Page 8 of The Alpha's Fallen Spell
The shouting grows louder. They’re almost here.
He adjusts his stance but doesn’t look back at me. Doesn’t ask me who they are.
And then I see them.
Shifters.
Not partial, not wild like I am. These men are composed, clean, cold. They wear no uniforms, no armor, nothing to announce their presence but the chilling weight of their silence and the way the clearing bends around them as they step forward into the gleaming ring of firelight.
There are at least a dozen of them, maybe more. It’s hard to count. My vision is narrowing again, not from pain but from memory—from the familiar grip of recognition tightening around my ribs.
And then, I see him. The one who leads them.
He doesn’t move like a soldier. He moves like a surgeon. Deliberate. Methodical. Controlled.
His eyes meet mine, and he doesn’t smile—not quite—but his mouth twitches with something worse: familiarity.
I know him.
The scientist. The one who used to stand behind the glass and speak into microphones while others held me down. The one whose calm voice always preceded pain.
“Well,” he says, his tone too casual for a place filled with blood and broken bodies. “You’ve wasted enough of my time today.”
I don’t flinch. I don’t recoil.
“Subject Twenty-Three,” he says with that detached sort of clarity that he and others like him seem to have mastered when referring to us, the kind that strips skin from bone with nothing but syllables. “You know the rules. Come back.”
The number he uses doesn’t surprise me because it is me. It has always been me. It’s what they carved into my memory, into my spine, into the parts of me I never had a chance to name.
“Come here, or the next time I remove your skin, I’ll let the maggots feast on your flesh before I let you heal.”
My fingers dig into the clothes of the man standing in front of me.
I remember the pain.
I had done everything right, but he wanted to see how fast I would heal. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed louder than I did that day. I thought my heart would burst. There was so much pain as the soldiers went at me with scalpels—
The man who who’s shielding me steps forward, his voice a low growl. It’s just one step, but it’s enough to plant himself fully between me and the man who once decided how much pain I could withstand before losing consciousness.
And it centers me.
“She’s not going anywhere,” he says, voice like gravel soaked in quiet fury, low and unwavering.
The scientist doesn’t seem worried. Instead, he tilts his head and says with mock curiosity, “Does a deposed king still get to make demands?”
That word, “king”—it doesn’t mean anything to my confused mind right now. It’s just a sound, a label, maybe a title. Something people in stories wear, like a cloak. I don’t understand it, and I don’t care to. But my protector stiffens.
It matters, then.
“Oh,” the scientist continues, as if savoring the moment, “you don’t like the title anymore? What a shame. You wore it proudly once, Erik.”
The name falls between us like a stone dropped in a still lake—subtle but heavy.
So, that’s his name. Erik.
He doesn’t speak. But the tension in his shoulders speaks volumes.
“She’s not yours,” Erik says finally, quietly, like a knife being unsheathed.
