bookshop counter. The way she melted beneath my hands, the heat of hermouth against my neck. She was still asleep when I left—hair tangled, lips parted, her skin marked by me. When she woke, all that remained was a note, my scent on the sheets, and the empty space I’d left behind.
I left her behind because I thought it was the only way to keep her safe. I told myself it was out of love, that staying would only drag her deeper into danger. But I’ve been running from the truth, and now it’s catching up fast.
I move along the alley behind Main, blending with the shadows. It feels like every light in town is pointed straight at my soul. A dog barks, sharp and sudden. I freeze. The sound fades, replaced by the low rumble of tires over cracked pavement.
I pull my hood up, bury my hands in my pockets, and keep moving. I’m not ready to face her. Not yet. I need answers. I need to know who’s circling, who’s talking. I need to know what my family wants with my child—and how far they’ll go to get it.
I wait behind the bakery. A flicker of movement catches my eye—a shape slipping through the back door of the mercantile, boots silent, face hidden under a battered cap. My sister, Kate. Always in the middle of it all.
I move to intercept, silent as a rumor.
“Luke,” she hisses, spinning on her heel as I step out of the shadows. She smells like fresh rain and trouble, hair wild, green eyes sharp as broken glass.
“Miss me, Red?” I keep my voice low, almost smiling.
She shoves me—hard. “You bastard. You’ve got some nerve, showing up now. After what you did—after what you left.”
I take the hit, let it burn. “You heard?”
“Everyone’s heard. You should’ve stayed gone, but you don’t know how to leave anything alone, do you?”
“I couldn’t. Not this time.”
Kate glares at me. “You want to talk about it? Or just make my life harder?”
“Both,” I say, straightening. “The pack’s watching for Elena. Why?”
She crosses her arms, eyes tight with worry. “Waylon’s stirring things up. Says that baby is the heir and belongs to the pack. He says Elena’s unfit—because she’s not one of us.”
I feel a snarl rising. “She’s more wolf than half the men in that compound.”
“You going to do something about it this time, Luke?” Her voice is a challenge, hard and sharp.
