The Alpha's Regret

*Rowan*

I saw her.

The image burned into the back of my eyelids, a branding iron searing my mind the moment I blinked. I saw Lyra again for the first time in five agonizing months, and it was unmitigated torture.

Ever since that horrific afternoon when I stood in the cold marble foyer and formally rejected my true fated mate, her anguished, tear-streaked face had relentlessly haunted every single one of my waking thoughts. The raw, bleeding pain in her eyes, the shattered gasp that escaped her lips as the bond severed—it ruined me every single day. The phantom pain of her broken heart had plagued my nightmares night after night, a ghost I could never escape, clawing at my sanity while I slept.

But then, walking into the Swiftriver Pack kitchen today and seeing her standing there brought a blinding, beautiful light back into my desolate, suffocating world.

She was breathtaking. Somehow, she was even more beautiful than my fractured memory allowed me to believe. Her silky, midnight-black hair cascaded down past her waist, and my fingers twitched with the overwhelming need to bury my hands in those dark strands. She looked thinner, more fragile than the girl who had left, but her presence struck me like a physical blow to the chest. I wanted nothing more than to drown in the deep ocean of her blue eyes. I wanted to trace the soft curve of her lips—lips that made my blood run hot and my mind race with the filthy things I wanted to do to her.

But I was cursed. Cursed with the agonizing knowledge that I couldn't reach out. I couldn't touch her. I had foolishly, irreparably bound myself to Odette as my chosen mate, and it was all the catastrophic result of my own drunken, reckless stupidity.

The memory of that night at the academy clawed at my throat. My friends and I were celebrating. I had just received my touch of the Alpha. The power surged through my veins, making me stronger, faster, sharper. I was officially an Alpha, and in that intoxicating haze of celebration and alcohol, my judgment was fatally clouded. All I wanted was to call Lyra. I had been dying to hear her voice for six years. Instead, the liquor drowned my senses, and Odette appeared in the dim light.

Her midnight-black hair and striking blue eyes cruelly tricked my heavily intoxicated brain. In that dim, sweaty club, surrounded by the thumping bass and the cheers of my friends, I thought I was holding the woman I truly loved. Even drunk out of my mind, my soul should have known the difference. I shouldn't have been able to mistake another woman for my fated mate, but I danced with Odette anyway, losing myself in a blur of music, cheap liquor, and fatal decisions. The rest of the night faded into black, leaving me with a crushing hangover and zero memory of the sin I committed.

Just a month later, when it was finally time to go home, Odette showed up at my dorm room door. She stood there with a sweet smile, carrying the ultimate consequence. She was pregnant.

Bound by the unwavering, honorable duty ingrained in me since birth, I made the devastating choice to reject Lyra to provide for the child. It was a horrific punishment that shattered us both. The moment the agonizing rejection left my lips, my inner wolf howled in pure agony, a sound that tore my soul to shreds. Then, he retreated into a terrifying, impenetrable silence. He refused to communicate with me. He refused to shift, locking me out of my own mind. He was utterly disgusted by the choice I made, punishing me by leaving me hollowed out, cold, and alone in my own body. I hadn't shifted once since the day Lyra ran away.

Now, instead of stepping up to lead, I pathetically lingered here in my childhood home at the Ember Pack. I constantly delayed my permanent move to the Moonshadow Pack, inventing weak excuses to stick around just a little longer. In truth, I was barely surviving day by day on the rapidly fading remnants of the sweet scent Lyra had left behind in the floorboards. That faint trace of honey and strawberries was the only thing keeping me from losing my mind. Her scent soothed the raging beast inside me, even when he refused to speak.

I marched back into the Ember Pack house, the disastrous confrontation at Swiftriver still echoing loudly in my skull. I slammed the heavy front door shut behind me, the loud thud vibrating through the foyer walls and rattling the framed pictures in the hallway.

"And where the hell have you been?"

