The Alpha Mate

Chapter 100

Atlas had insisted on joining the morning training session despite the dark circles beneath his eyes, despite the way his hands trembled slightly when he thought no one was watching.

I'd wanted to argue, but the look he gave me when I opened my mouth had shut it again. Steel wrapped around exhaustion.

He needed to feel useful. I understood that better than anyone.

So I stood at the edge of the training grounds and watched him work with Piper, running defensive drills that required him to manipulate the shadows around the clearing, bending them into barriers, shaping them into distractions, the techniques he'd been perfecting for weeks.

At first it looked fine. His movements were fluid, the shadows responding to his commands with their usual eerie grace. Piper circled him, testing the barriers, probing for weaknesses.

Then—

He faltered.

It was small—a stutter in his stance, his left hand pressing briefly to his ribs. The shadows he'd been weaving flickered like a candle caught in a gust. He blinked, refocused, and pushed forward.

The shadows surged, but not where he'd directed them.

They lashed sideways in a violent whip of darkness, striking Piper across the chest and hurling her backward into the dirt. She hit the ground hard, rolling twice before she came to a stop, gasping, the wind knocked out of her.

"Piper!" Atlas staggered forward, face white with horror.

The shadows convulsed around his feet, writhing as though they'd come alive, no longer obeying him but reacting to something deeper, something he couldn't control. His crescent mark blazed erratically, flickering between silver light and sickly darkness.

I was already moving. I reached Piper first—bruised, winded, but conscious—and then Atlas, who had dropped to his knees, clutching his ribs with both hands, his breathing ragged and shallow.

"I didn't—" he choked. "I didn't do that. I didn't tell them to—Draven, I couldn't control it—"

"Easy." I knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other tilting his face toward mine.

His skin was clammy and cold. His eyes were wide and glassy, and behind them I could see something I'd never seen in Atlas before—raw, uncomprehending terror.

"Hyde," he whispered, and the name came out cracked. "Hyde just—he said something. He said…" Atlas swallowed hard, his voice dropping to barely a breath. "'Something is inside us. Something dark. It's feeding on our bond with the moon.'"

The words landed in my chest like a blade between the ribs.

I helped him to his feet, waved off the gathered warriors with a sharp look, and walked him back to our quarters with my arm locked around his waist.

He protested weakly—’I'm fine, it was just a slip, I'll be fine’—but his weight leaned into me more with every step, and by the time I eased him onto the bed, his eyes were already closing.

I waited until his breathing steadied into sleep. Then I left.

Mia, our healer, was an old woman with hands like birch bark and eyes that had seen things she'd never speak of willingly.

I found her in the apothecary, grinding something sharp-smelling in a stone mortar. She looked up when I entered and read my expression in a single glance.

"Bring him to me," she said.

"He's sleeping. I need you to come to him. Quietly."

She examined Atlas while he slept—her gnarled fingers hovering over his body with a patience that made me want to shatter something.

When her hands reached his left side, she stopped. Her fingers pressed gently against the skin above his lower ribs, and her face changed.

"Lift his shirt," she murmured.

I did. And there, beneath the skin where Evan had bitten him—healed on the surface, smooth and unmarked to the naked eye—something dark pulsed. Faint, almost invisible, like a bruise made of shadow rather than blood. It spread in a pattern that wasn't natural.

Symbols. Sigils. Carved not into skin but into something deeper.

"Blood magic," Mia said quietly. Her voice had gone flat in the way it did when she was frightened and refused to show it. "Old one. The kind tied to the silver wolf prophecy—the rituals that were banned centuries ago."

"What does it do?"

She was silent for too long.

"Mia."

"It's a parasitic curse. It feeds on his connection to the moon—suppressing his abilities, draining his wolf. The longer it remains, the stronger it grows."

She withdrew her hands and straightened, meeting my eyes with a steadiness I recognized as forced. "If this curse isn't broken before the lunar eclipse, it won't just strip his powers, Alpha. It will kill him."

The room tilted. The floor beneath my feet went liquid, and for one terrible moment I was standing in a different room, four years ago, staring at Annabeth's empty bed, being told she was gone and there was nothing I could have done.

Not again. Not again.

"How long?" My voice came out wrong—scraped raw, barely human.

"The eclipse is in three weeks."

"How do I break it?"

"I don't know. This magic is beyond anything I've studied. You'd need someone with knowledge of the old rituals—the silver wolf rites, the Hollow Stones. Perhaps the source of the curse itself."

I looked down at Atlas who was still sleeping and pale. The crescent mark at his brow dim and unsteady, its light guttering like a flame running out of air. My hand found his, and I held it so tightly my knuckles went white.

‘I will not lose you. I will burn the world to its foundations before I let you go.’

The door opened behind me. Aaron stepped in, his face grim, hauling someone by the arm.

Talia.

She was snarling, twisting against his grip, but Aaron held her easily. In his other hand he carried a folded piece of parchment, its seal broken.

"Caught her at the northern border," Aaron said flatly. "Trying to send this to Midnight Crest. It's addressed to Dominic. Patrol schedules, ward rotations, the location of our supply caches. All of it."

Talia's eyes met mine—defiant, furious, utterly unrepentant. "You have no idea what's coming," she hissed.

"Lock her up," I said. My voice was ice. "No one speaks to her until I do. No one."

Aaron dragged her away. The door closed.

I turned back to Atlas, brushed the silver hair from his forehead, and pressed my lips to the flickering crescent mark. It pulsed weakly against my mouth—a heartbeat fading.

"I'll find a way," I whispered against his skin. "If it means walking into enemy territory alone, I will find a way to save you."

Atlas stirred beneath my touch, murmuring something I couldn't hear, and his fingers tightened around mine even in sleep—holding on, trusting me, even now.

The door burst open again. My other Beta, wild-eyed, chest heaving.

"Alpha—Damian's forces are massing at the eastern border. Hundreds of them." His voice cracked. "They'll be here soon!"