MATED TO THE SECRET ALPHA-Chapter 245: Back To The Pack
"They’re here," Reana interrupted, her voice sharper than the wind slicing through the air.
Kira followed her gaze and spotted movement on the eastern ridge – dark figures cutting through the snow like phantoms, cloaked and staggered but upright. Alive.
The patrol escort had intercepted the delegation. Relief washed over Kira like a wave, but Reana didn’t move.
She stood still, rigid, watching as each step took the group closer to home.
There were many. More than she anticipated. But somehow, she felt something wasn’t right.
Kira’s stomach tightened. "I think some are limping? There are fewer carts than we know. No horses?"
Reana didn’t respond immediately. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to zoom in, beyond the howling wind. But the heavy snow wasn’t easy to see through.
Reana didn’t tell anyone that the group entered the Wastelands – surely many must have died and goods destroyed. She didn’t expect a single cart to be saved. But why were there still many carriages? Did they risk their lives to protect the resources?
Reana’s jaw clenched. Her breath steamed in the freezing air, the tension in her body coiling tighter with every step the delegation took.
She watched them get closer and clearer. They were dragging the carts on the snowy grounds – no horses. Only larger, high-ranking warriors shifted into wolves, were pulling the carts. The group looked exhausted and could barely walk.
Reana felt her chest tightening with a strange, bitter mixture of dread and awe. Exhausted, frostbitten, bruised, but alive. They had come back alive, dragging their burdens through hell and frost on nothing but willpower and grit.
They could have abandoned the carts to save themselves, yet they didn’t. They cared about the pack’s winter resources and rather chose to protect it with their lives than return empty-handed.
As they drew nearer and nearer, Reana finally understood why they were still many. Not every one there was her pack member – the members of Dark Snow Pack. Again!
Reana’s heart dropped like a stone to her stomach. There were already more than enough Dark Snow Pack members in her pack, holding her people by the throat. Now these ones too?
She knew—knew—they had stepped in when her own were too few, too weak, too vulnerable to survive the Wastelands. She knew her people might not have made it out without them.
And yet...still, having them in her pack didn’t sit right with her.
Reana’s fingers curled into fists on the rail. She was grateful to them, yes, but the fury in her chest was still raw.
Dark Snow Pack’s presence was always laced with poison, no matter how sweet the gesture. Their kindness always cost more than it seemed to. Every debt owed them was a leash. Subtle at first, but always tightening.
Not to mention their misplaced anger. Ryder was gone. He was hers as much as he was theirs, yet they blamed her for his fate as if her grief didn’t matter. As if her heart hadn’t shattered, and still shattering in his absence.
The wind roared harder, as if echoing Reana’s bitterness.
They hadn’t shared what she had with him. They didn’t love him like she loved him, didn’t miss him like she missed him, yet they blamed her. Accused her. Judged her with eyes that had never seen what she had endured.
To them, Reana was the villain who caused the death of their Alpha. In a sense, they were right, but she refused to bear that burden. Or maybe she was already bearing the burden.
A bitter smile tugged at her lips.
Let them believe what they want. Because if they ever knew the truth, that she still reached for him in her sleep, that she sometimes thought she heard his voice in the snow, they might realize just how much they’d already taken from her.
And she would not give them anything more.
With that, she turned, walking down the tower. Kira followed behind her, watching Reana’s every step.
The Luna might fool everyone in the pack that she was fine. That nothing they did or said got to her. That Ryder’s disappearance was just an inconvenience. That she was still the Luna everyone knew. But Kira knew it was all a lie. Reana was no longer the Luna they knew. This woman walking in front of her was just a cracking shell who might give up at any given moment.
"Open the gates," she ordered. "Let them through. Offer shelter and fire. But listen closely, Kira."
Kira turned to her sharply.
"Not a single Dark Snow member steps beyond the southern quarter. Not without an escort. And not a single one is allowed near the council hall, the armory, or the war room."
"Understood." Kira hesitated. "And the wounded?"
"We’ll tend to our own first. Then the rest." Her tone was sharp, final. "Even though we owe them, no one forgets who they are."
As she walked down the stone steps, her cloak flaring behind her like a shadow, Reana knew this wasn’t the end of it. Worse of all, no one could stop them.
But if they stretched too far and she saw a hint of the disaster about to happen to her pack again, she’d open the four gates and let monsters pour into the pack.
If the Dark Snow thought they could bully them like the vision she saw, then, they must be ready to leave their lives behind.
...
The courtyard buzzed with happiness and sorrow. Relatives whose loved ones returned safely clung to their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, parents, and mates, unwilling to let go.
But the relatives of those who had died on the mission collapsed. Their cries rising above the happiness like jagged knives through the air. Mothers wept into frostbitten shoulders of their mates or children, children clung to trembling legs of their family members, and mates, who already felt their bonds severed at the death of their mates, stood in stunned silence – hollow-eyed and frozen, as if time itself had stopped for them. No wails, no collapse. Just that haunting stillness that screamed louder than any sob.
