Page 5 of The Forbidden Alpha

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When the ivory towers and castle gates were swallowed by the pines, I closed my eyes.

The woods were the only place the migraine didn’t follow. Here, the air was sharp with the aroma of damp earth and pine needles—and something else. An ancient, breathing pressure. My senses were stretched thin, but beneath my ribs, a restless shadow stirred.

I pulled the tie from my hair and let the chocolate strands free as I ran. I felt her the strongest here. I didn’t stop until I reached the hidden pool—a fracture in the earth where the water ran black and motionless. It was the only corner of the world where I could peacefully exist.

I dropped my bag and collapsed onto the moss, the cold ground a mercy against my skin. Even out here, I didn’t feel entirely alone; the forest breathed with me, a thousand tiny heartbeats thrumming in the undergrowth. But it was a different kind of company. The trees didn’t demand my loyalty, and the water didn’t ask for my soul. This was mine, and mine alone.

Above me, the canopy fractured the sunlight into jagged shards of gold and blue. The wind hissed through the branches, a low, rhythmic sound that mimicked the battlefield in my head. For a moment, I wasn’t a stray or a pet. I just was—and the forest didn’t ask anything more of me than that.

A pair of rabbits darted through the ferns, their pulse a frantic thrum. My heartbeat slowed. I could have stayed there until the sun died, letting the moss grow over me, but the sudden snapping of twigs cut through the peace.

I’m alone.

I belong.

One day, I promised myself. I’d find a place where the walls weren’t so pristine and there were no debts. I didn’t know where it was or who built it. It existed somewhere else, and it was mine.

I sat up, the weight of the dreams settling back onto my shoulders. There was a scent that eluded me. Not pine, nor the damp of the pool. Only a dark, intoxicating sweetness. It slipped before I could grasp it.

I reached for that restless shadow beneath my ribs, but it didn’t stir. Whatever she craved, it wasn’t here. I needed to leave my sanctuary. The ominous walls of the Academy called—a place designed to remind me I was a wolf in name only. It was time to pretend I was a woman who didn’t have a war raging inside her.

Chapter 2

Before

Ten-year-old Adea

My father was the Alpha of the Ice Kingdom, and my mother was his Luna. His blood soaked the grass of our territory.

I knew every face in that circle. I’d grown up breathing them in—wood smoke, pine, freedom. A happy pack was a sound too, a low hum at the back of your skull that you didn’t notice until the day it stopped.

The challenge came from a wolf named Davien during my birthday month. A mountain of a man with cold blue eyes stepped into our circle; his presence carried a finality heavy enough to feel long before the first blow landed. My dad accepted the challenge. He was fast, but Davien was an unmoving force.

The crunch of Davien’s nose shattering under my father’s fist sent a surge of pride through my chest. I’d fist-pumped the air while my little sister, Ava, copied my movements, her high-pitched cheers echoing mine. We were princesses; we didn’t know crowns could be crushed.

Then the mountain moved.

The shift was instant. Davien didn’t just win; he dismantled my father, peeling away his dignity until the Alpha was forced to crawl. When the words were spoken—the stripping of rank—the pack bond withered, root and all, in an instant.

We found refuge in a human city, a suffocating grid of concrete where the air smelled of exhaust instead of pines. The silence that came with being unlinked was an ache in my chest, but watching my parents was worse. My father, who used to run a kingdom, spent his nights hunched over a glowing laptop, staring at construction spreadsheets. My mother’s brilliant golden eyes grew dull as she forced a polite smile at a local farmers’ market, paying a human vendor for fruit she used to forage. Their wolves paced beneath their skin, trapped behind drywall and cut off from their community.

Dad told us stories about the construction sites while Mom cooked things we had to pay double the cost for. We ate at a table that didn’t vibrate with the pack bond, in a kitchen that smelled of dish soap instead of home, and we pretended the hum of the refrigerator was enough.

“Just wait until you see this one,” he’d told us, his eyes bright with the excitement of his latest project—an internet cafe he’d built with his own calloused hands. Even with his sunken features and withered hair, it was a testament to his survival, proof he could build a life even when his biology screamed it was all over.

When others would have gone rabid—he remained solid for us.

We were on our way to his masterpiece when it happened.

My mother’s floral scent curdled. My father’s hands left the wheel as his eyes found mine in the rearview. The semi-truck didn’t just hit our car; it erased my family. I remember my mother’s hand reaching back toward us—fingers spread, instinct before thought—and then the world became sound. Metal and glass and the absence of my sister’s voice, all at once.

I woke up to the steady heartbeat of a hospital monitor, needle in my arm, and a tube lodged down my throat. It tasted of latex and old blood, a sterile invasion that kept the scream trapped in my lungs.

The silence was back. But this time, it was a void and I was the only soul left to inhabit it.

“She’s coming to. Hey, honey?”