My Pack Gave My Sister My Alpha, So I Chose His Enemy

The afternoon before the full moon, the training field smelled like cut grass and nerves.

Every pup who had shifted that spring was out there, running drills in fur for the first time with the senior warriors watching. I stood at the edge with my clipboard, checking names the way I had all week. The fact that I wasn't Luna candidate anymore didn't mean the roster would fill itself out.

Ivy stood ten feet away in a white sweater, holding my handbook against her chest. Caleb had asked her to "observe." She hadn't opened it once.

"Is it always this loud?" she asked, wincing as two young wolves collided and rolled.

"Only when they're excited," I said. "Watch the gray one by the fence. That's Danny Keller. He finished his first full shift four days ago."

"How do you know that?"

"It's on page nine."

She flushed and didn't answer.

Danny was big for sixteen, all long legs and oversized paws, still clumsy in his new body. I'd been watching him since the drills started. He kept shaking his head like something was buzzing in his ears. His tail was clamped low, his lips pulled back from his teeth.

Then a warrior blew the whistle for the next rotation, sharp and shrill, right beside him.

Danny snapped.

He spun on the warrior with a snarl that silenced the whole field. The man jumped back, and Danny lunged at nothing, then at everything, eyes rolling white, foam at the corners of his mouth. A pup screamed. Wolves scattered.

And Danny ran straight toward us.

Ivy stumbled back so fast she tripped over the water table. Bottles went everywhere. The handbook hit the grass and slid open in the mud.

I didn't think. I dropped the clipboard and stepped forward.

"Danny." I kept my voice low, the same tone I'd used on Poppy, on a dozen pups before her. "Hey. Danny, it's Elara. You know me."

He skidded to a stop three feet away, hackles up, a growl rattling deep in his chest.

"I know it's loud." I lowered myself onto one knee, slowly, and turned my wrist toward him so he could catch my scent. "Everything's too much right now. Your ears, your nose, your skin. That's normal. It feels like you're drowning, but you're not."

His growl wavered.

"Your mom's name is Lisa," I said. "She makes those awful oatmeal cookies with raisins, and you hate them, and you eat them anyway because she'd be sad if you didn't. Remember?"

His ears twitched forward.

"There you go. Breathe with me. In." I inhaled. "Out."

He took one step closer and pushed his nose against my wrist. His whole body was shaking. I rested my other hand on his neck, and I felt it start, the ripple under the fur, the bones beginning to shift back.

"That's it. Come back. You're okay."

The change hit him hard. He jerked, convulsing, and his front paw lashed out on instinct. Claws raked down my forearm from elbow to wrist.

I didn't pull away. I kept my hand on him until the fur thinned and the snout shortened and there was just a naked, sobbing sixteen-year-old boy curled in the grass.

"I'm sorry," he gasped. "Elara, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"I know." Someone threw a blanket, and I tucked it around his shoulders. "You did great."

That was when I heard Caleb.

"Ivy!"

He came across the field at a dead run. For one stupid second, out of three years of habit, I thought he was coming to me.

He went right past me.

He dropped beside Ivy, who was sitting in the spilled water with her hand over her mouth, and pulled her up by the arms. "Are you hurt? Did he touch you?"

"I'm fine," she said shakily. "I just fell. I got scared."

"Let me see." He turned her hands over, checking her palms, brushing mud off her sleeve. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure, Caleb."

He let out a long breath and pressed his forehead to hers. The whole field saw it.

Only then did he glance over his shoulder. His eyes landed on my arm, on the blood running down to my fingers and dripping into the grass.

"Jonah," he called to one of the warriors. "Take Elara to the healers."

That was it. Four words, and he turned back to my sister.

Jonah jogged over, looking uncomfortable. "Come on. Let's get that looked at."

I didn't move right away. I stood there and watched the blood bead along the four long cuts, bright red against my skin. It stung. It should have hurt more than that. Everything should have.

I kept waiting for the ache in my chest, the one that had followed me since the Moon Celebration.

It didn't come. There was nothing left where it used to be.

"Elara?" Jonah said.

"Yeah." I bent down with my good hand, picked my handbook out of the mud, and held it out to Ivy. She stared at it, then at me.

"Page nine," I said, and walked away.

By the time the full moon rose, my arm was stitched and wrapped in white gauze under my sleeve.

The ceremony hall was packed. Long tables lined the walls, candles flickering in silver holders, and the elders sat at the head table with the Alpha's family and mine. My seat had been moved to the far end, beside Elder Marion. Nobody explained why.

I figured it out when my father stood up and tapped his glass.

"Tonight," he said, and his voice filled the hall, "I have the honor of sharing some news on behalf of both our families."

My mother reached over and squeezed Ivy's hand. Ivy was already glowing.

"After much discussion with our Alpha, and with Caleb himself, we've agreed that my daughter Ivy will stand as Caleb's Luna candidate going forward."

Applause broke out. Somebody whistled.

I looked at Caleb.

He wasn't surprised. He wasn't confused. He was sitting back in his chair, nodding along, like he'd heard these words a dozen times already in rooms I hadn't been invited into.

He knew. He'd known for days, maybe weeks. He'd held my gaze in the council room and told me I was reading into things.

The applause faded, and then, one by one, heads turned toward me.

I felt it all around the hall. Every family I'd sat with, every elder I'd brought tea to, all of them watching to see what quiet, capable Elara would do. Smile. Clap. Make room.

My father walked the length of the head table and bent down beside my chair, still smiling for the room.

"Don't embarrass your sister," he murmured.

I looked down at my left wrist.

The courtship bracelet had been there since I was twenty-one. Braided silver, with a small moonstone Caleb had picked out himself. He'd fumbled the clasp three times putting it on me, laughing, promising it meant forever.

I unhooked it. The clasp came open on the first try.

The hall went silent.

I stood, walked to the head table, and set the bracelet down in front of Caleb, right beside his wine glass. The moonstone caught the candlelight.

He stared at it. Then at me. For the first time all night, his face slipped.

"El," he said quietly. "What are you doing?"

"You chose," I said.

I let him hear it. I let the whole room hear it.

"So did I."

"Elara." My mother's voice was sharp. "Sit down."

I didn't. I walked down the center aisle between the tables, past the stares and the whispers, and pushed open the heavy doors into the cold night air.

My phone buzzed in my pocket before they swung shut behind me.

It was an official pack notice, marked urgent, from the border office.

*Nightfall Pack has formally requested the reopening of the old northern territory patrol. Their Alpha will attend negotiations in person. Coordinator assigned: Elara Vale.*

I scrolled down to the name of the visiting Alpha, and my breath stopped in my throat.

*Ronan Black.*

Eight years ago, my father had dragged that boy to the Silverpine border in front of the entire pack and told him that if he ever came back, he'd die there.

Now he was coming back as an Alpha.