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

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

changed, the once perfectly sculpted mountains giving way to deep craters and sharp, uneven peaks. Nothing grew here, and fields and fields of boulders marked our journey between valleys. This hadn’t been what

Waving in the stiff, unrelenting breeze.

marked the entrance to a narrow cave opening and inside 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 into the spare clothes they had brought on

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What Happened

I asked, running my fingers through my matted, filthy hair. The bodies were nothing by bone by now, and must have been here

explorers. They’ve been here for roughly fifteen

mean the expedition you sent 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 disappeared into the forest, bound for the

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

They never came back.

had dressed in a similar fashion for

I’m not 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 enough

“Dad!”

or matches.

in decent shape and at least half full, and a lighter

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

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.

woman. Not in a

time. It sounded plausible. There were warriors that wanted to go, begged

remember them leaving for the expedition. I wanted to go

with a sober smile,

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,

them?” I asked, moving towards the

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

rabbits and ground squirrels for a week and

“Should we bury them,”

best to identify them

away over the boulders until we reached another short cliff where a cave

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

of the uneven ground as I moved through the boulders. They were black

would explain the strange

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 regret as I watched him,

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

handfuls of dry grass and rose, tucking them under my arm. Then I heard a whooshing sound

tried to maintain my balance.

“What,”