The Feral Alpha's Captive

🦋 ALTHEA

Two sides with me in the middle, with no idea in whose fate my fate lay—but at least they had made it out alive—

The moment of my sliver of victory curdled into ash before I could draw a full breath.

"Gammas!" Draven’s voice cut through the chaos like a whip. "Surround them on all sides!" he snapped. "Get the girl and subdue the hell hound!"

My mother’s cold hand reached for mine as the world slowed to a crawl. Her hands morphed into paws, clawing at my skin for a whisper of a second as the brigfade moved to cut out every possible exit, moving around us. A total wave of bared teeth and shifting bodies.

Yet, they were too slow.

Thorne behind me morphed into a force of nature, his arm fighting around me, pulling me flush against him. It was the grip of ruin, the crushing certainty of a predator claiming its hard-won kill.

He did not wait for the circle to close. With a jarring, guttural roar that vibrated through to my very marrow, Thorne launched off the earth with me secured in his arms.

The sheer concussive force of his jump sent a shockwave outward. I saw the front line of the gammas slam into one another with a sickening, metallic crunch. Even my mother, caught off guard by the raw power of the sudden ascent, stumbled back, nearly falling into the tangled heap of her own soldiers.

Air rushed past my ears, cold and sharp, as we soared. For a heartbeat, we were weightless, suspended—tangled in the moonlight. Then we slammed back into the earth at the edge of the dense woods. The impact rattled my teeth and sent a flare of agony through my side.

Thorne did not let go. He spun me around. His fingers dug into my shoulders, his face inches from mine. His breath was hot—smoldering—his eyes burning with a terrifying light, his expression hard with infuriation.

"You can’t run from me," he hissed, words a jagged snarl. "You belong to me."

A horrible tremor raked through my spine. I couldn’t speak. I could only sink deeper into the heat of his gaze as it pierced my very soul, still unsteady from the ascent I did not see coming.

Then my gaze shifted to where we had just been, where we had been launched from. My heart stopped when I saw the distance—we were a substantial distance away now—but through my shock, I saw a nightmare unfolding.

My plan was being dismantled before my eyes.

"No," I whispered, the words dying in my throat. "No, no, no..."

The Vargan that had just been freed, who had been scrambling for the safety of the trees, were being hunted down like sport. Hollowhowl gammas were recapturing them. The exchange had been forfeited.

"Recapture them! If they resist, kill them where they stand," Draven ordered.

I watched, paralyzed, as the gammas shifted their hands into paws, unveiling their claws.

I saw Yana trip and get dragged by her hair. The fear in her eyes as she tried to reach for Thal, who struggled with two ruthless gammas. One came for him, claws flashing like knives in the moonlight. With a sickening sound of tearing fabric and flesh, the gamma raked his claw across his narrow back.

He screamed, his voice hoarse, as if he had been crying before.

"THAL!" My scream tore from my throat at the same time Yana’s did. I fought Thorne’s grip, clawing at his arms, desperate to run back to the fray, but he clamped onto me like his grip was made of iron.

"Look at what you’ve done!" I shrieked at him, tears blurring my vision as I watched the Vargans being forced back into their chains, bleeding and broken. "They were free! I had them! You destroyed it."

He had his eyes closed just as Nyx came down with his mask in her beak. He remained stoic, infuriatingly unbothered by my screaming as he put on the mask. He was utterly indifferent to the suffering of his own people as their distressed shouting and pleading echoed through the space.

"Let me go," I begged, sobbing. "They will release them again. You just have to let me go."

The air turned to ice in my lungs.

"The deal is void," my mother announced, her voice cutting through the chaos with surgical precision. Each word was measured, deliberate—the pronouncement of a commander who had already won. "We no longer wish to speak to you, Althea."

My name on her lips felt like a curse.

She shifted her gaze past me, through me, as if I were nothing more than an inconvenient obstacle. Her eyes locked onto Thorne with an intensity that made my skin crawl.

"We wish to speak to the Hell Hound instead."

