Alpha Deception

Ten years old. Mia was only ten when she stood barefoot on the frost-bitten stone, her feet numb, her breath catching in the icy air. Before her, a crowd had gathered like wolves drawn to blood. Warriors lined the edges, cloaks fluttering. Mothers clutched their children tighter. And at the center of it all on her knees was Lira.

Her mother.

Chains coiled around her wrists and neck, silver-glinting and cruel. Her head was bowed, dark hair matted with sweat and frost. Mia tried to rush forward, but the guards held her back. She could barely breathe past her screams.

"Please!" Mia shouted. "Please, she didn't do anything! She's not a traitor!"

Alpha Jon Snow stood above them all, the high stone platform beneath his boots. His gaze was carved from granite, cold and unreadable. The wolf in him didn't flinch, didn't blink. But Mia saw the flicker of hesitation, the war between what he once felt for Lira... and what he believed now.

"She is accused of infidelity," Jon declared. "And treason against the bloodline."

Lira's voice was hoarse. "You know I would never betray you."

His jaw clenched. "Then tell me the truth, Lira. How many more lies have you told? How many patterns, how many secrets were kept from me? Was Mia even-"

"She is yours!" Lira rasped, her voice breaking on the name. "You know she is! Look at her, Jon. Look at her."

But he did not look. Not at Mia. Not at the girl shaking with cold, face wet with tears, clutching her fists so tightly her nails drew blood from her palms.

Instead, he turned to Luna Cara, regal and venomous at his side. She didn't speak, but the tilt of her chin said enough. She had won. She always did.

"Enough," Jon said quietly. "The sentence is death."

"No!" Mia broke free, throwing herself forward. She was just a child, but rage made her reckless. "She's not lying..!"

A guard struck her hard across the cheek, and she tumbled to the ice. The breath left her lungs in a sharp gasp. She crawled toward her mother, but another guard stepped in, blocking her.

Lira looked up one last time. Her eyes locked on Mia's.

And then the blade fell.

There was no ceremony. No final prayer.

Just a clean, brutal flash and silence.

Mia screamed so hard it scraped her throat raw. But no one moved to shield her eyes. No one turned her away. They made her watch.

The blood steamed on the snow.

They called her a bastard. A liar's daughter. A threat.

That same night, Alpha Jon summoned her again. Not as a father. As a ruler.

"She should never have been born," Cara whispered. "Your mercy is weakness."

Jon stared at Mia, who stood defiant despite the swelling in her cheek.

"You are not my daughter," he said.

And just like that he banished her.

No title. No name. No home.

The gates of Snow Pack closed behind her, and the last warmth of her childhood died.

The woods beyond Snow Pack were merciless. A wall of dark pine and endless winter.

Mia wandered deeper into it, barefoot and broken. Her bones ached. Her lips split open from the wind. The snow reached her knees, and still she walked. She didn't cry. Not anymore.

She stopped when her legs gave out.

The snow wrapped around her like a shroud. Her fingers went numb. Her eyes blurred.

And just before the darkness pulled her under... she saw a shadow.

A woman.

Tall, wrapped in a raven-black cloak, her face pale and sharp as a blade. Her eyes were haunted things, filled with ghosts and storms. At her side was a man silent, vigilant, with a little scar running down his cheek and a short sword at his hip.

The woman crouched beside her.

"You should be dead."

Mia coughed. "I... I should be."

"What's your name?"

"I don't know," she rasped. "I don't know."

The woman looked at the man. He said nothing. Just nodded.

Reluctantly, she scooped Mia into her arms.

"You're lucky I'm not as cruel as your people."

Her name was Jessie Roy. A rogue. A ghost with fire under her skin. She lived past the Green Borderlands, in a village that took in the lost and spat back the broken.

The man was Denis loyal, quiet, and far too observant.

Jessie took Mia in not with warmth, but with rules.

"You don't speak unless spoken to. You train. You work. You don't beg for pity."

Mia nodded.

And so, Jessie taught her.

She taught her how to fight. How to bandage a wound. How to slip poison into a goblet without being seen. How to speak various languages and survive seven kinds of winter. Jessie sharpened her like a weapon.

And so did Denis, under the instructions of Jessie, he was to train her like he was being trained to fight wars.

Denis said little but he was always there. Watching Mia. Bringing her food when Jessie forgot. Showing her how to clean a blade, how to spot liars with one look.

They became something like a family.

But Mia never forgot the snow.

She never forgot the scream in her throat. The cold steel of exile. The moment her father didn't claim her. The moment her mother bled into the ice.

And as the years passed, and the scars became stories etched into her skin, the fire inside her didn't die.

It grew.

Mia grew into her rage like a blade grows into its hilt, dangerous, balanced, honed.

She trained with bruises on her arms and questions in her heart. Jessie never answered all of them. She didn't speak of Snow Pack. She didn't speak of Alpha Jon or Lira or the trial that stole a mother from her child. But Mia remembered every detail. Every scream. Every betrayal. And that silence became her vow.

By twelve, she could out-sprint most warriors in Green Pack. By fourteen, she could disarm Denis with a wooden blade. By sixteen, she knew how to kill a man in four different ways without spilling a drop of blood.

Jessie taught her not to just survive, but to infiltrate, manipulate, destroy.

"You're not just a girl," she said one night, voice low by firelight. "You're a weapon."

Mia didn't flinch.

"I don't want to be a weapon," she whispered. "I want to be more, I want to be a storm."

Jessie looked at her, then nodded.

"So be it."

