The Alpha's Wrath

DECLAN

"They secured the girl, Alpha."

Gael’s voice cuts through the low rumble of the car engine. My Beta and only real friend keeps his eyes focused on the winding road, but I can hear the relief edging his tone.

"Send her to the house," I order, my voice rough, grating against my own throat. "Tell Lara to prep a room and take care of her."

My gaze stays locked on the approaching silhouette of Alpha Gideon's territory. That crumbling, pathetic excuse for a pack house sits at the end of the dirt road, looking like a rotting corpse in the morning light. My claws prick the leather of the passenger seat. I need to rip the doors off that shitty place and drag my mate out into the fresh air.

The image of her from last night burns behind my eyelids. She looked so fucking terrified. Her big, haunted eyes tracked every movement in that room, shrinking away from the shadows. If she had not begged me—if she hadn’t used that soft, seductive whisper to ask me to leave her there for just one more night—I would have burned the entire territory to the ground and carried her out over my shoulder.

My wolf paces back and forth inside my mind, scratching at the walls of my chest. I need to taste her again. My jaw clenches, teeth grinding together as I force myself to practice restraint. I push away the vivid memory of her bare skin pressed flush against mine, the way her hips moved, the slick heat of her core. She felt perfect. Heavenly.

I spent a grueling month hunting her down like a feral beast, tearing apart every lead, chasing every ghost. Finding her in this backwater Alpha’s house was a twist of fate I did not see coming.

Even now, the ghost of her sweet scent clings to my senses. It coats my tongue and fills my lungs, driving my instincts wild.

But a dark, festering frustration bubbles under my ribs. Why didn’t she react to me? She is my mate. The bond is a primal, undeniable force. Like me, she should have been driven by pure wolf nature. She should have thrown herself at me, begging to be under me, over me, wrapped around me. You do not just fight the mating pull. You cannot.

Yet last night, she acted like I was a stranger. She flinched. She kept her distance. I scoured her beautiful face for a single spark of recognition, a flash of memory from our night together, but there was nothing. Just stark, hollow fear.

"What do we do about Talia?" Gael asks, pulling me from my dark thoughts. He lets out a heavy sigh, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel. "She keeps blowing up the private line."

Talia. My ex-girlfriend. The second I caught my mate’s scent in that crowded club a month ago, I kicked Talia out of my house and my life without a second thought. Now she will not stop pestering my Beta, begging for another chance.

"Just tell her to fuck off," I say, waving a dismissive hand in the air. "If she values her life, she will lose my number."

"You are long gone, man," Gael chuckles, shaking his head with a dreamy, amused smirk. "But I am glad you finally found her. A month of dealing with your feral ass was enough for a lifetime."

Gael swings the car into the cracked driveway of Gideon's pack house. The tires crunch over the loose gravel, but I do not wait for the vehicle to stop moving. I shove the door open and hit the ground walking, my heavy boots slamming against the pavement.

I need her with me. Right fucking now. The hunger is a physical ache settling deep in my bones.

I march straight for the open double doors. Before I can cross the threshold, a nervous, sweating face blocks my path. It is the same pathetic excuse for a guard from yesterday. Ronan, or Ron, or whatever the hell his name is.

"Alpha Declan," he stammers, his eyes darting to my chest before looking at the ground. He tries to straighten his spine, faking a brave stance that crumbles instantly. "Uh, good morning."

I press my lips into a hard, unforgiving line. The air around him smells like sour anxiety. "Save the greetings. Bring her to me."

Ronan does not move. His boots stay rooted to the floorboards.

I take a slow, deep breath, searching the foyer for her scent. Nothing. The sweet, angelic fragrance is missing. My wolf snarls, the restless energy morphing into sharp, biting panic.

"Bring her to me," I repeat, my voice dropping an octave, layered with undeniable Alpha command. "Right now. I am not in the mood to play games with you."

"That's... that's the thing," Ronan stutters, running a trembling hand through his messy hair. He looks sick to his stomach.

"What. Is. The. Thing?" I push the words through my gritted teeth, stepping closer until my shadow engulfs him.

"Alpha Declan!" A breathless voice echoes down the hallway.

I look up and watch the short, squat woman hurrying toward us. Luna Vera. I shoot a look of pure disdain at her plastic, surgically enhanced face and the spilling cleavage she practically shoved in my face last night. I had zero interest then, and I have zero patience now.

"We..." She stops a few feet away, forcing a nervous, trembling smile. "We were waiting for you."

"Where is Sienna?" Her name rolls off my tongue smoothly, a beautiful sound meant for an angel, utterly out of place in this rotting house.

Luna Vera shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her fake smile faltering. "She—"

"She ran away last night."

The voice comes from the shadows behind the Luna. Alpha Gideon steps into the dim light of the foyer, his face grim, his posture defensive.

The words hit my brain, and the world stops. Then, it explodes.

Pure, unadulterated rage erupts from the deepest pit of my soul. I do not think. I just move. I use my wolf's speed, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second. My hand uncurls, shooting forward like a viper, and my fingers wrap tight around Gideon's thick throat.

I lift him off his feet and slam his back into the plaster wall. The impact sounds like a bomb going off. A massive web of cracks splinters outward from his shoulders, raining white dust over the floorboards.

Gideon gurgles, his hands flying up to claw uselessly at my forearm. His eyes bulge from their sockets, wide with sudden, suffocating terror. My grip is iron. The urge to snap his neck is a roaring fire in my ears.

