Knotting His Rejected Breeder

The Alpha turned away after his cold dismissal about her father saving her, his heavy boots crushing damp leaves as he walked toward the edge of the clearing.

Aurora remained standing near the center, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. She looked down at her hands. The dark, hooked talons that had begun pushing through her fingertips were slowly receding, the thick bone shrinking back beneath her skin with a sickening, grinding ache deep in the joints. Her fingers returned to normal, but the residual heat stayed trapped beneath her skin.

She curled them into tight fists, fighting the tremor in her wrists.

"How long?" she called out to his retreating back.

The Alpha slowed near the treeline, pausing beneath the shadow of a towering pine. "Until what?"

"Until the transformation finishes," Aurora said, taking a deliberate step toward him. "Until I can’t force the claws back. How long before I change to one of these freak wolves?"

He turned around, his yellow eyes holding her gaze in the dim light. "That depends on how hard you fight it."

"That’s not an answer. You got to give me something better than that."

He walked back toward her, stopping a few paces away. "Then I’ll give you a precise one. Right now, your body can resist the shift for several hours before the curse overwhelms your skin again. If Hollow Death progresses at this pace, that window will shrink to minutes."

"And eventually?"

"You won’t return to human form at all."

Aurora swallowed past the lump in her throat, looking toward the wolves scattered around the clearing. "Earlier, you said some of them were Alphas before they were bitten. How many?"

"Three," the Alpha answered cleanly. "The first lasted eleven months before he stopped returning to human form. The second lasted seven. The third lasted four."

Aurora’s attention snapped back to him.

"Where are they now?"

"Dead."

The bluntness of his answer sent a cold shudder down her spine. She looked over the rest of the pack—some crouching near the tree line, others lying motionless in the mud as dark veins pulsed beneath their fur.

"And the rest of these twenty?" she asked, her voice tight. "How many can still change back?"

"Six," he said. "Six still have enough willpower to return to human form after shifting. The other fourteen are trapped as beasts."

"Fourteen," Aurora repeated quietly, doing the arithmetic in her head. "And how many have died since you brought them into these woods?"

"Twenty-three."

Twenty-three dead in eight months. Fourteen reduced to permanent monsters. Only six who could still wear a human face.

"And you?" Aurora pressed, taking another step closer, forcing herself to match his imposing posture. "You’ve carried this for how many months or years without losing yourself? Who taught you to control it?"

"Nobody," he said. "I learned by surviving. I’ve lived with it for two years."

Aurora scoffed softly. "How? Is there a cure?"

"By managing the triggers that feed the curse: fear, rage, unchecked shifting, and surrendering control when the beast is close to the surface." He looked at her calmly. "I cannot stop Hollow Death, Aurora. I can only slow the rate at which it burns through your humanity."

"So you drag others here to build a pack you can control," Aurora said, the full picture taking shape in her mind. "You said you needed my father because he commands Silvercrest, but it’s not just his warriors you want. You want an Alpha’s instinct."

"A ordinary wolf carrying Hollow Death loses most of its reason," the Alpha explained, gesturing toward the larger beasts prowling the perimeter. "They become fast, brutal, and nearly impossible to control all by myself. But an Alpha’s rank is tied to something deeper. The instinct to lead remains, even when the human mind is stripped away. I cannot control twenty wild beasts across three territories by myself. If Vance is infected, his authority will bind his warriors together under my command."

"He will tear you apart before he lets you infect him," Aurora spat. "And I won’t be your weapon to get close to him."

"You won’t have a choice once the fever takes hold," the Alpha countered smoothly. "I don’t need to force your hand, Aurora. I only have to wait for the curse to make the decision unbearable for you."

Before Aurora could answer, a shadow detached itself from the edge of the clearing.

One of the six shifters—a tall, gaunt man with severe yellow eyes and crude wolf-skin wraps across his shoulders—walked into the open. He didn’t look like a mindless beast, but his movements were uncomfortably fluid, his yellow eyes fixed on Aurora with a predatory hunger that made her skin crawl.

"Is this the Vance girl?" the shifter asked, his voice raw, as if his vocal cords hadn’t been used in weeks. "She smells like fresh blood and fear."

"Step back, Marcus," the Alpha commanded, his tone dropping an octave.

The shifter paused, his jaw working as if fighting an internal impulse, before slowly backing into the shadows. The brief interaction confirmed what Aurora feared most: even those who could still speak were slipping closer to the edge every day.

She looked past the Alpha toward the dark southern path leading out of the clearing. The woods were quiet, and no wolves stood in her way.

"You’re not blocking the path," she observed, her pulse thumping in her ears.

"No."

"If I walk out right now, you won’t chase me?"

"I won’t need to," the Alpha said quietly. "If you leave, you will be completely wild before you reach the borders of Silvercrest. You’ll attack the first living thing you see—including your father’s patrols."

Aurora stared at the dark opening between the trees. Freedom was right there, but it was a trap.

She turned back to face the Alpha, digging her fingernails into her palms to anchor herself against the cold ache in her bones. She wasn’t ready to bend to his demands, nor was she willing to let him use her as a proxy to destroy her father. But if she ran now, she would lose the only mind she had left.

She needed to buy time—time to find a weakness in his control, time to figure out how he kept the shift at bay, or time for Silvercrest’s scouts to track her down.

"Give me until morning," Aurora said, keeping her voice steady and deliberate.

The Alpha studied her for a long moment, reading the defiance in her eyes, before giving a single, concise nod.

"Until morning."

He turned and walked toward the center of the camp, leaving her alone near the treeline. Aurora remained where she was, listening to the heavy, ragged breathing of the cursed pack around her.

She looked down at her hands one last time. The skin was pale, smooth, and human.

For now.