Alpha Of The Blackmoor Woods

I wasn't supposed to be in Blackmoor Forest that night.

I knew the stories. Everyone did. You don't cross into Dravon territory. You don't breathe in Dravon territory. You certainly don't bleed in it - because blood draws wolves, and the wolves in these woods answered to one man.

Kael Dravon.

Alpha. Predator. The kind of man that entire packs moved their borders to avoid.

But the nine men behind me with silver-tipped blades didn't care about pack borders. And I was out of options.

So I ran.

My feet hit frozen ground and I didn't stop. I couldn't. My lungs were on fire, my left side screaming from where Gregor had caught me with his blade two miles back - shallow cut, not deep enough to slow me, deep enough to bleed everywhere. The trees blurred past. The boundary marker - a carved stone wolf head with hollow eyes - appeared and I leaped over it without breaking stride.

Behind me, the footsteps stopped.

Just like that.

I heard Gregor swear. Loud. Ugly.

"She crossed the line."

Silence from the others.

"Leave her," someone said. "Dravon wolves will finish her."

Their footsteps retreated.

I slowed to a stop against an oak tree and pressed my hand to my side. Breathed. Counted. Five seconds, ten, thirty - nobody followed.

Okay.

Okay.

I was alive. Temporarily. I'd traded nine killers for a territory full of wolves who answered to a man whose name alone made pack Alphas nervous. Great trade, Zara. Really excellent decision-making.

I pushed off the tree.

And walked directly into the largest wolf I had ever seen in my life.

Not metaphorically. Literally. It stepped out of the dark like the dark had made it - black fur, silver eyes, completely, terrifyingly still. It didn't snarl. Didn't snap. Just stood there and looked at me with the patient certainty of something that had never once in its life needed to prove it was dangerous.

My knife was in my hand before I thought about it.

The wolf looked at the knife.

Then back at me.

I had the horrifying feeling it was judging me.

"Nice wolf," I said. My voice came out steady. Years of practice. "I'm just passing through."

It shifted.

I'd seen wolves shift before. It never got easier to watch - that violent rearrangement of bone and muscle, the sound like something the body was never designed to make. I kept my eyes open because flinching felt like losing.

When it was done, a man stood where the wolf had been.

Tall. Dark hair pushed back from a face that was all sharp angles and harder edges. Eyes still silver - that didn't change, with high-blooded wolves. Built like someone who'd been fighting since before it was a choice. He was wearing dark clothing that somehow looked completely undamaged despite the fact that he'd just been a wolf.

He looked at me the way I looked at threats. Like he was already three steps ahead and waiting for me to catch up.

"You're bleeding on my territory," he said.

Low voice. Quiet. The kind of quiet that meant he'd never needed to raise it.

"I noticed," I said. "I'll bleed somewhere else."

I moved to go around him. His hand closed around my wrist.

Not hard. That was the thing that threw me. Men who grabbed usually grabbed to hurt. This was just - firm. Like a door that had decided to stay shut.

I looked at his hand. Then at him.

"Let go," I said.

"You're losing blood."

"That's my business."

"You made it mine when you crossed my border." His silver eyes moved to the tree line I'd come from. "Nine?"

"Started as nine."

"They'll add more by morning."

"I'll be gone by morning."

"Where?" He said it simply. No mockery. Like he genuinely wanted the answer. "You've been running for four days. You have no pack, no allies, and a bounty on your head that I heard about two territories away." His gaze came back to mine. "Where exactly are you going?"

My jaw tightened.

I hated that he was right. I hated the way he said it - not to humiliate me, just stating facts, like he was reading a map out loud. It was worse somehow than if he'd been cruel about it.

"That," I said, "is also my business."

He looked at me for a long moment.

His nostrils flared.

Something happened to his face - fast, violent, gone so quickly I almost thought I'd imagined it. Like a man who'd just touched something hot and immediately decided not to react to it. Every muscle locked back into place. His expression went smooth and unreadable.

But his hand on my wrist tightened. Just slightly. Involuntary.

"Let go of me," I said again. Quiet. Dangerous.

"What's your name?"

"None of your-"

"What. Is your name."

Not a question that time.

I felt it move through the air - that particular frequency that Alphas carried when they pushed authority. I'd felt it before. I'd always hated it. The way it pressed against your instincts, tried to reach into your spine and straighten it whether you wanted it to or not.

I straightened my spine on my own.

"Zara," I said. "And you don't get to use that voice on me."

Something moved in his eyes. Something that looked - just for a second - like it might have been surprise.

"Kael," he said. Like I didn't know.

"I know who you are."

"Then you know what I'm capable of."

"Yes," I said. "Which is why I'm telling you clearly - let go of my wrist, or this gets complicated."

He looked down at the knife still in my free hand. Then back up.

Let go.

I stepped back. Kept my eyes on him.

"I'm not your enemy," he said.

"I don't know what you are," I said. "And I stopped trusting what I don't know a long time ago."

I turned to walk into the trees.

"They'll kill you before sunrise." His voice followed me. Still quiet. Still certain. "You know that."

I stopped walking.

I didn't turn around.

"There's a room," he said. "One night. No conditions."

The forest was dark ahead of me. Cold. Empty.

Behind me was the most dangerous Alpha on the continent.

I laughed. Short and humorless.

"No conditions," I repeated. "Nobody offers anything without conditions."

"I do."

I turned around.

He was watching me with those silver eyes and that locked-down face and I thought - this man is hiding something enormous behind all that control. I didn't know what. I didn't want to know what.

But I was bleeding. And tired. And fourteen men would be at that border by morning.

"One night," I said.

He nodded.

I followed him into the dark.

God help me.