🐺 Chapter 1: The Alpha Ascends
> "The moon gives, and the moon takes. Tonight, we howl not in joy, but in memory."
— High Elder Ruan, speaking at the pyre of Alpha Morric
The mountain wind whispered through the pines like an ancient breath. Snow fell lightly upon the gathering below, a ring of wolves and men circling a towering funeral pyre. At its heart lay the still body of Morric Silverhide, wrapped in white furs, crowned with a garland of silver thistle.
Kael stood before the flame, barely twenty-three winters, yet already burdened by the weight of the Silverhide Alpha's mantle. His dark hair was streaked with ash, his golden eyes sharp and unblinking. A fresh scar marked his left shoulder—the mark of ritual combat, a tradition fulfilled after his father's death. The blood had barely dried.
To his right stood Theren, his younger brother. Where Kael was calm and carved by grief, Theren was fire—his eyes restless, his jaw tense. And behind them, the seer, Vaela, hooded in midnight blue, silent as stone.
Kael raised the torch.
"We return his body to the flame," he spoke, his voice echoing through the pine-shadowed glade. "His soul to the Moonmother. His memory to the Pack."
He touched the torch to the pyre. Flame kissed oil-soaked pine, and fire roared upward with sudden hunger.
Howls split the silence. Dozens of voices—half-human, half-beast—rose in unison, the mourning call of a pack saying goodbye. But in the back, Alira—Kael's bondmate—did not howl. She watched Kael with shadowed eyes, fingers white on her cloak clasp.
Later, in the sacred chamber beneath the Stonefang Den, the elders anointed Kael with moon-oil. He knelt, shirtless, breathing in the incense of crushed herbs and iron dust. The Alpha's Mark was carved into his chest with a bone dagger—three claw-like lines representing strength, blood, and sacrifice.
When it was done, Kael stood—new Alpha, yet already alone.
In the crowd, Theren did not bow.
The Fall of Silverhide
---
The mountain air bit deep, laced with pine and sorrow.
High on the cliffs of Elderglen, the sacred pyre burned. Its smoke drifted skyward, curling around the pale face of the full moon. Below it, the wolves of the Silverhide Pack stood in formation—wolfborn and skinbound alike—each adorned in ceremonial garb marked with soot, silver thread, or bone charms. It was a rare unity, forged not by celebration, but grief.
Morric Silverhide, Alpha of the oldest werewolf pack in the Northern Territories, was dead.
Kael, his firstborn son, stood at the base of the pyre. The cold kissed his bare skin, but he did not flinch. Ritual demanded he feel it all—the wind, the weight, the truth. Fire crackled behind him, devouring the body of the man who had ruled for thirty years with both fang and foresight.
The pack's collective howl had faded. Silence settled over the den like a heavy pelt.
He turned slightly as someone approached from the shadows. Alira. She moved with the grace of a hunting cat, her cloak trailing frost across the stones. Her hair, the color of ravens' wings, was braided with wolf teeth—each a symbol of a hunt she had led or survived. A true warrior of Silverhide.
But her eyes… they had changed.
"You did not howl," Kael said quietly, not accusing—just observant.
Alira met his gaze. "Nor did you."
They stood in stillness. Behind them, embers floated like dying stars. There had been a time when Alira was his anchor, his fiercest defender. They had grown up sparring side by side. When they were sixteen, they made a blood bond in secret, binding soul to soul as was custom among chosen mates. No formal ceremony, only instinct. Only love.
Now there was distance between them. Months of it.
"I grieve," she said at last. "Just not with howls."
"Then how?" he asked.
She looked away. "With caution."
---
🩸 The Politics of a Dying Alpha
In the days following the funeral, Kael sat the Alpha's Throne for the first time. A half-circle of stone carved with ancestral glyphs, it sat at the back of the council cave, beneath the mural of the Moonmother's descent.
Tensions were immediate.
Elder Varek, the oldest living werewolf in the pack, challenged Kael's decision to send a peace envoy to the Blackroot Pack, whose warriors had been spotted along their eastern border.
"They circle like vultures, and you greet them like neighbors," Varek growled, his one remaining eye gleaming with suspicion. "Your father would have met them with steel and tooth."
Kael held his temper. "And how many lives would he have spent doing it?"
Varek scoffed. "Lives are the currency of power, boy."
Before Kael could respond, a softer voice cut in.
"Perhaps diplomacy and steel can walk side by side," said Theren, lounging at the base of the throne steps. "A sharp tongue backed by a sharper claw. That's what Father taught me."
A few councilmembers murmured their approval. Kael caught Vaela, the seer, watching the exchange. Her expression was unreadable, her silver-threaded robes trailing behind her like mist. She had advised Morric for years—and yet, something about her silence felt… coiled.
Kael dismissed the council after an hour of bickering. As the chamber emptied, Theren lingered.
"You're losing them," he said, once they were alone.
"I haven't even begun," Kael replied.
Theren shrugged. "Exactly."
---
🌙 Beneath the Moonlight
That night, Kael found Alira outside the den, staring out across the snow-covered trees. She often took to the cliffs when troubled—said the wind cleared her mind better than prayer.
He joined her without a word. They watched the moon rise—full and heavy, like a bloodstone.
"You should have said something today," Kael finally murmured. "You're my bondmate. Your voice matters."
"I'm not sure it does anymore," she replied.
He turned sharply. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I stood beside Morric when he crushed the Hollowtooth Rebellion," she said. "I bled for this pack, for our laws, for the stability your father built. Now I see elders divided, wolves murmuring about Theren behind closed doors, and you—"
"Say it."
"You act as though leadership is a burden, not a calling," she said. "But power doesn't wait for you to be ready."
Kael's chest tightened. "I didn't ask for this. I only wanted—"
"Peace?" Alira scoffed. "The world doesn't give peace, Kael. It gives choices. Hard ones. And your brother's already making them."
There it was—the truth he didn't want to face.
Theren wasn't just bold. He was popular. Charismatic. More wolf than man. He spoke to the younger warriors about reclaiming honor and glory. About cleansing the bloodlines tainted by human kin. About a purer pack.
And some were starting to listen.
Kael looked to the moon, where the flames of his father's pyre still danced in memory.
"Then I'll make mine," he whispered. "Starting now."