Alpha's Fate

First of all, thank you for giving my story a chance.

English is not my first language, so there may be spelling errors. But I can fix that if you tell me where you saw.

You are stepping into a story where nothing is as it seems. So excited to hear what you guys think!

Let’s move on to the story!

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My head throbbed like something was drilling into my skull. The pain sat behind my eyes, pulsing with every heartbeat.

“Get up”, Rea grumbled in the back of my mind, her massive white paws pacing against my mental walls. ”You did this to us. Now suffer the consequences.”

Shut up, I thought back, dragging myself out of bed.

Wolves aren’t supposed to get hangovers. Our bodies heal too fast, burn off toxins before they can stick. But when you’re determined enough to escape your own miserable reality, you find a way around biology. A few drops of enchanted monkshood in the bourbon kept the alcohol in my blood long enough to numb the edges. Now I was paying for it.

I stepped into the shower and pressed my forehead against the freezing tile. I let the icy water blast over my shoulders until my skin went numb. It chased the fog off, whether it woke me up or drowned me I honestly didn’t care. Drowning sounded like an upgrade this morning.

Being born a rare white wolf made me a freak in the Silver Dawn pack. Carrying the territorial spirit of an Alpha with no pack to actually lead made me something worse. An unpredictable liability.

I can’t submit. It’s a physical impossibility, my knees just don’t hit the dirt for an Alpha, which makes my job as head of the pack warriors complicated. Not that the title carries any weight here anyway. Especially not with Knox. The Alpha’s son treats me like something scraped off his boot. If I had a dollar for every sneer he threw my way, I could buy a one-way ticket out of this territory. Or at least a decent hitman.

I never knew my mother. Elias Ovarys, the Alpha of Silver Dawn, is my father, that much I know for a fact. His Luna is definitely not my mother. The disgust in her eyes is too practiced, always paired with a stiff posture and pinched lips whenever I walk into a room. She’d poison my coffee if she had the spine for it.

My dad’s the only person on this estate who’s ever shown me a shred of kindness, and even that feels thin.

I scrubbed mint shampoo into my scalp hard enough to sting, trying to get the stink of cheap liquor and regret off me. The sting on my scalp matched the ache sitting in my chest just fine.

After the shower I pulled on my boots and strapped into my leather gear. Worn seams, old scars in the leather. Kind of like me. The smell of it grounded me a little, at least enough to face the day.

Training meant babysitting the next batch of Silver Dawn fighters. I hated toddlers, so at least these ones were old enough to take a hit. I actually liked watching them push through bruised egos and exhaustion. Pain teaches fast, and I didn’t mind being the one holding the lesson.

The weather had gone ugly outside, so we were stuck training indoors. I hated enclosed spaces. Four walls meant the smell of wet dog and too many eyes on me. They pretended to be polite about it, but they watched me like I was something in a cage.

Nobody said it out loud, I was too dangerous for a direct insult, but the silence said enough anyway. Pack law says we can’t kill everyone who pisses us off. Shame. This place would be a lot quieter.

I dragged myself into the pack kitchen and dropped a flat “Morning” into the room, making sure it landed like anything but a greeting. The clatter of plates and silverware died the second I walked in. A blond kid who looked maybe fifteen dropped his toast and snapped his eyes to the floor.

Thomas, Mary, and Oliver went quiet the moment I crossed the threshold, their chatter replaced by hushed whispering, like I couldn’t hear it from three feet away.

“Prey”, Rea sneered, her icy blue eyes flashing somewhere in the dark of my mind. “They smell like wet leaves and fear.”

Gossip wouldn’t save them if a rogue ever tore their throats out. I walked toward the counter slow, unhurried, just to watch their shoulders go stiff.

I stopped close enough to hear Mary’s heart stutter. “Coffee.”

She blinked, flinched back a step. “I... umm. Yeah. Sure.”

This was the whole deal with being the Alpha’s daughter. People flinched, people whispered when they thought I couldn’t hear, and it had only gotten worse since last week, after Tyler mouthed off during sparring.

“Hit harder!” I’d snapped at him when he half-assed a block. “You keep acting like a delicate daisy and you’ll be ripped apart before you even shift.”

He’d whined about his ribs, said I’d cracked them. My fist moved before my brain caught up. The crack of his jaw under my knuckles echoed off the ceiling, and the room went dead silent.

Mary handed me a mug black as my mood. I took it without a word but nodded, walked out.

