The Forbidden Alpha's Mate

The blade was at his throat before he stopped running.

"Where is he."

"I don't - I swear-"

I pressed harder.

"Last chance."

"Voss, old mill, route Nine." Tears running down his face. "Please. I have kids."

I stepped back. "Then go home to them."

Gone before he hit the ground.

The retrieval contract came through a courier at sundown.

Neutral corridor, standard markers, In and out before sunrise. Simple job, good pay. The kind I'd been taking for five years because simple jobs didn't ask questions and good pay didn't require explanations.

I had built my entire life around things that didn't ask questions.

I checked the route twice. Moved out before dark.

The neutral corridor at night was exactly what it always was cold, quiet, and belonging to nobody dangerous enough to hold it. I moved fast through the trees, no light. I didn't need one. Five years of surviving alone had sharpened everything the grief hadn't taken.

I found the package at the marked location. Secured it. Turned back.

Checked my position against the tree markers.

Checked again.

My stomach dropped.

I was inside Crimson Ridge territory. Not clipping the edge, but a full quarter mile in, moving deeper. The markers had been shifted and repositioned just enough to walk me across without noticing.

Someone had moved them.

I turned immediately. Low and fast. If I moved now I could be back across the border before-

They came from three directions at once.

Six wolves, crimson Ridge markings. Moving with the patience of a patrol that had been waiting, not searching.

My knife was out before the first one reached me. Dropped two, broke a grip. Took an elbow to the jaw that split my lip open and snapped my head sideways. Tasted blood, kept moving and kept fighting.

Five years alone had taught me one thing above everything.

The moment you stopped was the moment you lost.

"Hold."

Every wolf froze.

And the world tilted.

Something inside my chest lurched sideways like a door blown off its hinges in a house I thought was empty. Not pain, not fear. Something I had no name for that moved through me before I could stop it.

I stopped breathing.

Genuinely stopped.

Until I turned and saw him stepping out of the trees and then I understood completely and wished I didn't.

He didn't command the clearing. He just stood in it and the clearing rearranged itself accordingly.

Tall, dark eyed. Moving like gravity was something that happened to other people. He walked into that clearing and the noise of the fight, the rain, the six wolves still surrounding me, all of it dropped away until there was only him.

His eyes found mine.

The bond hit.

The bond didn't feel like finding something. It felt like losing everything I'd built to avoid it.

It cracked through my sternum without permission. Sudden and total. My wolf, silent for five years, half buried under grief and survival, slammed forward with