Sould 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

jeans on and tucking in the sweater I had pulled over my head. Dad was lacing up a pair of boots, grimacing as he pulled the

We were sore and dead tired, having spent nearly a week trudging through overgrown valleys and over the peaks of snow capped

sculpted mountains giving way to deep craters and sharp, uneven peaks. Nothing grew here, and fields and

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

a narrow cave opening and inside we

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

0.00%

12:250

What

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

missing explorers. They’ve been here for roughly

my stomach tightening as the memory of their departure from Winter Forest, all of

eyes as she watched her

They never came back.

been wearing, but they had dressed in a similar fashion

tossing an empty backpack out of the cave opening. He turned

“Dad!”

not going to go far. Look through the packs for anything like flashlights or matches. They had a

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

tucked into the pockets of the jacket he had found as he scanned the ground

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

strange woman. Not in a bad way, but in

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

the expedition. I wanted to go

that,” Dad said with a

ten 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

moving towards the entrance of

but for now, we need to find a

head. We had been eating rabbits and ground squirrels for a week and had stayed well

“Should we bury them,”

quickly, 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 return to Winter Forest, but that’s all. I don’t like the

felt somewhat electric and overwhelming. I was thankful to leave, walking a quarter mile away over the boulders until we reached another short cliff where a cave opening was hidden

sleep here,” Dad said, “look for something, anything, we can burn. We can’t have a fire inside, but we can have

uneven ground as I moved through the boulders. They

the strange landscape and cave

caves, seeing the top of Dad’s head disappear as he made his way back to the final resting

failed to save his daughter, who lost his hold on the castle of Drogomor. Whose nephew, the Alpha of Drogomor,

tucking them under my arm. Then I heard a whooshing sound and turned to it, right as

my

“What,”