Chapter 6 — The Alpha Who Went Feral
1105 Words
Damien feels it before anyone else does.
A tearing.
A pull.
A sudden, violent emptiness inside his chest.
He’s in the middle of trying (and failing) to read through border patrol reports when it hits him like the ground collapsing beneath his feet. His pen slips from numb fingers. Papers blur. His vision pulses in and out like a heartbeat.
Not a physical injury.
Something worse.
Something primal.
His wolf rips forward inside him, howling.
She’s gone.
Damien grips the edge of his desk, knuckles whitening, trying to breathe past the crushing weight squeezing his ribcage. But his chest only tightens harder, a brutal ache thudding behind his sternum.
He stumbles back a step.
Then another.
The bond may be torn, but remnants still cling to him—raw, unstable threads that twist painfully when triggered.
Right now, those threads are screaming.
“Alpha?” Bram bursts into the doorway when the office lights flicker from Damien’s unstable aura. “What happened? Are you—”
“Where is she?” Damien growls.
The room dips in temperature. Papers ripple in a dead breeze. Even Bram, one of Damien’s closest guards, instinctively lowers his gaze.
Sylas appears behind him, breathless. “She left the infirmary.”
Damien’s breath stops.
“And we tried to get her to return, but—”
“Where. Is. She?”
Bram swallows. “Past the training fields. Heading toward the southern border.”
The southern border.
The most dangerous one.
The one patrolled by Bloodpine wolves.
Damien doesn’t remember leaving the office. One moment he’s standing in front of his desk, the next he’s halfway down the hallway, boots striking the floor with a force that echoes like thunder.
Wolves scatter around him, pressed flat against the walls as he storms through, head down, shoulders stiff, breathing ragged. A low, continuous rumble vibrates from his chest.
Someone calls his name. Someone else tries to stop him.
No one succeeds.
He shoves open the back exit of the packhouse so hard the door bounces off the outer wall, slamming back into its frame as he leaps down the steps two at a time and hits the forest floor running.
The moment the trees close around him, his wolf surges up again—hot, furious, feral.
Damien drops to all fours, fingers curling into the dirt as he tries to contain the shift clawing at the edges of his skin. His bones tremble beneath the strain.
He’s lost control before.
But never like this.
Never because of her.
Her scent hits him next. Faint, but there.
It destroys him.
Pine and rain. Soft earth. The warmth of early morning clinging to someone who never should’ve walked these woods alone.
“Lila!” His voice cracks on the first shout, raw and unfiltered. “Lila!”
Only silence answers.
He pushes forward, tearing through brambles and low branches, ignoring the sting of bark scraping across his skin. His boots skid over a patch of wet moss but he barely slows, his breath ripping out in harsh, uneven bursts.
The more he follows her scent, the more frantic his wolf becomes—growing louder, heavier, stronger. A beast pounding at the walls of his mind, begging to be released.
Find her. Protect her. Bring her back.
His heart slams painfully, too fast, too wild.
He sees a small broken branch where she brushed past it. Then the crushed pattern of her footsteps—light, trembling, uneven.
She was weak.
She shouldn’t have been walking.
She shouldn’t have been alone.
And he let her go.
Damien’s stomach twists so sharply he gag-breathes against it.
He keeps running.
The forest thickens. Sunlight barely filters through. His vision sharpens unnaturally—wolf senses taking over without permission. Every breath tastes like her, every heartbeat feels like it could be her last.
Then he sees it.
A smear of blood on a rock.
Small.
But hers.
His knees hit the ground before he realizes he’s fallen. He grips the stone, trembling.
His wolf lets out a sound that nearly shatters him—a guttural, mourning howl inside his skull.
Damien leans forward until his forehead rests against the cold earth, chest heaving like he ran a hundred miles in one breath.
“Lila…” His whisper is the opposite of the Alpha he pretends to be. It’s broken. Afraid. “Why did you leave? Why didn’t you stay? I could’ve… I would’ve…”
No words come.
No words are enough.
He pushes himself upright, swiping his forearm across his face, not caring about the streak of dirt it leaves behind. His hands curl into fists so tight blood begins to pool beneath the crescents of his nails.
He inhales again, deeply.
Her scent is weakening.
Growing colder.
Older.
He moves.
Faster.
Branches whip across his face. Rocks cut his palms. His breath burns in his throat, but he doesn’t slow. Can’t slow.
He bursts into a clearing just as the scent trails off into nothing—like she stepped off the earth itself.
A cliffside stretches out before him, overlooking a steep drop into thick fog and jagged stone.
Damien stops so abruptly he almost goes over the edge.
His vision tunnels.
His breath stops.
She came this way.
Weak. Bleeding. Alone.
And the trail ends here.
“No.” His voice is a whisper of a man unraveling. “No, no, no…”
His wolf claws violently inside him, tearing at whatever part of him still has the strength to resist the shift.
A sound leaves Damien’s chest—half howl, half broken plea.
It echoes across the mountains like a wound screaming open.
He drops to his knees.
His hands shake uncontrollably now, fingers clawing at the earth as if he could dig her scent back out of it. His jaw trembles. His throat tightens around a sound he refuses to release.
He whispers her name again.
Not like an Alpha.
Not like a warrior.
Not like a man who rejected her.
But like someone begging a ghost not to leave him behind.
“Lila… please.”
The forest holds its breath.
His wolf stops fighting.
And in that terrible stillness, something inside Damien Blackthorne breaks in a way that cannot be undone.
Not by rank.
Not by pride.
Not even by the lie he told himself when he rejected her.
Because now he knows the truth with absolute, crushing certainty:
He didn’t reject her to protect her.
He rejected her because he feared what he felt for her.
And now that she’s gone—
He fears nothing
and
he fears everything
all at once.
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