I felt Thorne go utterly still behind me. Not the stillness of calm, but of a predator that had just scented something familiar. Something dangerous. His grip on me didn’t loosen, but there was a new tension in his arms—a coiled awareness that hadn’t been there before.

My mother’s smile unfurled slowly, like a blade being drawn from its sheath. The curl of her lip was utterly malicious, bone-chilling in its intimacy. This wasn’t the expression of a woman addressing a stranger. This was recognition.

"We meet again," she purred, and the words landed like stones in my stomach.

Again?

"You have really grown big and strong, just like your papa." Her tone was almost... nostalgic. Proud, even. "Even more so. I am impressed."

I felt the world tilt beneath my feet. What?

My mother knew Thorne? Beyond the stories, beyond the legend of the woman who had killed his mother? There was history here—personal history—written in the way she looked at him, in the strange affection threading through her cruel words.

"Be a good little pup and give Althea back," she continued, her voice saccharine and venomous all at once. "Or the Vargans will not only be killed—as you have done with your fortress, I will have their bodies strewn as decoration for our pack house. It has been needing a pop of color, and red and rotting brown would be perfect." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Bile rose in my throat. Bodies as decoration. She wasn’t bluffing. I knew my mother well enough to know she would do it. She would make art from their suffering.

But what twisted my insides into knots wasn’t just the threat—it was the familiarity in her words. Like his fortress. She had been there. She knew what he had done.

How much history did they share that I knew nothing about?

Behind me, Thorne finally spoke. His voice was different—colder, sharper, with a cruel lilt that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

"Hello, Aunty Poppy."

Aunty.

Poppy?

The word detonated in my mind like a grenade. My breath caught, my thoughts fragmenting into a thousand jagged pieces. Aunty? My mother was his—

"What?" The word escaped me in a strangled whisper, but neither of them acknowledged it.

The tension in the clearing ratcheted up to unbearable levels. I could feel it pressing against my skin, thick and suffocating. Around us, shadows began to move. At first, I thought it was a trick of the moonlight filtering through the trees, but then I saw them—figures emerging from the tree line like wraiths materializing from the mist itself.

Thorne’s clan.

They were massive, feral things with eyes that glowed in the darkness. They had shifted and had been moving stealthily through the surrounding woods. They moved with eerie synchronization, surrounding the Hollowhowl brigade in a slow, tightening circle.

We were no longer outnumbered.

"Let me remind you, Aunty," Thorne said, his voice dropping to a lethal purr, "that the mist is my territory." His grip on me shifted, possessive and binding "And the woman I hold here—" he pulled me tighter against him, and I felt his breath hot against my ear, "—is my fated mate."

The words sent a shockwave through the clearing.

My mother’s eyes narrowed, but before she could respond, another voice cut through the night—raw, unhinged, shaking with fury.

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY WOMAN!"

Draven.

I whipped my head toward him and felt my heart plummet into my stomach.

He had moved with terrifying speed. Yana was in his grasp now, his claws pressed against the delicate skin of her throat. She was frozen, her eyes wide with terror, a thin line of blood already trickling down where the tips of his claws pierced her skin.

"Let. Her. Go," Draven snarled, his voice fracturing with rage. His eyes were wild, feral—a man who had been pushed past the edge of reason. "Let Althea go, or a Vargan dies. Right here. Right now."

Yana whimpered, the sound breaking something inside me.

"No—" I started, but Draven’s claws dug deeper, and she gasped in pain.

"CHOOSE!" Draven roared, spittle flying from his lips. His entire body trembled with the effort of restraining himself. "What will it be, Hell Hound? Althea—" he spat my name like poison, "—or the Vargans?"

The silence that followed was deafening.

I felt Thorne’s heartbeat against my back—steady, unhurried. Maddeningly calm.

"Thorne," I whispered desperately, my voice breaking. "Please. Please, you have to—"

"Shh." He drawled, his hand moved to cover my mouth gently, almost tenderly. "Quiet, little wolf."

And then, with a voice like death itself, he addressed the clearing:

"You seem to be under the impression that I negotiate."