Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder

Chapter 54: What Happened to Seraphine?

Rowan-Valoria

Boy, did things unravel.

We hadn’t been able to sleep for long before Damian’s warriors found us again. Dad led us deeper into the forest, crossing the river and attempting to back track towards Mirage, but it was too late. The forest was full of wolves. We were two against an impossible force.

“What pack did that woman say she was from?’ Dad said, his voice cracking over the mind-link as we began to climb up the base of the mountains, our paws slipping on the uneven, fragile shale rock.

“Greenbriar, I think,’ I answered, my legs sore and hips aching from the exercise. I ran in my wolf from every single morning and had done so for years. But spending over twenty-four hours as a wolf was causing an indescribable exhaustion and something I had never experienced before.

Plus, I was watching my dad’s plans fall through, and he was pissed. Especially after we crested the top of a cliff face looking over the forest and our plane buzzed the top of our heads.

*Damnit!” he said, turning his head to watch it ascend into the clouds.

‘That was us, wasn’t it

‘Yes, obviously. Come on, we have no choice but to keep going. They’re pushing us into the mountains, and we’re outnumbered-‘

The mountains? What exactly are you planning,

‘I was wrong, Rowan. There’s too many of them. I hadn’t expected Damian to have made alliances with other packs in Valoria, especially without my knowledge. We have to get home

“By crossing the mountains? Are you insane? That’ll take us weeks!”

.

Howling drifted from the trees below as we continued to climb, and I winced, torn between two impossible paths.

How did I prefer to die? Being torn apart by wolves, or dying of exposure in the mountains between the North and Valoria?

‘We have no choice. They’re expecting us to travel through the forest until we reach the Northern Tier. Stop whining, let’s go.’

I followed him up and over another ridge, padding further and further into the clouds until I finally looked down, seeing a full view of what had once been Mirage. Fires burned in pockets across the city. I could see the destruction of the buildings from our perch. And there was the castle, standing like an untouchable fortress amongst fields of golden grass.

And ahead of us?

I looked up where Dad had stopped and stretched his legs.

Nothing but miles, and miles, and miles of stone.

***

One Week Later

to?” I asked, pulling the jeans on and tucking in the sweater I had

through his teeth as he tied the other boot. We were sore and dead tired, having spent nearly a week trudging through overgrown valleys and over the peaks of snow capped

deep craters and sharp, uneven peaks. Nothing grew here, and

saw a flag. A familiar flag. Waving in the stiff,

the entrance to a narrow cave opening and

stood at the cave’s entrance for a long time, peering into its depths. We didn’t speak as we inspected the bodies, still fully dressed under layers of rotting fabric. He counted them, one by one, and after we found their backpacks, we shifted and changed

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54: What Happened to

The bodies were nothing by bone by now, and must have been here for a long, long time. But their clothes

for roughly fifteen

out when I was a kid? Really? This is them?” I looked down at the bones at my feet, my stomach tightening as the memory of their departure from Winter Forest, all of us watching and cheering them on as they

Gemma, who had tears in her eyes as she watched her mother

They never came back.

but they had dressed in a similar fashion for the journey. It was

sure,” Dad said briskly, tossing an empty backpack out of the cave opening. He turned back, walking deeper into the cave where it was dark

“Dad!”

here. I’m not going to go far. Look through the packs for anything like flashlights or matches. They had a fire in here, I can see the

in decent shape and at least half full, and a lighter that was dry, useless. I also found a compass

of the darkness. He had his hands tucked into the pockets of

into the mountains. No one had ever crossed the mountains before, at least as far as we know. Generally speaking, when we travel by land from the Northern Tier to Mirage, we do so through the forest, but she was convinced there was more to find to the east, that it could be faster if we found this river. It’s hundreds, if not a thousand miles of mountains and valleys between Winter Forest and Valoria on the east. This was shortly after the war when our planes and boats were in disrepair and supplies were short. We were desperate, and Seraphine, she well. She said halfway through the mountains was a river that she believed linked up with the river that runs through Valoria, through Mirage. She believed she could find it, it would be faster than traveling through the forest by

a river?” | asked. I remembered Seraphine, and she was always a strange woman. Not in a bad way,

at the time. It sounded plausible. There were warriors that wanted to go, begged in fact. So, your mother

leaving for the expedition. I wanted to go with

Dad said with a sober smile,

or eleven at the time. The expedition had opened up a whole new world for me and the other boys in Winter Forest. We were the generation born after the war, confined to one place while the adults cleaned up the mess. Suddenly, the small bubble we

I asked, moving towards the entrance

not sure. I’d need to inspect them closer, but for now, we need to find a place to rest and

had been eating rabbits and ground squirrels for a week and

“Should we bury them,”

grabbing the packs as we exited the cave, “We shouldn’t disturb them. I’ll do my best to identify them so I can give their families closure when we

leave, walking a quarter mile away over the boulders until we reached another short cliff where a cave opening was hidden between

couldn’t stand. “We’ll sleep here,” Dad said, “look for something, anything, we can

to find kindling, careful of the uneven ground as I moved

strange landscape and cave

final resting place of the expedition. I felt a pang of

Alpha King. Ethan, the mate of the White Queen. Ethan, who likely felt he had failed to save his daughter, who lost his

of dry grass and rose, tucking them under my arm. Then I heard a whooshing sound and turned to it, right as something hit me hard, square in the

to maintain my balance. I could taste blood, feel it streaming from my

“What,”