The Green Pack's training ground was always alive with sound swords clashing, boys shouting, elders barking orders but the noise faded at the edge of the cliffs where three children used to escape. They weren't supposed to be there, high above the valley where eagles circled, but it was the only place Mia could breathe.

She sat cross-legged on the edge, scuffed knees and bleeding knuckles hidden beneath her tattered cloak. Jayson stood behind her, silent as always, while Kira darted around the boulders with reckless energy.

"You're going to fall one day," Jayson said quietly.

"I won't," Mia replied, not looking back. "I watch my footing."

He didn't argue. He never did. Instead, he sat beside her, leaving a respectful space between them. Kira eventually joined, brushing grass from her clothes.

They were just eleven years old when they'd first found that cliff. Raven would always come and watch her and smile at her but will disappear once she looked back at him. It wasn't love he felt but something more comforting.

Mia noticed Raven first and then Jayson and Kira. He wasn't widely known in the pack, so they asked Mia to stay far.

Jayson Stark, the noble son of a respected warrior, had always been quiet, withdrawn yet drawn to Mia like moss to stone. Something about her made him stay. Maybe it was the way she never cried when the boys called her names, or how her eyes burned when the trainers told her to behave like a girl.

But Jayson didn't see a girl. He saw a warrior.

"Why do you always pick fights?" Kira had asked once, swinging her feet over the cliff's edge.

"Because they deserve it," Mia muttered. "They call me weak because I was adopted. Because I like swords. Because I'm not one of them."

"You fight too hard," Jayson said. Not as a criticism, but a quiet observation. "Harder than even the sons of Betas."

Mia turned to him, eyes narrow. "You think I shouldn't?"

"I think you don't have to fight to prove anything to me."

That was the first time Mia felt something strange when she looked at him. A flutter she buried beneath anger and grit.

As the years passed, their bond only deepened. The other boys saw Mia as a threat, always too fast, too clever, too determined. She disguised her pain with sarcasm and the sharp edge of her blade, but Jayson and Kira saw through her armor.

Kira became the glue that held them together. Fierce and loud-mouthed, she always teased Jayson for his brooding silence and Mia for her reckless anger. But when Mia came back bloodied from another fight, it was Kira who patched her up, muttering curses at the boys who dared touch her.

"She doesn't need your protection," Jayson had told Kira once, watching as she dabbed a cut on Mia's cheek.

"Maybe not," Kira retorted, "but sometimes warriors need friends too."

Mia had looked away then, eyes burning. She didn't know how to ask for help. She didn't know how to let herself be vulnerable, not when her entire existence felt like a rebellion.

But she trusted them. That meant something.

At fourteen, their world shifted.

Mia started growing into herself taller, stronger, deadlier. Her features sharpened, her presence intensified. She had always been beautiful in a wild, untamed way, but now even the older boys noticed. Some looked at her with desire. Others with contempt.

Jayson noticed, too. He tried not to.

When they spared, he was the only one who could truly match her. Their fights were silent dances, each move studied, each strike a message. She moved like wind; he moved like water. They never spoke of what passed between them during those fights, but it changed things.

"I hate this," Mia said one night, wiping sweat from her brow. "Being in this body."

Jayson handed her a towel. "You mean being a girl?"

"No. I mean being a target."

He looked at her then not as a friend, not as a comrade, but as something else. Something deeper. "You're not a target, Mia. You're a storm."

She scoffed. "Storms don't get chosen."

"Then we'll change the sky."

She stared at him, startled. He wasn't the type to say things like that. He rarely said anything at all. But in his quiet way, he always made her feel seen.

Mia trained with the other pack members on the training grounds because Mia and Denis had molded her and she was able to beat a few pack members in fights.

One cold evening on her way back from personal training, she was jumped.

Mia spun, breath ragged, a cut split across her brow, but her stance held firm. The boy at her feet groaned, clutching his ribs.

"Next time," she snapped, "don't try grabbing me from behind."

A cluster of boys loomed nearby, all sons of minor warriors bitter, bruised, and eager to put her in her place. She'd humiliated three of them before the others grew bold enough to intervene.

"She's not even one of us," one spat, wiping blood from his mouth. "Jessie's stray mutt. Rogue trash."

Mia tilted her head. "Funny. You say that while coughing up teeth."

Another stepped forward bigger, louder, but slower. He was breathing heavy from their earlier sparring match.

"You think strength makes you one of us?" he barked. "You're not blood. You're not even pack."

"And yet you're on the ground," Mia replied coldly.

He lunged sloppy, angry.

She pivoted, dodging low, then slammed her elbow into his spine. He hit the dirt with a choked grunt, and the circle of onlookers gasped.

"Enough!" one of the older trainees barked, stepping in. "This isn't a brawl. Back to formation."

Mia backed away, chest heaving, blood dripping slowly down the side of her cheek. The others began to scatter, some throwing glares over their shoulders.

That was when she heard it.

"Don't waste your time on her, bro," one boy muttered under his breath. "You should be training for the Alpha Trials."

Mia froze.

The words struck like a blow.

Alpha Trials?

She turned sharply, narrowing her eyes at the retreating backs. "What did you just say?"

The boy smirked but didn't stop walking. "If you don't know, you don't matter."

She stood in the middle of the field, the icy wind biting at her skin. For a moment, she forgot the sting on her cheek, the ache in her knuckles.

Alpha Jon had no male heir.

And the Trials... were only for males of strength and royal blood.

Something twisted deep in her gut.

Something old. Cold. And burning.

The fire inside her, long buried under frost and discipline, roared back to life.