The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 61: Howling Nightmares

🦋 ALTHEA

While we waited for them in front of the fortress, the rest of the clan slowly began to arrive. I realized then that the other homes in the territory were behind the wide and high building that was the fortress.

It served as protection. The fortress would be the first place to be hit by enemies. Another element of the clan that I would miss. The higher ranks truly protected the lower ranks. It was not that way in Hollowhowl.

The pack house stood at the outerlands, the omega keep right at the mist’s lip.

I found myself smiling, and the hell hound noticed. I could feel more heat radiate off him. He curled his large hand into a fist, cracking his neck like he was preparing for war. He wished to be rid of me.

His ire and irritation toward me would boil over soon enough, festering into a hate greater than the one he already bore.

With more streams of people joining us in front of the fortress—what I deduced was the clan center—I saw more faces, all wearing the same expression the moment their eyes met me where I stood beside their Alpha.

Hate.

And it rolled like a blaze over me, their eyes simmering with disdain.

And then I saw her.

Ivanka stood among the gathered ranks, half-shadowed by torchlight and bodies, her spine straight, her expression carved into something unreadable. But her eyes found mine without hesitation. She held my gaze—hard and steady. There was no pity there.

Only instruction.

She gave a single nod.

I knew what she wanted.

My fingers moved before my courage could catch up with them. I reached out and threaded my hand into Thorne’s, the heat of him immediate, volatile. The moment my skin touched his, the air shifted. Every eye snapped to us. A ripple passed through the clan like a living thing.

I leaned closer, rising on my toes just enough to brush my mouth near his ear.

"You are mine," I whispered, soft enough that only he would hear. "You will always be mine."

The lie burned. The bond screeched. His reaction was instant.

And Ivanka’s voice slithered into my skull. You might never understand this—calling a man that used to be a slave ’yours,’ as if he were a possession, will make him hate you. That is what you must do. Say it in private. Say it like a pronouncement. Let him hate you like he hated his captors.

His hand left mine only to clamp around my neck, fingers curling with deliberate cruelty as he hauled me closer. Gasps broke out. The world tilted as he dipped his head down to my face, his breath hot, his voice pitched to carry.

"Do not touch me," he drawled, slow and venomous. "Do not claim me."

My feet barely kissed the ground.

"You are nothing to this clan," he continued, eyes raking over me like I was something dragged from rot. "A stain. A mistake. A body tolerated only because I allow it."

The words struck harder than his grip.

Murmurs rose—then voices, echoing him, feeding off the permission he gave them.

Whore.

Leech.

Omega trash.

Mist-born filth.

Each insult landed like a stone. I kept my face still. Kept my breath shallow. If I cried now, I would never stop. My chest ached, hollow and burning, the mate bond flaring bright and savage beneath my skin, begging, begging for relief that would never come.

This was the plan.

I reminded myself of that as my vision blurred, as something inside me cracked anyway.

He released me, dropping me with a snarl.

Then hands caught me from behind—too sudden, too rough—and for a heartbeat I thought I was falling.

I turned sharply.

Ivanka.

Her grip was firm, anchoring, her mouth close to my ear as she hissed through clenched teeth, "Head up. Do not lose yourself now."

She didn’t wait for permission. Her fingers moved fast, practiced, gathering my loose hair and braiding it quickly down my back—tight and efficient, out of my face, out of the way. A small, intimate act done in defiance of the cruelty on display.

"Keep your head on straight," she murmured. "If you don’t want to die."

For a second, confusion almost seeped through the hurt I had instigated. Die? During a hunt?

It was then that I noticed something strange. The children were here too—newborns. All strapped to their mothers and fathers. Some men had more than one child secured to them.

I blinked, seeming to jolt out of my daze. I had focused so much on their hateful gazes that the other details had blurred.

Thorne took center stage. He did not need a dais; the man loomed like a mountain.

"We know why we are here tonight..." His eyes shifted evenly to me.

I swallowed.

"Tonight, as the moon reddens," he continued, voice carrying without effort, "the spirits of the Vargans slaughtered during the massacre will stir."

A hush fell over the gathered ranks. Even the children stilled.

"They wander still," Thorne went on, gaze never leaving my face. "Trapped within the Red Mist. Unrested. Unburied. Twisted by pain until they are no longer who they were."

My stomach dropped.

Nightmares.

The ones that inhabited the mist were not mere spirits. They were dead Vargans. The realization dawned then, weighing a ton on my hammering heart as my blood slowed to a cruel crawl.

"They will come," he said calmly. "Drawn by memory. By instinct. By the lie of home."

Cold seeped into my bones.

The nightmares left the mist? But they never entered our pack.

"They sing," Thorne said, and there was something sharp beneath the word. "They wear familiar voices. Familiar faces. They will call to you with grief and longing, with promises of forgiveness, of return."

The horror mounted, slow and suffocating.

"They come back to what they once knew," he continued. "To this land. To this clan."

They came back to where they knew as home—to where Silverclaw once was, to where the clan had now reclaimed as theirs.

His eyes burned into mine. "And we will put them down."

A murmur rippled through the crowd—solemn, reverent.

"Not in cruelty," Thorne said. "But in mercy. To grant them true rest."

My chest tightened painfully. Mercy. Like this.

"But you must guard your amulets with your lives," he warned, voice hardening. "If chaos tears them from you—if their voices reach your mind unfiltered—their laments, their pain, their suffering will drag you screaming into the mist."

Madness.

"You will walk willingly into it," he finished. "And never return."

The moon crested higher.

I felt it before I saw it—the shift in the air, the wrongness pressing down. When I lifted my eyes, the pale glow had deepened, bleeding into crimson.

Crimson.

The Solstice had begun.

Then the howls came—but they did not come from the already shifting clan members. They did not come from lungs as fur burst through skin, their children still strapped to their bodies.

A chorus of disembodied voices rose from the forest’s edge—layered, echoing, fractured. Grief woven into sound. Longing sharpened into hunger. Songs that crawled beneath the skin and pulled at something ancient and desperate inside the chest.

A few shifters flinched. A child whimpered.

My hands trembled.

Thorne did not look away from me.

The howls swelled, pressing closer, as if the forest itself were breathing them out.

And I understood, with cold dread, why Ivanka had told me to keep my head on straight.

Because the nightmares were already calling—

and they were headed straight for us.