The Alpha and The Enforcer [TATE]

Chapter 31 (Short Chapter)

Ellie's Sister – POV

It wasn't the first time I thought about running.

The idea had crept into my mind more times than I could count, always quietly, like a whisper riding the edge of the wind. Especially on the nights when the air grew thick with the scent of blood, and the silence of missing voices pressed heavily on my chest. The kind of silence that screamed.

Kyle had always been a ruthless leader. I knew that. I accepted it. Hell, maybe I even admired it once. The way he never flinched, never begged, never looked behind him. There was something coldly powerful about that kind of certainty. When I was younger, when the world felt like it was swallowing me whole, his strength was the only solid thing I had. Something to cling to when everything else felt temporary.

Kyle said he found me in a storm. Just a baby, wrapped in a damp blanket, left crying somewhere near the tree line. I don't remember any of it, of course. I was too young. Too small. But I've imagined it a thousand times over the years.

The way he told it, I was wailing loud enough to wake the dead, so loud that the forest itself seemed to recoil. He said he almost didn't find me. That if he'd been a few minutes later, the rain might have swept me away. He made it sound like a rescue. Like a mercy.

And maybe it was at first.

He raised me like I was his. Taught me how to fight, how to track, how to survive. But I wasn't considered family to him. Though he helped raise me, he never saw me as a daughter. I was a weapon. And for years, I didn't question it.

Because what would have been the point? I had no memories of anything else. No lullabies. No faces. No name. Just Kyle's voice, his rules, his shadow, and the scars I earned in his service. I learned to stop asking questions about where I came from. I learned to stop wondering who my parents were and stop picturing their faces in my head. I learned to stop until I had the opportunity to find some answers from a witch, and she pointed me to Ellie.

So I believed him. Every word he ever said. He had no reason to lie to me.

Even when things started to rot beneath the surface, I still clung to the version of him I wanted to believe in. When rogues began to disappear and never return, I told myself they had run away. Cowards. That's what he said. Traitors who abandoned the pack.

And when I stumbled across a bloated body half-buried at the riverbank, flies buzzing like vultures, I told myself it was justified. That maybe they deserved it. That Kyle was just doing what was necessary to protect us.

But then came Marta.

Marta was different.

She wasn't loud or fierce. She didn't fight with claws or teeth. She fought with kindness, quiet, persistent kindness, in a place that tried to crush it out of us. She found warmth in the coldest corners and shared it like she wasn't afraid. She wasn't blood, not technically, but she became family. The closest thing I ever had to a mother.

When I was too cold to sleep, she wrapped her blanket around both of us. When my hands were too shaky to braid my own hair, she did it for me. When the nightmares came, she sang lullabies in a voice that cracked but never faltered.

She saw what Kyle really was.

She saw how he smiled when people flinched. How he fed on fear like it gave him power. She was careful, but not careful enough. She started asking questions. Whispering warnings. And one day, she pulled me aside and told me I had to be smart. That if I ever planned to leave, I would get only one chance. Just one.

I didn't know she was planning to go herself.

Maybe she didn't tell me because she knew I'd try to stop her. Maybe she didn't want me to carry the guilt if it failed.