The Alpha's Bargain

The Beast's Moon Part 2

"When was the last time you took human form during the day?" Lucas asked, and I realized I couldn't immediately answer. Weeks, maybe. Possibly longer.

The wolf was easier. The wolf didn't think about empty chambers and cold beds and conversations that never came. The wolf focused on immediate concerns—territory, pack, survival. The wolf didn't dream of soft skin and gentle hands, didn't wake with an ache that had nothing to do with the physical demands of the change.

"The pack needs to see their alpha," Lucas continued when I didn't respond. "Not just the beast who rules them, but the man who chooses to."

Choice. The word tasted bitter. What choices had I made in the past twenty-seven years that hadn't been dictated by the curse, by the need to protect both my people and the humans who shared this land from the monster I could become?

"I've protected them," I said, hearing the defensive edge in my own voice. "Protected everyone."

"By hiding." Lucas's tone was gentle but implacable. "By avoiding any contact with the human world, by keeping yourself isolated even from those who've sworn to follow you."

He wasn't wrong. The early years after the curse had been different—desperate attempts to find a cure, reckless experiments with magic that had nearly killed me more than once. But as the decades passed and hope faded, I'd retreated further and further from anything that reminded me of what I'd lost.

No visitors to the castle. No trade with human settlements. No contact with the outside world beyond what was absolutely necessary for the pack's survival. I'd turned my domain into a fortress and myself into its prisoner.

"The humans are safer—"

"The humans are afraid," Lucas interrupted. "Stories travel, Kieran. They whisper about the lord in the northern mountains who's never seen in daylight, whose lands are guarded by wolves that hunt in packs too organized to be natural."

I felt my jaw clench. "Let them whisper. As long as they stay away."

"And what happens when they stop being content to stay away? When fear turns to action, and they decide the threat needs to be eliminated?"

It was a fair question, one I'd been avoiding for years. Humans had a tendency to destroy what they didn't understand, and their fear of the supernatural had only grown stronger as their world became more civilized, more rational. The old ways, the old agreements between our kinds, were being forgotten.

"Then we deal with them as we always have," I said.

"By running? By retreating further into the wilderness until there's nowhere left to go?"

The challenge in his voice made my wolf stir, hackles rising at the implied criticism of my leadership. But Lucas had earned the right to speak freely—had stood by me through the worst of the curse's effects, had helped me build a pack from the scattered survivors of my family's destruction.

"What would you have me do?" I asked. "Reveal myself? Walk into the nearest village and announce what I am? See how long it takes them to organize a hunting party?"

"I'd have you remember that you're more than just the beast," Lucas said quietly. "That the man still exists beneath the curse."

The wind shifted, carrying new scents through the trees. Somewhere in the distance, a nightjar called its haunting melody, answered by another from across the valley. Normal sounds of a normal night in a forest that was anything but normal.

"The prophecy speaks of a rose," I said, voicing the thought that had been circling in my mind like a vulture. "Not just any flower, but specifically a rose."

Lucas nodded. "The gardens at the castle have bloomed for centuries. Even in winter, even when they should be dormant."

"Magic," I said. "The same magic that bound me, that keeps this place hidden from casual human sight."

"Perhaps." He paused, studying my expression in the moonlight. "Or perhaps it's simpler than that. Perhaps it's just hope, refusing to die no matter how long winter lasts."

Hope. I'd given up on hope years ago, dismissed it as a luxury I couldn't afford. But lately, the word had been echoing in my thoughts with increasing frequency, usually accompanied by images I couldn't quite grasp—flashes of dark hair and bright eyes, the phantom sensation of gentle hands, a voice I'd never heard but somehow recognized.

"You've been dreaming again," Lucas said, and it wasn't a question.

"Dreams mean nothing."

"These do. Your wolf has been... different since they started. More restless, more focused. Like he's searching for something."

Someone, I corrected silently, though I couldn't bring myself to say it aloud. The dreams had been growing stronger, more vivid. A woman's face I couldn't quite see clearly, her scent that I somehow knew would be sweeter than any rose. The bone-deep certainty that she was real, that she was coming, that my centuries of waiting were finally nearing an end.

Madness, most likely. The curse playing its final, cruelest trick on a mind that had endured too much isolation.

"The full moon," I said, steering the conversation back to safer ground. "I'll need to be confined."

"You've maintained control for years now," Lucas pointed out. "The chains aren't necessary anymore."

But they were, and we both knew it. Not because I couldn't control the wolf—I'd mastered that particular challenge long ago. But because the full moon brought with it a hunger that went beyond the physical, a need that made me dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with claws and fangs.