"She's not ours to deal with anymore," another voice snapped. "Boss says we ship her to the capital. Let the Alpha King decide what to do."
A long pause.
"You think he'll kill her?"
"You think he won't?"
They laughed. Short. Uneasy.
Then footsteps faded.
Vireya didn't move.
Her fingers flexed around the chain at her wrists.
The capital.
The Alpha King.
She'd heard stories. Everyone had.
Brutal. Unmatched. Cold.
She didn't care.
Let them send her.
Let him try.
At least it'd be a change of scenery when she died. She may even welcome it at this point. They came for her at dusk.
No words. No eye contact. Just three guards with shackles and a tranq needle the size of a dagger. She didn't fight. Didn't flinch. Just stood when they told her to, arms out, head down.
They cuffed her wrists. Shackled her ankles. Chained her neck like she was a fucking animal.
She felt every scrape of the metal.
They didn't speak. Not to her. Not to each other.
Like saying her name out loud might summon something they weren't ready for.
She didn't even know if they knew her name.
Good.
They shoved her into a transport cage steel bars, thick floor chains bolted into rusted rings. No cushion. No water. Just enough room to sit and rattle with every bump on the road.
She didn't ask where they were going.
She already knew.
The capital.
To the Alpha King.
They wanted him to kill her.
He probably would in all honesty.
They wanted to hand her off like a bomb with a cracked timer.
Let him deal with it. Let him be the one to pull the plug.
They thought it'd be easy.
She hoped they were right.
The ride was long. Cold. Her wrists bled from the cuffs rubbing raw. She didn't sleep—too wired, too hungry, too sore.
Somewhere near dawn, she started hallucinating. Or maybe dreaming. The cage swayed. Her vision pulsed.
The scent of pine and ash filled the air.
Not from the woods.
From something... older.
Bigger.
She sat up. Eyes half-lidded. Something deep inside her stirred, like a thread pulled taut.
The guards started whispering again. Not to her. Just behind the driver's gate.
"You smell that?"
"Like firewood. And rain."
"No, not rain. Something else. Like... blood. Fresh blood."
She swallowed hard, her mouth dry as bone.
One of the wolves banged on the cage. "Hey. What the hell are you doing to the air back there one of the guards said banging on the bars"
She didn't answer.
Didn't move.
But she smelled it too now.
Something was pulling at her gut. Tugging, invisible, electric. The tiniest taste of something ancient in her blood woke up and growled.
She didn't know what it was because she didn't have a wolf. Never had. If she did, she wouldn't be trapped in this hellhole. She wouldn't have spent her entire life this far being tortured, sold, and raped to pay off her father's debts every time he fucked things up. AGAIN.
She smirked... soon though she would either be killing the Alpha King herself like she had just done to that grimy bastard "RAKE".
Or the Alpha King would kill her. Either way, she was going to bring chaos and wouldn't go down without a fight. She smiled and chuckled to herself at the thought.
*********************************************************
Miles away, the Alpha King lifted his head from a war table lined with parchment and bloodied maps.
His generals froze. His Beta stopped mid-sentence.
The King's eyes glazed for half a second. Then sharpened.
He inhaled again.
Slow.
Deep.
"What is it?" one of them asked carefully.
He didn't answer.
Didn't blink.
The scent hit him like wildfire, raw, feral, wrong and right all at once.
Something old.
Something dangerous.
Something his.
He exhaled through his teeth.
"Find the source." He turned, eyes burning.
"Now!" He exhaled through his teeth.
"Now?" one of the generals asked.
The King didn't look at him. Didn't speak. He just stared into nothing, his jaw clenched so tight the bone popped.
"I said now do not make me repeat my self."
Chairs scraped. Boots scuffed. The room scrambled to obey—but the confusion was thick.
"I don't smell anything," his Beta muttered. "Is it a threat? A scout? A witch?"
The Alpha King still didn't answer.
Because he knew the truth.
It wasn't a threat.
It was a claim.
The scent wasn't human. Wasn't wolf, either. It was everything. Fire, iron, blood, and ash—chaos bottled in skin. And it was his.
No one else smelled it.
That was the worst part.
His pack looked at him like he was glitching. Like his senses had betrayed him. But deep in his chest, his wolf was pacing.
Tense.
Restless.
Snarling.
The King's fingers dug into the edge of the war table until the wood cracked.
Something was coming.
He could feel it.
And whatever it was... it already belonged to him.