The shrill, demanding voice grated against my fraying nerves before I even took off my boots. Odette stood near the bottom of the staircase, her posture rigid, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. She spent most of her time locked in her room, a self-imposed exile, only descending to demand that I share her bed. A request I denied every single time. I couldn't stomach the thought of touching her. I simply wouldn't.

"None of your damn business," I hissed, the words laced with raw venom.

I carelessly dropped my heavy jacket onto the arm of the couch. Bree sat quietly on the cushions nearby, the television glowing in the dim living room, but she kept her gaze fixed on the screen, shrinking back into the upholstery to avoid the crossfire.

Odette marched down the final step, her blue eyes blazing with an ugly, consuming jealousy.

"You went to see her, didn't you?" she shrieked, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "You went to try and get her back! I am your Luna! You should respect me. I am the mother of your child!"

I stopped in my tracks, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached as her shrill sense of entitlement drilled into my skull. I slowly lowered my gaze to her visibly swollen stomach. Deep down, a logical part of my brain knew with undeniable certainty that I would love the innocent pup eventually. It wasn't the child's fault. My father used to tell me stories about the bond he felt with me before I was even born, a connection that tied a father to his pup.

But right now, looking at the woman who carried my child, I felt nothing.

There was no natural pull. There was only an unnatural, hollow, icy void where a fierce, protective fatherly bond should naturally reside. Odette knew it, too. It was a chilling reality between us. Perhaps the bond was missing because she wasn't my true mate. Perhaps it was because her pregnancy was the very reason I destroyed the woman I was actually meant to be with.

"You’re not my Luna yet," I replied with lethal, dismissive coldness, ignoring her rapidly rising, hysterical fury.

Her face flushed crimson, her mouth opening to scream another accusation, but a sudden movement on the couch cut her off.

Bree suddenly perked up, abandoning the movie on the screen. Her bright eyes sparked with desperate hope as she looked between me and the doorway.

"Wait, you went to see Lyra?" Bree asked breathlessly. "She's coming home?"

Before I could even formulate an answer, the heavy front door slammed open again, the wood cracking hard against the wall. Kaelen stormed furiously into the room, his boots thudding heavily against the hardwood floor.

He didn't hesitate. Kaelen immediately stepped in front of his mate, shielding Bree from the crossfire, and locked his furious gaze on me. His icy blue eyes looked so agonizingly much like Lyra's that my breath hitched. We had been inseparable as kids, brothers in everything but blood. Now, looking at him, I only saw hatred. He rightfully blamed me for driving his sister away, for forcing her to refuse all visitors for the last five months. The crushing guilt in my chest acknowledged that he wasn't wrong.

"Who the fuck gave you permission to go for Lyra?" Kaelen demanded fiercely.

He discarded all brotherly history. He discarded all Alpha formalities, speaking to me with a venomous disrespect that would have gotten any other wolf killed on the spot.

My newly awakened, volatile Alpha energy fiercely flared in my chest in response to his direct challenge. Even with my wolf giving me the silent treatment, the raw, ancient power of my rank demanded submission. The air in the living room grew thick, the sheer pressure of my aura making the glass on the coffee table vibrate.

"I didn't need permission," I growled, my voice vibrating with power. "I am not your beta. I am your equal."

Kaelen didn't flinch. His expression remained a mask of pure, unwavering ice.

"You had no right," Kaelen snapped, stepping closer, closing the distance between us until the air crackled with hostility. "Declan said she was getting better. Now she seems worse."

The mere mention of his name acted like a spark to a powder keg. My Alpha energy was instantaneously matched and eclipsed by a sudden, blinding surge of jealousy that robbed me of my breath. The agonizing image of Lyra hiding behind Declan's broad shoulders, seeking comfort in his house, living under his roof—it made my blood boil in my veins.

"She shouldn’t be there with Declan anyway. She’s mine," I growled possessively, the primal words tearing from my throat before I could stop them.

Kaelen let out a harsh, humorless laugh that echoed mockingly off the walls.

