Chapter 10 THE SHADOW ALPHA

The silver light was dying.

It bled from the trees, from my skin, from the sky itself.

Whatever figure I had seen had now disappeared. Every single one of them. But I was sure I wasn't imagining things.

I lay on the forest floor, every nerve burned raw. The cold seeped into my bones until even my heartbeat felt distant, muffled beneath the weight of exhaustion. My breaths came shallow and uneven, the air thick with smoke and the faint sweetness of scorched sap. Even Astra was silent—curled in some hidden corner of my mind, whimpering softly like a frightened child.

I didn’t know how long I had been there, sprawled between the roots of the old oaks, but the moon had already begun to fade behind the mist. Time felt strange—thick and sluggish—like the world itself had forgotten to turn.

The woods were too still.

Too watchful.

It felt like the forest had seen everything and was now holding its breath.

Then—I heard them.

Footsteps.

Low. Deliberate. More than one.

Boots crunching over charred leaves, breaking the silence with sharp, steady rhythm.

My instincts screamed to move, to run, but my body was no longer my own. I tried to push up, but my arms trembled uselessly. My limbs felt heavy, foreign, as though they belonged to someone else entirely. The power that had filled me, the burning silver that had once roared through my veins, was gone—leaving behind only ashes.

Branches rustled.

Shadows broke through the mist.

And then they appeared.

Men in armor.

Wolves cloaked in metal and darkness.

They fanned out in a half circle around me, their movements crisp and silent, their presence heavy with authority. Their armor shimmered like spilled oil, the faintest glow of crimson sigils etched along the plates. Each rune pulsed in rhythm with something unseen—like a second heartbeat.

The scent hit me before the recognition did.

Smoke. Iron. Blood.

Not SilverMist. Not familiar.

Blackridge.

My pulse stumbled.

The name alone scraped across my nerves like glass.

One of the soldiers crouched beside me, his eyes narrowing as he studied my face, then the faint glow that still lingered beneath my skin. “She’s alive,” he muttered, disbelief softening his tone. “Barely.”

Another man stepped closer, his boots crunching beside my head. “Should we finish her off?”

The first man hesitated. “No. Look at her chest.”

A rough hand tilted my chin upward, forcing my gaze toward the faint shimmer between my collarbones. The mark—the one that had once burned black with Kael’s rejection—was glowing again, soft and silver, pulsing like a fragile heartbeat.

“She’s marked by Moonfire,” the soldier breathed, awe threading through his voice. “The Alpha must see this.”

The Alpha.

The word sent a chill through me. My throat burned as I tried to speak, but only a rasp escaped. “Stay… away…”

A growl cut through the clearing—low, deep, and commanding enough to still every man where he stood.

It wasn’t just sound; it was presence. A weight that pressed against the air, instinctive and primal. Every wolf there responded the same way—backs straightening, eyes dropping, hearts bowing.

The mist shifted.

And then I saw him.

He stepped out of the haze like a shadow given form—tall, broad-shouldered, moving with a slow, deliberate grace that made the world around him shrink. The air bent in his wake, colder, sharper, the kind of chill that whispered danger and reverence at once.

His hair was dark as midnight, framing a face carved from control and silence. And then there were his eyes—

Silver-gray.

Not soft like moonlight, but hard, glinting like forged steel.

He looked at me once. Just once.

And in that single glance, the world tilted.

There was no pity there. No curiosity.

Only assessment.

Like a god deciding if a mortal was worth saving—or destroying.

He stopped a few feet away, gaze sweeping the ruined clearing. “What happened here?”

“Alpha Damien,” one of the soldiers said quickly, bowing his head. “We found her like this. SilverMist scent, but… her power—it’s unlike anything we’ve seen.”

“Moonfire,” Damien said softly, cutting him off.

The word rolled off his tongue like a memory, not a question.

My heart tripped over itself.

He knew. Somehow, he knew.

He crouched beside me, close enough that I could feel the static of his presence, dark and steady, humming beneath his skin. The power in him wasn’t wild like mine—it was contained, chained by sheer will.

His gaze lingered on my glowing mark, then lifted to meet my eyes.

The space between us crackled with something unspoken.

“You shouldn’t be alive,” he said finally, voice low and smooth, carrying the weight of something ancient.

“Maybe…” I managed a trembling breath. “…I’m not.”

For a heartbeat, something flickered across his face—too brief to name. Not surprise, not pity. Recognition, maybe. Or curiosity he refused to admit.

He didn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth twitched, like someone hearing the first line of a story they already knew the ending to.

The silence between us stretched. Even the mist seemed to still, caught in the tension of that moment. Then, without another word, he rose to his full height.

“Take her to Blackridge,” he ordered.

The command was simple, absolute. The kind that left no room for question.

Hands closed around my arms, firm but not cruel. I tried to resist, to summon even a spark of the power that had burned through me before, but there was nothing left. My strength was gone, hollowed out by the light that had once consumed me.

The world blurred. The soldiers’ faces became streaks of black and silver. My head lolled as they lifted me, and my body sagged between them like a broken doll.

Through the haze, I looked toward him again.

He stood where I had last seen him—tall, unmoving, framed in the pale shimmer of dying moonlight. His gaze followed me, unreadable. The silver in his eyes glinted faintly, not with compassion, but calculation.

The air between us still hummed with the ghost of that light, as though some invisible thread connected us—a thread neither of us had chosen.

The last thing I saw before darkness swallowed me was him—

The stranger with eyes like stormlight, standing against the silver mist, cold and unyielding.

The Shadow Alpha.