My Alpha Stole My Wolf to Control Me Forever

The logbook was still in my lap when the door slammed open.

Beta Derek strode in with two enforcers flanking him, their faces blank masks. Briana went rigid beside me.

"Miss Snyder." Derek's voice was all business. "We need to have a conversation."

"About what?" My fingers tightened on the leather book.

He didn't answer. Just nodded to one of the enforcers, who moved to my wheelchair. His hands went to the storage pouch on the back—the one I never used because I couldn't reach it.

He pulled out a burner phone.

My stomach dropped.

"Well, well." Derek held it up like a trophy. "Care to explain this?"

"That's not mine."

"No?" He tapped the screen. Messages scrolled past, too fast to read, but I caught fragments. Pack patrol schedules. Guard rotations. Territory maps. "These texts to known rogues say otherwise."

"I've never seen that phone before in my life."

"Treason is a serious charge, Miss Snyder." Derek's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Alpha's orders. You're to be moved to the dungeon for interrogation."

Interrogation. The word hung in the air like a death sentence.

Briana stepped forward. "This is insane. She's been in this bed for two days. How could she—"

"You should leave, Miss Cook." Derek's tone went cold. "Unless you'd like to join her."

Briana's face went white. She looked at me, then at Derek, then fled.

The enforcers moved toward my bed.

Then the temperature in the room dropped.

Not literally. But something shifted in the air, thick and electric, raising every hair on my arms. The enforcers froze mid-step. Derek's hand went to his throat like he couldn't breathe.

The door opened again.

A man stepped through. Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair and eyes that looked almost silver in the fluorescent light. He wore simple clothes—jeans, a black shirt—but he moved like violence contained in human form.

Power rolled off him in waves.

"Alpha Lawrence." Derek's voice came out strangled. "This is Blood River territory. You have no—"

"Lycan Jurisdiction." The man's voice was quiet. Calm. Absolutely terrifying. "I'm invoking it."

Derek's face went from red to white. "You can't—"

"I can. And I am." Malcolm Lawrence—because that's who this had to be—moved between me and the enforcers. His aura expanded, pressing against them like a physical force. "When an Alpha is compromised by crimes against the Moon Goddess, a High Alpha may take custody of any suspect to ensure fair trial. Ancient law. Still binding."

"Jonah isn't compromised—"

"He nearly killed his own mate in front of witnesses." Malcolm's eyes flicked to my cast, my bruised face. "He's been poisoning her for seven years. And now he's framing her for treason to silence her." He held up his phone. The screen showed a photo of the logbook. "I have evidence. Do you really want to test me on this?"

The enforcers backed toward the door.

Derek stood his ground, but barely. "The Alpha will—"

"The Alpha will answer to the Lycan Council." Malcolm's voice dropped lower. "Get out of my way."

Derek moved.

Malcolm turned to me. His aura softened, the pressure easing until I could breathe again. "Can you travel?"

I nodded. Didn't trust my voice.

He lifted me from the bed like I weighed nothing. The logbook fell to the floor. One of the enforcers—the younger one—picked it up and handed it to Malcolm with shaking hands.

"Thank you." Malcolm's tone gentled. "Tell your Alpha I'll be filing formal charges by dawn."

Then he carried me out of the Healer's ward, out of the pack house, into the night.

***

The pain started an hour into the drive.

Not the broken arm. Not the bruised ribs. Something deeper. Something that felt like my bones were trying to tear themselves apart from the inside.

I bit back a scream.

"Almost there." Malcolm's voice came from the driver's seat. Steady. Calm. "Elena's waiting."

Elena. The Healer. She'd left with us, sitting in the back seat with medical supplies and a grim expression.

"It's the wolfsbane," she said quietly. "Her body's starting to purge it. It's going to get worse before it gets better."

Worse.

The Dark Forest territory was nothing like Blood River. No grand pack house, no manicured lawns. Just trees and darkness and a sprawling lodge that looked like it had grown from the forest itself.

Malcolm carried me inside. Up stairs. Into a room with soft lighting and a bed that smelled like pine and something else. Something that made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with broken ribs.

Elena started an IV. "This will help with the pain. A little."

It didn't.

The seizures started that night. My body convulsing, muscles locking, teeth chattering so hard I tasted blood. Elena held me down. Malcolm's hand found mine in the darkness.

"I'm here," he said. "You're safe."

Safe.

I didn't know what that word meant anymore.

The hallucinations came next. Jonah's face, twisted with rage. Luna's voice, calling my name. Shadows that moved like wolves, circling my bed with hungry eyes.

"Not real," Malcolm's voice cut through the nightmare. "Halle, look at me. Not real."

I tried. Failed. The shadows had teeth.

Then his aura wrapped around me. Not crushing like Jonah's. Gentle. Anchoring. Like a hand reaching through dark water, pulling me toward light.

I grabbed onto it and held on.

Three days. Elena said later it was three days, but it felt like years. Three days of my body trying to kill itself, purging seven years of poison one agonizing hour at a time.

Malcolm never left.

I felt him there, even when I couldn't see him. His presence, steady and unshakable, keeping me tethered to reality when everything else dissolved into pain and madness.

On the third night, something shifted.

The pain didn't stop. But underneath it, I felt something else. Something stirring in the hollow place where my wolf should've been.

A heartbeat that wasn't mine.

A breath that came from somewhere deeper than lungs.

And a voice, faint as a whisper, that I hadn't heard in seven years.

*I'm still here.*