"She's yours now, huh?" Kaelen sneered, his tone dripping with acidic disdain. "When she's finally moving on with someone else who will marry her and treat her right, now she's yours?"

My physical body actually shook with uncontrollable rage at the picture his words painted. My hands curled into tight fists, my knuckles turning stark white, my claws threatening to pierce the skin of my own palms. Odette, realizing she was irrelevant to this dangerous shift in the conversation, let out a dramatic, attention-seeking sob. When neither Kaelen nor I even glanced in her direction, her face twisted in fury. She turned on her heel and fled heavily up the stairs, her footsteps stomping in a desperate retreat.

Kaelen stepped closer, viciously driving the knife deeper. "You do know the rules. The ancient, iron-clad Valor Pack Alliance dictates her mandatory marriage to Declan. If you aren't her mate, she belongs to him."

The torturous image of Declan touching Lyra's skin flashed behind my eyes. The thought of them sharing a bed, sharing a room, tangling their limbs together in the dark. Declan had fought me tooth and nail for her affections our entire lives. He had hated me because he was in love with Lyra, and she had chosen me. Now, my own catastrophic mistakes had driven her right into his waiting arms.

The vivid hallucination turned my vision blood-red. A genuinely murderous urge clawed its way up my throat. I wanted to rip Declan's throat out. I wanted to burn his house to the ground and drag Lyra out of the ashes.

"She’s coming home," I vowed in a low, lethal whisper. I aggressively refused to even entertain the possibility of their marriage. "I know she is."

Kaelen held his ground, his muscles coiled tight, ready to strike if I made a sudden move. The heavy, suffocating tension between us reached a breaking point. Our inner wolves were practically challenging each other to a death match right there in the living room, the sheer force of our conflicting auras making the air difficult to breathe. The temperature in the room plummeted as we stared each other down.

The explosive standoff finally broke when a new scent entered the room. Rhys, a seasoned pack warrior and Kaelen's beta, urgently stepped between our rigid bodies. He placed himself directly in the line of fire, risking his own neck to force Kaelen and me to break eye contact.

"Alphas," Rhys reported, his posture stiff and professional, though his eyes darted cautiously between us. "There was reported activity at the pack border. About ten minutes ago."

Kaelen tore his icy gaze away from me, the mention of pack security instantly sobering him. "What kind of movement?"

"It was shortly after Alpha Rowan crossed back over," Rhys explained, glancing at me.

That meant whoever had breached the border was already deep within our territory. I hadn't come straight home after leaving Swiftriver. I had spent hours walking the tree line, trying to clear the agonizing mess in my head.

The murderous jealousy temporarily faded, replaced by the sharp, calculating instincts of an Alpha protecting his territory.

"Find out who it is and bring them in for questioning," I immediately commanded. My Alpha tone left no room for argument or hesitation.

Kaelen sharply nodded in agreement, putting the safety of the pack above our bitter blood feud.

Rhys bowed slightly to both of us, acknowledging the shared command, and turned swiftly toward the entryway. He reached out and grasped the heavy brass handle of the front door, pulling the thick wood open to head outside.

As the heavy wood pulled ajar, a sudden, powerful gust of wind blew into the foyer.

It swept through the entryway, rushing past Rhys and hitting me square in the chest. Carried on that breeze was a distinct, intoxicating, heartbreakingly familiar scent.

Honey and strawberries.

The scent washed over me, a tidal wave of memory and desire, drowning out the lingering smell of Odette, the heavy tension in the room, and the metallic tang of Kaelen's anger. It stunned my body into breathless silence. The world around me ceased to spin. My heart slammed brutally against my ribs, loud enough to deafen me, my lungs forgetting how to draw in oxygen.

I forced my head to turn, my eyes locking onto the open doorway.

And there she was.

Standing on the porch, the wind whipping her dark hair around her shoulders, carrying a small knapsack.

I saw her for the second time in one day.

Lyra.