At the training hall the heavy doors groaned open on hinges nobody bothered oiling. The room swallowed sound differently than the rest of the estate, all bare concrete and mounted steel racks lined with practice blades and staffs. Mats covered most of the floor, patched in places where claws had torn through the padding over the years. The far wall still had a dent from where I’d put someone through it last month.

The pups were already lined up on the mats, trying to look tougher than they felt. Sweat and old leather hung heavy in the air, mixed with something metallic underneath that never quite washed out. Rain hammered the high windows, the only light coming in gray and flat, making the whole place feel smaller than it was. Good. Smaller meant sharper.

And leaning against the wall, arms crossed, grin already annoying, stood Knox.

Perfect. Exactly the excuse I needed to break something today.

He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, boots kicked up against the concrete, looking like he owned the room just by standing in it. The grin on his face was already annoying me before he’d said a single word.

“You’re two minutes late,” he said, glancing at some invisible watch, like he had any right to keep track of me.

I let the corner of my mouth curl, slow and lazy. “Relax, big bro. No one’s dying from a two minute wait.” I dropped my bag by the wall and rolled my shoulders, still stiff from last night. “What are you even doing here?”

He pushed off the wall and closed the distance between us, unhurried, the way he always moved when he wanted to remind everyone he took up space. “Heard you’re making the kids fight in pairs today.”

“I am. Got nothing to do with you, even if you are the biggest man-child in this pack.”

Knox laughed, rolling one shoulder back, flexing like it was supposed to mean something. “Don’t be jealous just because I’m stronger.”

I scoffed, arms crossing over my chest to match his. “I knocked that cocky pup out cold two days ago with a single punch.”

“Yeah. He’s still recovering. Broken ribs, a fractured jaw, and a concussion isn’t exactly a win.”

I stepped in close enough to smell the cedar soap he always used, tilted my chin up at him, gave him a grin with every ounce of venom I owned. “You remember that time I kicked your ass when I was eight? Want me to refresh your memory, sweetheart?”

For a split second his smirk cracked at the edges, just a flicker before he smoothed it back over.

Gotcha. Just like that, my morning got a little brighter.

I remember our first pair training like it’s stitched into my bones. In a way, it is. I was eight, Knox was ten, and they’d lined us up on the sand together, the whole training yard smelling of dust and torch smoke.

Knox whined about it, loudly and more than once, kicking at the dirt like a kid throwing a tantrum. Said he didn’t want to be paired with a freak. Said I was too weak, that I’d cry the second he landed a punch.

Funny thing is, I remember exactly who ended up crying.

“I have no wish to be paired with a pathetic freak,” little Knox had snapped, chin jutted out, loud enough for the whole yard to hear. “She’s no match for me. I want a real opponent.”

“She’s your sister,” our father had said, voice flat and final, the kind of tone that made even grown warriors go quiet. Alpha Elias Ovarys never had to raise his voice to be obeyed. “Of course she’s a match for you. And talk to your sister properly. I won’t warn you again.”

Knox’s nose scrunched up, that stubborn look he still gets to this day. “But why does she have to be in everything I do?”

“You’re both my children,” Dad said. “When you become Alpha, your sister will command the warriors. You’d better get used to it now.”

It ate at me, standing there in the dirt while Knox looked at me like something stuck to his boot. Like making me small was the whole point of his existence. So when Dad finally shouted “Begin,” I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t even think.

I went in to kill.

Every ounce of the frustration I’d been swallowing, every sneer, every whispered word, went into that first strike. But Knox was faster than I expected. He lunged low and rough, and his fist caught my cheek before I even saw it coming.

We hit the sand together, rolling, grabbing fistfuls of each other’s shirts. I found an opening fast, drove my fist into his gut, then his face, again and again. I was small, but I threw everything I had into each hit. My knuckles split open against his teeth. Blood smeared across both our faces, his or mine, I couldn’t tell anymore.

He grunted, face twisting with pain, but it wasn’t enough to put him down.

“Give in, you freak,” he screamed, spit flying.

“Never,” I snarled back, and meant it.

He grabbed a fistful of my hair and threw me down. My spine cracked against the packed sand hard enough to steal my breath. Then his fists came down, fast, one after another, and I couldn’t even get my arms up in time to block.

“Father may love you,” he spat between punches, “but no one else ever will. Nobody loves you. I hate you.” Each word landed with another hit.

Pain exploded behind my eyes in white flashes. Blood ran hot down the side of my face, pooling at my jaw. My grip on being conscious slipped, my fingers going slack in the dirt.

Come on, Fate, I told myself through the haze, teeth gritted. You can’t lose. Not to him.

And then something happened.