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

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

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

peaks. Nothing grew here, and fields and fields of boulders marked our journey between valleys. This hadn’t been what I was expecting. The mountains were far east, lined

in

the entrance to a narrow cave

didn’t speak as we inspected the bodies, still fully dressed under layers of rotting fabric. He counted them, one by one, and

0.00%

12:250

54: What

my fingers 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 were surprisingly modern compared to how old I thought

They’ve been here for roughly fifteen years, give or

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

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

They never came back.

remember what Seraphine might have been wearing, but they had dressed in a similar fashion for the journey.

missing. I’m not sure,” Dad said briskly, tossing an empty backpack out of the cave opening. He turned back, walking deeper

“Dad!”

far. Look through the packs for anything like flashlights or

did as I was told, rifling through each of the backpacks. I collected two matchbooks that were in decent shape and at least half full, and a lighter that was dry, useless. I

into the pockets of the jacket he had found as he scanned the ground once more,

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.

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

were warriors that wanted to go, begged

for the expedition. I wanted to go with

Dad said with a sober smile, “You fought us for

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

moving towards the

them closer, but for now, we need to find a place to rest and start

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

“Should we bury them,”

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

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

we crouched and sat, but we couldn’t stand. “We’ll sleep here,” Dad said, “look for something, anything, we can burn. We can’t have a fire inside, but we can have one

careful of the uneven ground as I moved

the strange landscape and

the caves, seeing the top of Dad’s head disappear as he made his way back to the final resting place of the expedition. I felt a pang of

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

rose, tucking them under my arm. Then I heard a whooshing sound

vision blurring as I tried to maintain my balance. I could taste blood,

“What,”