After My Alpha Chose Her, I Brought Him Down

Two weeks.

That was how long it took for the pack I built to start bleeding.

Reid heard it first, through one of his old Deltas — a kid named Mason who still owed him his life from a rogue ambush two summers back. Fabian had walked into the war room on his second day, slapped a marker against the patrol map, and announced that Dad's rotation was "inefficient." Too many shifts. Too much overlap. He cut the northern patrol from four wolves to two and pushed the rotations from six hours to ten.

Mason told Reid he'd actually laughed at first. Thought it was a joke.

It wasn't.

Four days later, Ironveil hit the northern ridge. Just a probe — three rogues on Thorne's payroll, sniffing at our weakest line. Under Dad's old rotation, they would have been turned back before they cleared the tree line.

They took two acres. Killed a Delta named Bryce. Walked out before backup arrived.

I read Mason's message twice. Then I set the phone facedown on the kitchen table and stared at the wood grain until my eyes stopped burning.

Bryce had a mate. A little boy who'd just turned three.

Aria didn't whisper this time. She was silent, the way she got when grief and rage tangled together so tight she couldn't tell them apart.

"Coleson's already spinning it," Reid said from the doorway. He hadn't slept. None of us had. "Calling it bad luck. Says Ironveil got bold because of the leadership transition."

"Of course he is."

"Three warriors put in transfer requests this morning. Quiet ones. Senior wolves." He cracked his knuckles. "The ones who actually know what they're doing."

I nodded slowly. "It'll get worse."

"Yeah."

He sat down across from me. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Outside, Dad was splitting firewood. The dull thud of the axe carried through the open window, steady as a heartbeat.

---

The smear hit three days later.

Reid found out about it the way he found out about most things — through a forwarded message from another former Silvercrest wolf. He came into the kitchen with his phone clenched so tight in his fist I thought the screen would shatter.

"Read it." He shoved it across the table. "Read what that piece of —"

"Reid."

Mom was at the counter. She didn't turn around, but her voice cut clean through the room. He swallowed the rest.

I picked up the phone.

It was a group message, the kind that gets passed between Alphas' inner circles like contraband. Coleson's words, dressed up as an official statement, but the venom underneath was unmistakable.

*…regret to inform allied packs that the recent instability within Silvercrest stems from a deliberate act of sabotage by my former mate, Amora Sanders. Upon her removal from her unofficial advisory role, she and her family withdrew critical operational infrastructure in a calculated attempt to cripple this pack…*

I read it twice.

My hands did not shake. That surprised me.

*…the Sanders family's behavior has shown a troubling pattern of personal vendetta superseding pack loyalty. Allied Alphas are advised to exercise caution in any future dealings…*

I set the phone down.

Reid was already on his feet. He paced two steps toward the wall, two steps back, his shoulders so tight I could see the muscle jumping in his jaw. Then his fist came up.

"Reid."

His knuckles stopped half an inch from the drywall. His whole arm was trembling.

"Reid. Look at me."

He did. His eyes were wolf-yellow at the edges, Caspian — his inner wolf — riding too close to the surface.

"You break that wall," I said quietly, "and Mom has to patch it. That's what you want? More work for Mom?"

His fist dropped. He turned and braced both hands on the back of a chair, breathing through his teeth.

"He's calling you a traitor, Amora." His voice was raw. "He's telling every Alpha in three states that *you* did this. After everything you — after what he —"

"I know what he's doing."

"Then let me —"

"No."

I stood up. I walked to the cabinet above the fridge and pulled down the rolled map I'd tucked there the morning we arrived. I spread it across the kitchen table, smoothing the creases with my palms. The Pacific Northwest. Pack territories marked in faded ink. Silvercrest in the center. Ironveil shaded along its northern border. Nighthollow tucked east. A dozen smaller packs scattered between.

Reid watched me, his breath finally slowing.

I tapped two fingers against Silvercrest's eastern line. The route where Nighthollow's couriers had been crossing for months, back when I still had eyes inside that pack.

"We are not going to answer this," I said.

"Amora —"

"Listen to me." I lifted my eyes to his. "Coleson wants noise. He wants us to deny, to argue, to write our own statement and beg the allied packs to believe us. The second we do that, we're just two voices shouting in a hallway. His word against ours. And right now, in this region, his word still carries the Alpha title behind it."

Reid's jaw worked.

"So we don't shout." I tapped the map again. "We collect. Quietly. Fabian is already stealing — I'd bet my wolf on it. Emory and her brother didn't come to Silvercrest to play house. They came to drain it. Every dollar Fabian moves, every map he sells, every message he sends — it leaves a trace. And traces can be gathered."

"And then?"

I looked at him. My voice did not rise.

"Then, when the time is right, we don't say a word. We just put the evidence on a screen and let the entire werewolf community read it for themselves."

Reid stared at the map.

Then he cracked his knuckles, one slow joint at a time, and sat down.

"Tell me what you need," he said.

Aria lifted her head inside me, alert for the first time in weeks.

Outside, the axe stopped falling. Dad was listening through the window. I didn't have to look to know it.