Chapter 53 The Fall That Broke The Alpha
Grayson:
I was in my study trying to charge my goddammed phone when the door burst open.
The sound of heavy boots echoed in the corridor...Panicked, Fear.
I smelled it before I could see it. My heart sank for some reason.
“Alpha...”
I didn’t look up.
“Not now,” I muttered. “I said no interruptions.”
The warrior didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. Something cold crept up my spine.
I lifted my head slowly.
“Speak.”
His face was pale... Like he'd seen a ghost... Like someone had drained every drop of blood from him.
“Alpha Grayson,” he whispered.
His voice cracked.
“I… I’m so sorry.”
My entire body went still.
“What happened?”
My voice was not mine.
It was too quiet.
Too cold.
The warrior swallowed hard.
“There was an attack.”
My heart dropped.
“Where?”
“On the Seaside Ridge Road.”
My pulse slammed.
My ears rang.
Who was on the Ridge Road today?
Evie.
No.
No.
She was with her mother.
She was at the Luna Wing.
She was safe.
She was...
The warrior’s eyes filled with tears.
“The Luna’s skimmer, Alpha…”
His voice broke.
“It went off the cliff.”
The whole world fractured. My head spun, and my ears rang.
A roar tore through my chest before I realized I’d moved.
The journal fell to the floor.
The room tilted.
“What did you just say?”
The warrior flinched.
“The skimmer… It’s in the sea.”
My wolf exploded forward: violent, frantic, slamming into the edges of my skin:
Snarling, ripping, clawing to break out.
“No,” I whispered.
My voice shook.
“You’re lying.”
“Alpha...”
“WHERE IS SHE?” I roared.
The warrior trembled.
“They haven’t found her, sir.”
My vision doubled.
The walls closed in.
My wolf howled inside me, a wounded, agonised sound that did not belong to the living.
“They found debris,” the guard choked.
“Bodies… but not the Luna.”
The room shattered around me.
My breath vanished.
Not found.
Not found.
Not found.
The words were knives.
“Evie,” I whispered, barely able to form the name.
My knees buckled.
I caught myself on the dresser hard enough to crack the wood.
The warrior took a step forward.
“Alpha, we need you at the scene.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
There was only one command in me:
Go to her.
I didn’t walk out of the study; I ran, shifting mid-stride.
Bones cracking,
Muscles tearing,
My wolf bursting out of my skin with a violence that ripped my shirt apart.
I didn’t care.
I couldn’t.
I just ran, with an urgency only me and my wolf could feel to the depths of our souls.
Down the hallway.
Down the stairs.
Through the courtyard.
Across stone and grass.
Over the estate gates.
I don't know how I reached the
Warriors shouted behind me.
Someone called my name.
Harrow’s scent was faint in the distance, blood and salt.
I pushed harder. Ran faster than I ever had. Every second felt like a shard piercing my heart and soul.
I can't lose her when I just found her... NO, I refused to accept that.
She would be fine, I know that.
I didn’t feel the ground.
I didn’t feel my paws.
I didn’t feel anything but pain.
The sea’s scent hit me first: cold, sharp, salty.
Then the smell of blood, metallic. My gut twisted at the realisation:
Evie’s blood.
My wolf staggered mid-run, nearly collapsing from the scent alone, but I shoved forward, lungs burning.
The Ridge Road came into view like a nightmare painted in daylight.
Flashing drone lights.
Warriors running.
Rescue crews shouting.
The metallic stench of a ruined skimmer.
And below, down the jagged cliffside—pieces of twisted silver wreckage tossed on the rocks.
I shifted mid-leap—landing in human form on bleeding feet—and nearly stumbled over the railing.
“Harrow!” I shouted.
No answer.
“HARROW!”
A medic grabbed my arm.
“Alpha, wait..”
I threw him off so hard he hit the pavement.
I scanned the rocks.
And then I saw him, Harrow’s body—bloodied, broken, barely conscious—lying on the lower rocks, dragging himself up by one trembling hand.
He looked up at me, and the sound he made was not human.
“She...” he gasped.
“Grayson... she... she went under....I... I tried, I tried to... b...but the sea...”
His voice cracked into a sob.
My heart stopped.
“Where is she?”
My voice was sandpaper. Broken. Raw. Scarpped
Harrow shook his head. Curling in on himself. Blood spilling down his chin.
“The current...” He choked. "One moment she was there... and then… the waves, they pulled her...and..."
He left out another sob,
"I couldn’t... I couldn’t... pro.. protect her...” He broke.
So did something in me. I didn't say anything
I couldn't.
I couldn't think.
And I didn't
And just drove headfirst straight into the freezing water.
Ignoring shouted warnings,
Ignoring the rocks,
ignoring pain,
ignoring everything but the roar in my ears that said:
Find her.
Find her.
FIND HER.
The cold knifed through my bones. The current dragged at my legs. Debris sliced my skin.
I opened my eyes underwater, salt burning, searching for anything.
Her hair.
Her dress.
Her scent.
Her body.
Nothing.
I surfaced. Screamed her name.
“EVIE!”
My voice echoed off the cliff.
Mocking me.
I dove again.
And again.
And again.
I tore my hands open on rocks.
I swallowed seawater.
I bled into the waves.
My wolf screamed in my chest, desperate, feral, breaking.
Warriors eventually pulled me out, three of them, and I nearly ripped free.
“She’s alive!” I roared.
“She’s ALIVE!”
But the sea offered nothing.
Not a scrap of cloth.
Not a breath bubble.
Not a body.
Just absence.
A cold, black absence that hollowed out my ribs and salt-burned my throat.
The medic kneeled beside me, voice trembling.
“Alpha… we… we found signs she was in the water. Blood. Hair. Fragments. But… the tide is strong. If she was swept out…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
I fell to my knees.
The world fell with me.
Someone draped a blanket over my shoulders.
Someone said Harrow was alive but critical.
Someone said the attackers fled.
Someone said it looked coordinated.
Someone said a body might wash up.
Someone said the ocean was too deep there.
Someone said things I couldn’t hear.
The only thing I heard—the only thing I will ever remember—was Harrow’s voice, shredded with guilt:
“She’s gone.”
My throat closed. My vision blurred.
Something inside me split—a bone-deep rupture that made me fold forward, fists digging into the gravel.
“Evie…”
Her name broke me.
“Evie…”
Goddess please not her...
Not my Luna.
Not my mate.
Not the girl who smiled at me through tears.
Not the woman who forgave me things I never deserved.
Not the only person who had ever softened the edges of my world.
Not her.
Please not her.
The air ripped out of my lungs.
I grabbed the ground, shaking so violently I thought my bones would crack.
My wolf howled inside me, a hollow, broken, dying sound.
And I understood why wolves who lost their mates never survived the winter.
Because I wasn’t sure I would survive this hour....