My Alpha Refused to Save My Father from Rogues

“You have two choices, Selene.”

Santiago stood by the window of his study, the moonlight casting long shadows across the floor. The Alpha Summit was forty-eight hours away, a gathering of the most powerful wolves on the continent. It was a political shark tank, and usually, people like me—Gammas, omegas, the rejected—were the bait.

“Option one,” he said, turning to face me, his golden eyes unreadable. “You stay here. You heal in the gardens, you let the palace staff wait on you, and you remain a ghost to the world. You will be safe.”

He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a low rumble. “Option two. You walk into that hall by my side. You let them see you. You let Adrian see you. But if you choose this, you are declaring war. There is no going back.”

I looked down at my hands. The knuckles were still bruised from hitting the punching bag earlier that morning. For ten years, I had chosen option one. I had chosen safety. I had chosen silence. And it had gotten my father killed.

“I’m not hiding anymore,” I said, lifting my chin.

Santiago didn’t smile, but the air around him shifted, crackling with approval. “Good. Then you need to learn how to breathe underwater.”

He didn’t mean literally. For the next two days, we didn't spar with fists; we sparred with presence. Santiago taught me how to withstand an Alpha Command—the psychic weight a leader uses to force submission. He would flood the room with his aura, a crushing pressure that felt like gravity had doubled, and force me to hold his gaze.

“Don’t fight it,” he instructed as my knees buckled under the sheer power of his spirit. “If you fight the ocean, you drown. Ride it. Let it flow past you like water around a stone. You are the stone, Selene. You are unmovable.”

By the morning of the Summit, I was exhausted, but I was still standing.

My transformation began at dawn. A team of stylists, sworn to secrecy by the Crown, descended on my suite. There were no pastels, no soft floral prints like the ones Adrian used to prefer on me because they made me look “sweet” and “manageable.”

Instead, they dressed me in midnight blue—the color of the Lycan Royal Family.

The gown was made of heavy silk that poured over my body like liquid night. It was strapless, exposing the expanse of my shoulders, with a slit that ran dangerously high up my left thigh. But the slit wasn’t for show.

“Ready?” Santiago asked from the doorway.

I nodded, lifting the hem of the dress. Strapped securely against my thigh was a leather holster holding two silver daggers. They were thin, balanced, and deadly.

“I hope I don’t have to use them,” I said, smoothing the silk back down.

“Better to have a blade and not need it, than to need a blade and only have a prayer,” Santiago replied. He walked over to a velvet box on the vanity table and opened it. Inside lay a choker made of diamonds so clear they looked like ice, set in white gold.

He lifted it from the velvet. “Turn around.”

I did, sweeping my hair off my neck. His fingers brushed against my skin, sending a jolt of electricity down my spine that had nothing to do with fear. He fastened the clasp over the fresh mating mark he had given me on the plane.

“Why cover it?” I whispered. “Shouldn’t they know I belong to you?”

“Not yet,” he murmured against my ear, his breath warm. “Let them wonder. Let Adrian drive himself mad trying to figure out why he can’t smell you. Confusion is a weapon, Selene. Wield it.”

We took the royal limousine to the venue, a massive glass-domed convention center in the heart of the neutral territory. The paparazzi were swarming the red carpet, flashes popping like lightning storms. We waited in the tinted darkness of the car until the announcer called the Blackwood Pack.

I watched through the window as a sleek sports car pulled up. Adrian stepped out, looking every inch the arrogant Alpha in a tuxedo that cost more than my father’s life insurance. He turned and offered his hand to someone inside.

Kayla emerged.

A cold, metallic taste filled my mouth.

She was wearing it. My mother’s ceremonial Luna gown. The delicate silver lace that my mother had been married in, the silk that had been wrapped in tissue paper for twenty years. But Kayla had butchered it. She had cut the hem to her knees and lowered the neckline until it was trashy, trying to modernize a relic she had no right to touch. It didn't fit her; it bunched at the waist and gaped at the chest, rejecting her just as much as I did.

“Breathe,” Santiago’s voice cut through the red haze in my vision. He took my hand, his grip firm and grounding. “She looks like a child playing dress-up in a graveyard. You look like a Queen coming to collect a debt.”

The doors to the Grand Hall opened for us ten minutes later.

The room was a sea of chatter, clinking glasses, and political maneuvering. But the moment the herald announced, “His Majesty, King Santiago, and guest,” the sound died instantly.

It was a vacuum of silence.

We stepped onto the balcony overlooking the ballroom floor. Santiago radiated power, his aura rolling off him in waves that made the Alphas below instinctively lower their heads. But he didn’t walk in front of me. He walked beside me.

We descended the grand staircase. Every eye was on us. I kept my chin high, my face a mask of bored indifference, just as Santiago had taught me. I felt the weight of their stares—hundreds of predators assessing fresh meat—but I let it flow past me. I was the stone.

We reached the bottom of the stairs, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea.

And then, I saw him.

Adrian was standing near the champagne fountain, a glass halfway to his mouth. Kayla was clinging to his bicep, whispering something in his ear, probably complaining about the lack of attention.

Adrian looked up, annoyed at the interruption to his evening. His eyes landed on Santiago first, widening in deference. Then, they slid to me.

He frowned. He squinted, as if trying to bring a blurry picture into focus. He didn't recognize the woman in the royal blue silk. He didn't know the woman with diamonds at her throat and death strapped to her thigh.

Then, I smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

The glass slipped from his fingers.

It shattered on the marble floor with a sound like a gunshot, echoing through the silent hall. Champagne splashed onto Kayla’s stolen shoes, but Adrian didn't even blink. He just stared, the color draining from his face, his mouth forming a single, silent word.

*Selene.*