Chapter 1 The Wolf's Restraint. (1)

ALPHA GREGORY's POV.

The cry cut through the wind like a plea. It was thin, repeated, and fragile.

"Help...please help..."

It lodged itself under my ribs. They were three words pulling at something I had plastered over years ago. My control. Order. And the cold logic of an Alpha who was always on top.

I should have ignored it. I should have let Mateo follow the sound and stayed with the war plans, the maps, and the council that wanted a leader who wasn't weak.

Instead I rose.,

Mateo's ears twitched. He looked at me for a heartbeat before answering the pull in his own way. He shifted into his Wolf form. I watched him in his ash-grey wolf form vanish toward the cliff and the hollow beyond it.

After that, the forest seemed to hold its breath but the voice came again, smaller, as if something in the trees had learned how to sound like pleading.

My Wolf stirred beneath my skin and paced. The scent came after the sound-warm iron, wet earth, and under it a softer, sweeter thing that tightened my chest: fear braided with something untamed.

My legs moved as I ran into the woods. Branches slapped slightly at my face. The forest condensed to my pounding heart and the pull of that scent. As I passed a big tree, I caught a glimpse of her on the right side.

She crouched there like a broken thing, her hands over her head, long hair matted with blood. When I dropped to my knees, she flinched, shrinking inward as if the world would close over her.

I kept my hands open. "Easy," I said. My voice was a low thing I didn't entirely recognize. "I won't hurt you."

She whimpered. The sound was animal and human all at once. She pushed herself upright, her hands trembling, and for one heavy heartbeat, my jaw dropped.

His jaw, his Adam's apple, the way his shoulders fitted beneath skin, corrected me like a slap. He was a man. A wolfless male Omega.

"You?"

I breathed, because sighting him violated the tidy rules I had built around my life. I had sworn out loud, in the hush of the pack's older years that I would never claim again. The last claim had been a blade at my throat; the memory was an ache I hid beneath stone discipline.

But now, looking closely at his body, even in his current state, my knees nearly wobble and my heart skips a bit.

He looked at me with damp lashes, his brown pupils blown wide with panic. "Please...save me." The plea came out thin and ragged, and his body slumped as if the sound had taken the last of his strength.

I caught him before he fell. He was light and jagged in my arms, not the weight of anyone I had known to belong to us. His scent filled my nose-salt and copper and the faint, irresistible tang of something feral I couldn't name.

My Wolf pressed, insistent and ancient, and something in me answered. Not with the fury of a predator, but with the startled tenderness I had thought was gone from me.

My finger ran across his face gently. His skin was soft and almost flawless. My Wolf stirred. I cleared my throat and stopped what I was dragging myself into.

Carrying the Omega in my arms, I walked back to the main field where we were before. And just then, Mateo returned in his human form, breathing heavily. He paused when he saw what was in my arms, his eyes narrowing with concern and calculation.

"We have to take him," he said before thinking, shaking his head.

"And I was thinking not to." I pouted.

"But he's already in your arms. And he looks quite irresistible too." He joked, his eyes on mine.

The walk back to the palace felt short and long at once. The Omega was limp against my chest, his small hands fisted at my shirt. His breath came shallow; each inhale trembled through the fabric against my sternum. Either way, it worked through me like heat.

Inside the palace, the guards parted with the respect a leader required, not the curiosity I secretly invited. But deep inside the palace, there was noise and I saw some guards and maids running around.

"What's going on?" Mateo stopped and asked one of them.

"The left wing caught fire." The maid replied, breathing heavily.

"That means... the infirmary too?" He asked.

"Y-yes. I need to go help the others." She trembled and dashed away.

"Alpha, I need to go help the others before it expands to the other sides of the palace." Mateo said, the urgency of his voice not waiting for approval.

I nodded my head gently.

I was left with the Omega all alone in my arms. There was nowhere I was taking him to than my room. Else, I would drop him at the maid's quarters. After all, he is an Omega.

But, I couldn't just bring myself to do that. Maybe, because of his health?

"Stop lying to yourself. Just take him to your room." My Wolf encouraged me. I knew one day he would push me into a world of fire.