Scarlet's Claim: Four Alphas, One Fate

The tenth wolf lunged.

I dropped low, let its claws rake the air above my head, and drove my right blade up through its throat before it hit the ground.

Hot blood sprayed across my face.

The body crashed into the dirt.

I straightened slowly, chest heaving, and looked around.

Ten rogues.

All down.

The forest had gone completely silent.

Somewhere behind me, an owl that had been watching the whole thing finally decided to leave.

I wiped my left blade on the dead wolf's fur and stood up straight.

My ribs screamed.

Something in my left shoulder had been torn — not badly, but enough that lifting the blade had sent white sparks across my vision.

I was seventeen the first time I fought a rogue alone.

Otis had found me afterward sitting on its corpse, eating an apple, waiting for my hands to stop shaking.

"You're insane," he'd said.

"I was hungry," I'd told him. "Seemed wasteful to walk away."

Then he'd taught me how to fight properly, so next time I wouldn't have to sit on the corpse waiting for my hands to stop shaking.

A twig snapped to my east.

I spun, both blades up, and nearly took the head off the Otis patrol leader, Gregor, who stumbled into the clearing with four warriors behind him and stopped dead at the sight of me.

He looked at me, then at the ten bodies.

"Scarlet." He swallowed hard and asked, "How long have you been out here?"

"Since the first one crossed the border." I lowered my blades.

Gregor's mouth opened.

One of the warriors behind him — young, maybe sixteen, first month on patrol — made a sound that wasn't quite a word.

"There are ten of them," Gregor said finally.

"I noticed."

"You're bleeding."

I glanced at my shoulder.

The tear in my jacket was dark and wet, soaked through.

He crossed the clearing in several strides and grabbed my arm, turning me toward him with the kind of rough urgency that meant he was scared and covering it with anger. His eyes swept over the damage — shoulder, the gash along my left ribs, the smaller cuts I'd stopped registering an hour ago.

"You should have called for backup."

"By the time backup arrived, they'd have crossed into the village perimeter." I pulled my arm back. "I handled it."

"You handled —" He stopped, and looked at the bodies.

Something shifted in his expression.

"Little Warrior," he said softly.

——

My shoulder had been stitched and wrapped by the time Marcus called me in.

The tribe elder's tent smelled like pine resin and old decisions.

Marcus himself looked like he'd aged ten years since morning — which, given what I was about to hear, made sense.

Otis was on the medical cot in the corner.

His breathing was shallow.

His color was wrong.

I stood very still and looked at him for a long moment before I trusted myself to speak.

"How bad?"

"Bad enough." Marcus didn't soften it.

I respected him for that.

"The wound is infected. Our healer can slow it, but she can't stop it. Not without resources we don't have."

"What resources?"

"The kind that Red Moon Pack has." He met my eyes. "We need to send someone to request aid."

The tent went quiet.

Outside, I could hear the camp going about its afternoon — children, cooking fires, the distant sound of training.

"No one wants to go," I said.

"Red Moon doesn't respect small packs. Whoever we send will be walking into a room full of people who've already decided they're beneath contempt." Marcus folded his hands on the table. "I need someone who won't break under that."

I looked at Otis. At the gray tinge around his mouth. The way his chest rose and fell like it was working too hard for too little.

He'd pulled me out of a ditch when I was six years old.

I'd fallen in chasing a rabbit and couldn't climb out, and he'd reached down with one big scarred hand and lifted me like I weighed nothing, and then he'd kept me.

Just like that.

No paperwork.

No ceremony.

Just kept me.

"I'll go," I said.

Marcus looked at me for a long moment. "They'll eat you alive, girl."

I picked up my jacket from the chair.

The blood had dried stiff across the left shoulder.

I put it on anyway.

"Good," I said. "I'm hungry too."

——

I heard Red Moon Pack before I saw it.

The compound sat at the end of a long private road, all high walls and controlled entry points, and the kind of quiet that comes from having enough power that you don't need to make noise about it.

There were three guards at the gate.

I pulled my motorcycle to a stop in front of the main gate and killed the engine.

The silence that followed was immediate and total.

I swung off the bike. Rolled my shoulders — the left one pulled, but held.

Unclipped the strap across my chest so my blades were visible.

Not threatening. Just honest.

By the time I reached the gate, there were already people gathering.

Word travels fast in wolf compounds.

A stranger on a motorcycle, covered in dried blood, carrying two swords — apparently that qualified as entertainment.

"State your name, pack, and wolf type." The guard's voice was bored. Routine.

"Scarlet. Otis Pack." I met his eyes. "No wolf."

The boredom evaporated.

"No wolf," someone repeated, louder.

Amused.

"She said no wolf."

"I'm here to request aid." My voice cut through the noise, flat and unhurried. "Otis Pack's border was breached by a rogue unit last night. Our lead warrior is down with an infected wound. We need a healer and short-term support."

I looked at the guard directly. "I need to speak to your Alpha."

Silence.

Not the mocking kind this time.

Then the laughter came back — but it had changed shape.

Less certain. More defensive.

"From Otis?" someone said. "That tiny border pack sends a wolfless girl to Red Moon for help?"

"Bold," someone else said. "Stupid, but bold."

I tried my best to appear indifferent to the mockery.

"A wolfless girl from a nobody pack."

A lazy voice cut through the crowd.

He stepped out of the crowd like he owned the air around him.

Dark hair, easy grin, the kind of face that probably got him forgiven for things that should have been unforgivable.

He looked me over once — not threatening, almost bored — and smiled.

"Did Marcus run out of real warriors?" Ryan said. "Or did he just run out of options?"

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

And something happened in my chest.

Not anger — I knew anger, had lived inside it for years.

This was different.

This was a crack, sudden and structural, like something that had been sealed for a very long time had just been hit in exactly the right place.

Suppressing the strange feeling, I looked Ryan directly in the eye.

Held his gaze for exactly long enough that the laughter started to fade.

"Both," I said. "And I still killed ten rogues this morning." I tilted my head slightly.

"How many did you kill?"

Silence fell.

Everyone was waiting to see what comes next.

Ryan's grin didn't disappear. But it changed.

Stiffened at the edges, like a mask that had just been pulled away.

Behind him, someone went very still.

I felt it — that same crack in my chest, resonating, like a tuning fork finding its frequency.

What the hell is that?