"Alpha Declan!" Luna Vera gasps, shrieking as she runs toward us.

I snap my head to the side and throw her a lethal glare. My vision bleeds red. My wolf is right at the surface, ready to shred everyone in this room to ribbons. Vera sees my eyes glowing crimson. She hits the brakes, stumbling backward, her hands flying to her mouth in horror.

I turn my attention back to the struggling, pathetic Alpha in my grasp. His legs kick at the air. I see nothing but red. I should rip his throat out right now for losing my mate. He is useless. He is weak.

"Please, Alpha Declan!" Vera pleads, tears streaking through her heavy makeup. "She was not worth this fight! Please!"

Just a little more pressure. Just a fraction of an inch, and I will crush his windpipe. I watch his face turn a mottled shade of purple. My wolf roars for blood. I release my grip with a disgusted scoff and throw Gideon down. He crashes against the baseboards, sliding to the floor in a coughing, gasping heap. The cracked plaster crumbles further, leaving a gaping hole in the wall.

"We should have told you before," Vera whispers, dropping to her knees beside her husband as Gideon's incompetent, weak son rushes into the hallway to help him up.

I turn to face the cunning Luna, reigning in my feral aura. I force my facial muscles to relax, putting on a cold, dead mask of absolute calmness. It is the face I wear right before I end a life.

"What is it?" I ask, my tone eerily flat.

Vera swallows hard, her eyes darting to the floor. "Sienna... she was a wolfless girl. She never shifted when she turned eighteen."

The confession hits me like a physical blow. A wolfless mate. The shock ripples through my chest, trying to dismantle the future I have been building in my head since I found her.

"She was not worth your money," Vera continues, gaining a fraction of confidence, mistaking my silence for agreement. "She couldn't bear your children if you wanted to turn her into a breeder. She couldn't become a warrior if that's what you intended. She couldn't even take your knot. She was useless to you, Alpha Declan. You would have killed her the moment you got too close to her. Her human body would have shattered."

Is this bitch trying to fuck with me?

My jaw tightens. A cold, dark amusement mixes with my seething anger. I got more than close to her. I fucked her. I drove into her hard, emptied my load deep inside her tight core, and held her sweating, trembling body until she was ready to let me go. She took every inch of me and survived.

"You better tell me every single detail you know about her," I state, my voice dropping to a lethal, quiet register. "Or you better find her yourself. You will deliver her to me, or I promise you, my next visit will not be a conversation."

Vera pales. Gideon stops coughing and stares up at me. They understand the threat. It hangs heavy and toxic in the air.

If they do not bring Sienna to me, I will slaughter every single wolf on this land. I will turn this pathetic pack territory into a graveyard of rotting corpses. And I will not lose a wink of sleep over it.

Once I have my mate back, I will figure out the rest. Even if she is wolfless. Even if my pack demands a strong, dominant she-wolf for a Luna and despises weakness. Maybe she cannot hold the title, but if she can survive my bed and bear a child, she will be mine. I will keep her.

I turn on my heel, ready to walk out the door, deploy my best trackers, and launch an aggressive manhunt.

"The whore was pregnant with a bastard's child."

The voice belongs to Cole, Gideon's worthless son. He spits the words out like venom from the floor.

My boots freeze. Every muscle in my body locks up. My lungs stop pulling in air. The foyer goes dead silent, the sound of my own heartbeat deafening in my ears.

I slowly turn my head, my red eyes locking onto Cole. "Pregnant?"

"Yeah!" Cole sneers, emboldened by his father's presence. "She is a slut. She goes around sleeping with random men. She got knocked up by one of them and wanted an abortion. Our pack doctor refused to do it."

"I am sure she wanted to do the procedure in some other town," Vera blurts out, her voice trembling but eager to justify their failure. "She wanted out because we tried to stop her from killing an innocent child. That is the kind of girl she is, Alpha. A cold-hearted slut. It's a blessing you didn't get to take her, Alpha Declan."

The math clicks in my head with the force of a thunderclap. A month ago. The club. The one night stand. No scent of any other male on her when I found her.

Each disgusting word pouring from Vera's mouth acts like gasoline on an open flame. The fire behind my ribs blazes into a blinding inferno.

My child. She is carrying my baby.

"Find her," I command, my voice a demonic, vibrating growl that shakes the dust from the ceiling. "Bring her to me the second you do. I will decide her fate."

I do not wait for their response. I spin around and storm out of the house, the wood of the doorframe splintering as my shoulder clips it. I stalk across the gravel, a suffocating cloud of Alpha fury radiating from my pores.

I rip the passenger door open, drop into the leather seat, and slam it shut. The heavy bang rocks the entire vehicle.

"Fucking Goddess!" Gael yelps, his hands gripping the steering wheel tight as the sheer force of my anger floods the confined space. "Alpha Declan, what the fuck just happened?"

I stare straight ahead at the tree line, my chest heaving. "Find her," I grate out, my jaw locked so tight my teeth ache.

Gael's green eyes widen in shock. "Who? Your mate?"

"She ran away with my kid," I seethe, the words burning my throat. "And she is trying to get an abortion. We must find her before she does it."

Gael drops his jaw, his face going pale. "Seriously?"

"I will kill this fucking girl if she lays a single finger on my child," I fume, my claws digging deep into the dashboard, piercing the thick material. My wolf is howling, frantic and lethal. "She has no idea what she is doing. She has no idea who she is dealing with. She is so dead when I get my hands on her."