The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 64: Us

🦋ALTHEA

The wolf with the baby turned, eyes wide with shock as she saw the blood blooming across my dress. For a heartbeat, she froze.

"There’s no time," I hissed through clenched teeth, shoving her backward with my shoulder. "Move."

She did.

The nightmare came at me again, feral and enraged, but something in me had already shifted.

The pain did not recede, it hid to bend to the will of the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I would feel it all fully later. Probably when chains would adorn my hand and feet when Hollowhowl had me back.

A hum began beneath my skin, low and insistent, vibrating through my bones like a second pulse. My vision narrowed, then fractured—brief flashes overlaying the present. Blood-soaked stone. Screams echoing off walls. Hands pinning me down. Teeth sinking in. Chaos, old and familiar, rising up to meet the new.

And in the anarchy of it all, I had no choice but to welcome it.

I stepped into the creature’s reach and drove the dagger straight into its chest, just as Thorne had ordered. The resistance was thick, gristly. I pushed harder, feeling the blade punch through something vital. The nightmare convulsed, its weight crashing into me as it died.

I shoved it off and kept moving.

Another came. Then another.

I found my rhythm in the violence—duck, slash, strike, turn. The world reduced itself to motion and breath and the wet sound of steel finding flesh. My wound burned with every movement, but the pain fed the hum rather than silencing it. It carried me forward, steadied my hands, sharpened my instincts.

Around me, the omegas fought like they had never been meant to—desperate, vicious, alive.

I tore through what stood in front of me, lacking well in grace but with certainty. Every nightmare that fell felt like a refusal. Every step forward was a defiance carved into the earth.

Somewhere ahead, Thorne’s howl split the night again, fierce and commanding.

I followed the sound, blood-soaked and unbroken, dagger slick in my grip.

Whatever waited beyond this—betrayal, flight, consequences—I would earn it.

Tonight, I fought like this clan was home too, Like I also had the responsibility to lay the restless undead to rest. The hate had melted away into a puddle at our feet, trampled while we fought side by side.

I cleaved through the head of one nightmare, as a wave of agonising longing washed over me as I realized that I had never felt this in sync, in arms with my own pack, Hollowhowl had never filled me with this much zeal.

I found in the death, despair and macabre gore that I would miss this.

Being here for two weeks and I had only beaten once through it all.

The moon’s red hue began to lift.

I felt it before I saw it—the shift in the air, the way the nightmares’ movements became less coordinated, more frantic. The crimson light that had bathed everything in blood-soaked shadow started to pale, thinning like fog burned away by dawn.

Around me, the clan sensed it too.

The howls changed pitch. Commands rang out louder, the pitch shifting. The tide was turning. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Despite the ravenous ache that had lodged itself in my chest, I pushed harder. What I hoped would be the last stretch drew on for longer that I thought I could manage.

But I had to, something in me wanted to. I barrelled on to prove I belonged here, even if only for these final moments. I wanted to earn the dagger at my waist, the amulet at my chest, the brief flicker of connection I’d felt when Thorne’s eyes had met mine.

A nightmare lunged from my left.

I spun, drove the blade up under its jaw, felt the resistance give way.

Another came from behind. Something massive and shadow-dark intercepted it before it could reach me.

Thorne.

He tore through the creature and it way with a wet, sickening crunch. He then wheeled around, placing himself between me and the next wave. We moved together without speaking, without planning—him clearing the path, me covering the gaps, both of us falling into a rhythm that felt older than thought.

Back to back.

For just a moment, his shadow-form pressed against my spine, solid despite its ethereal appearance. I felt the heat of him through the darkness, the barely restrained violence thrumming beneath his fur.

He didn’t move away and strangely neither did.

Something passed between us in that suspended breath—recognition, maybe. Understanding. A acknowledgment that despite everything, despite the hate and the words and the coming betrayal, this was real.

This moment.

This fight.

Us.

Then the chaos pulled us apart.

A nightmare crashed through the space we’d occupied, and Thorne was already moving, already tearing into the next threat. I stumbled forward, caught myself, kept fighting.

But I’d felt it. And I knew he had too. The nightmares began to retreat.

They turned around as though being coordinated in answer to something beyond the battle itself. The moon’s crimson faded further, returning to silver-white, and with it, the creatures started pulling back toward the trees. Some limped. Others dragged fallen companions. They melted into the shadows like water finding cracks in stone.

The clan let them go.

Orders rang out—hold position, tend to wounded, count losses—but no one pursued.

This was the treaty. The balance. The nightmares came, the clan fought, and when the moon returned to normal, both sides withdrew.

I saw my chance.

Thorne stood a dozen yards away, his massive shadow-form beginning to shimmer and contract. The shift back was starting. His eyes closed as his body convulsed, bones reforming, darkness condensing back into flesh.

Nyx descended from above, landing on what would soon be his shoulder, her presence a signal that the transformation was nearly complete.

He reached for the silver mask at his belt.

Now. I screamed at myself. I turned on my heel and I ran along with the Nightmares, blending in.