Fuck.
“You’re Alpha Merric.” His voice is shot to hell, probably from screaming himself raw.
“Yeah.” I shut the door, plant myself where he can see all six-foot-five, two-forty pounds of what he’s asking for help. Let him measure what he’s getting into.
“My mother said if things went sideways, I should find you.” He’s watching my face like he’s looking for something specific. “Said you were the strongest alpha in the south. Said you’d keep your word even if it meant bleeding for it.”
My chest goes tight. “Your mother.”
“Brenna Corvus.” His voice catches on her name. “Ravenclaw Pack. You knew her.”
Knew. Past tense.
Double fuck.
“Where is she?” I ask, but I can already smell the answer on him—grief so thick it’s practically another presence in the room.
“Dead. Two years.” He swallows hard. “Raiders hit our settlement. Ma held them off, bought time for the rest to run. They surrounded her. Twenty to one.” He stops, sucks air into his lungs. “There was an explosion. Her magic and theirs colliding. The whole forest went up in white fire. When it cleared…” His hands fist in the sheets. “Nothing left. Couldn’t even bury her proper.”
Dead. Brenna’s dead.
The grief hits like an unexpected sledgehammer, forcing the air from my lungs. Eighteen years apart, and it still fucking hurts.
Goddammit, Brenna.
Of course she died fighting. Died protecting her people with magic and fury. Exactly how she would’ve wanted it, if she had to go.
Doesn’t make it hurt any less.
“Shit,” I say. “I’m sorry.” And I mean it down to my bones.
“Syndicate grabbed me six months back.” His voice steadies, pushing through. “They wanted what my family has. The old magic. Said they could extract it, weaponize it, sell it to the highest bidder.” His knuckles go white. “They tried everything. For six months, they tried.”
Magic. Of course. Wolf magic’s rarer than dragon tears these days. Most packs either lost it or buried it out of fear. But Ravenclaw kept the old ways alive. And those abilities—shifting beyond limits, reading the future in bone and blood, pulling lightning from clear skies—that’s exactly the kind of power Vex and his psychopaths would kill for.
“You want to go home,” I state.
“What’s left of it.” He meets my eyes straight on, no flinching. Pure Brenna in that look. “We’re scattered. Weak. The other packs still call us outcasts, won’t recognize our territory. Raiders pick us off one by one. Without my mother…” He trails off. “We need protection. My mother said if anyone would stand for us when nobody else would, it’d be you.”
She said that. After I abandoned her. After I chose politics over her.
My wolf’s rumbling, not in threat but recognition. This is Brenna’s boy. Her blood. Her legacy.
And she’s dead because nobody protected her people. Because eighteen years ago, I was too much of a coward to tell the elders to fuck off.
Not making that mistake twice.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
Seventeen.
Fucking seventeen years old.
I left eighteen years ago.
Is he…?
