My Alpha Shed Silver Tears novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Wheelchair
I broke Abdiel Ballesteros's heart when I was nineteen.
I did it carefully, with the exact words, looking into his eyes so he wouldn't doubt a single one.
He was the heir to the Alpha of the Sierra Nevada and my boyfriend since we were nine.
The boy who carried my school backpack and taught me to climb trees.
I told him I didn't love him anymore.
I pushed him away, day after day, until he left for the Northern Fortress.
There he served under a foreign Alpha.
There he spent seven years.
Seven years in which he didn't send a single letter.
Seven years in which I slowly faded away in a cabin at the foot of the mountain.
Silver ran through my veins.
Now he was back.
He'd arrived that morning with a caravan of black trucks, and a woman on his arm.
Her name was Leticia Tovar.
The daughter of the plains pack, the one who would seal peace between the two tribes with their union.
The ceremony would be in three weeks, in the Great Hall of the highlands.
And that same week, the pack witch had told me how much time I had left.
Three months.
"Put on the blue dress, sweetheart," my mother said that afternoon, draping a blanket over my legs. "The old Alpha has ordered every member of the pack to present themselves before the heir."
"I don't want to go."
"You have to go."
"Mom..."
"Please."
Her eyes were red.
My mother had aged ten years since I got sick, and I didn't know how to give a single one back to her.
I let myself be pushed.
The wheelchair creaked over the dirt path.
In the courtyard of the Great Hall there were forty people, tables with arepas and guarapo, and kids running between legs.
I recognized his back before I saw his face.
It was broader.
Harder.
His black hair was longer, tied at the nape of his neck, and he wore a leather jacket with the Fortress crest on the shoulder.
Leticia, at his side, was dressed in white linen, her brown hair loose and a doll-like smile on her face.
My mother cleared her throat.
He turned.
His eyes, dark as unsweetened coffee, traveled down over me slowly.
They passed over my pale face.
Over the thin arms beneath the sleeves.
Over the chair.
His mouth twisted into that cruel, mocking smile I remembered all too well.
"Well, well," he said. "Seven years later and you look like shit."
Someone held their breath.
My mother gripped the handles of the chair.
"Can't even walk anymore?" he added.
I felt my face burn.
I pulled my sleeve down a little to hide the scars.
They were silver marks, thin as spiderweb threads, climbing up my forearms and back.
Traces of years of treatments that had done nothing.
I kept my voice from trembling.
"I just fell and fractured something," I said. "It was nothing."
He let out a short laugh, with no trace of humor in it.
"Whatever you say."
Leticia looked at me with polite curiosity.
"Sweetheart, who is she?"
"An old acquaintance." Abdiel didn't take his eyes off me. "Amaranta Zuleta. We studied together."
"Nice to meet you," Leticia said, extending her hand. "So sorry to see you like this."
"Thank you."
"Abdiel and I are getting married in three weeks." She smiled. "I'd love for you to be my maid of honor. You're from here, aren't you? It would be a lovely gesture."
I felt something break in my chest, deep down.
No one noticed.
Abdiel said, coldly:
"Yes. You should be her maid of honor."
I looked at him.
So many years.
So much pain.
And there he stood in front of me with that smile.
I smiled back.
Over the years, I had learned to smile despite the pain.
"I'm sorry," I said softly. "But I'll be leaving soon."
The murmur among the guests died down.
"Where?" he asked.
"Somewhere very far away."
I saw his jaw tighten.
A muscle twitched beneath his skin.
I also saw something else.
A crack.
So small that anyone would have mistaken it for fury.
I patted my mother's hand gently on the handle of the chair.
She said nothing.
She only gripped tighter, and wheeled me out of there.
She took me down the dirt path, past the stares, all the way to the cabin.
I didn't look back.
That night, at midnight, a howl swept through the highlands from end to end.
I recognized it immediately.
It was the howl of an Alpha wolf.
But it didn't sound like fury.
It sounded like grief.
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