5

Derek

Derek Blackwell already regretted leaving pack land.

The city pressed in on him the moment he crossed the boundary — noise, fumes, too many humans packed into too little space. Cars crawled along the road like wounded animals, horns blaring, engines whining. Morning rush hour. His personal hell.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, jaw clenched. He hated coming into town. Hated the concrete, the chaos, the way everything smelled wrong. But today he didn’t have a choice.

Three shipments of construction materials had vanished in the last month. Expensive ones. And now the funds to replace them had mysteriously “not cleared.” His Gamma, Marcus, usually ran the company without issue — but even he couldn’t explain this mess.

Which meant Derek had to show his face. And when the Alpha showed his face, people stopped lying.

He exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the suffocating press of traffic around him. Back home, the air was clean. Crisp. The forest wrapped around the pack’s territory like a living shield. Wolves patrolled the borders. The land breathed with them.

Here, everything felt dead.

He checked the time. He was already running late. Perfect.

A lorry cut into his lane without signalling. Derek growled under his breath — an instinctive, low rumble he forced himself to swallow. Humans didn’t react well to that sound. He will have to work hard to keep his wolf under control in this environment.

He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension. He hadn’t slept much. He rarely did, anyway. Nights were the worst — too quiet, too full of memories he didn’t want but felt guilty enough to welcome.

Freya’s face flickered in his mind. Pale. Smiling. Braver than she had any right to be. Braver than him.

He shoved the thought away.

Focus. Business first. Grief later.

He turned onto Westbourne Road, the street leading toward his company’s headquarters. Traffic thickened even more, cars bumper‑to‑bumper, inching forward like a herd of stubborn cattle.

He muttered a curse.

If Marcus hadn’t sounded genuinely worried, Derek would have turned back and went home. But missing materials meant someone was stealing from him. From his pack. And that was something he would not tolerate. Not as the Alpha, not as himself.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, scanning the road ahead. Not long and he'll get there.

And then he saw it.

An old sedan ahead of him jerked sharply across lanes, weaving through traffic like its driver had a death wish. Derek’s eyes narrowed. Humans. Always in a rush, always reckless.

The sedan took a hard turn toward a narrow side street — too hard, too fast.

Derek’s instincts prickled.

Don’t do it, he thought.

But the sedan did it.

It cut across his lane, misjudged the angle, and—

CRUNCH.

The impact jolted through his red sports car, the sound sharp and ugly. Derek’s jaw locked as he slammed the brakes, the seatbelt biting into his shoulder.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then horns.

Shouting.

Traffic snarling even worse than before. He saw the woman getting out of the car. Hair wild. Wearing a pantsuit that looked like it had been through a war and still made it. 100 years ago. Worn by somebody else.

She stared at the car, muttering something under her breath.

Derek inhaled slowly, counting to three. Losing his temper in the middle of a human street was not an option.

He stepped out of the car, rage simmering under the surface of his skin.

The damage wasn’t catastrophic, but it was there — a dent in the bumper of a vehicle that cost more than most humans’ yearly salaries. He didn’t care about the money. He cared about the disrespect. The recklessness. The sheer audacity. His ruined day.

Derek’s patience snapped.

“What the fuck, lady?” he demanded.

She turned — slowly — like she was bracing for impact. He winced inwardly when he saw how young she was. The suit thing was misleading. Is this the latest fashion? He didn’t know the first thing about that, but the women he did saw in his pack and small circle of friends, surely looked like they lived in this decade not the eighties.

“Lady?” the woman echoed, eyebrows shooting up. “I’m pretty sure this midlife‑crisis penis extension of yours — which has no business being on the road during morning rush hour, might I add — is a clear indication that you are older than I am.”

Derek blinked. Forced his wolf back into submission before it tore into those shoulder pads she was wearing. Did she.. Did she have a death wish?

No one spoke to him like that.

No one. Grant it, she had no idea who he was, but humans out of instinct didn’t talk like that to a wolf, to any wolf, nevermind an Alpha. Yet, she seemed… unaffected. Weird.

He stepped closer, towering over her. “Do you always talk like that, or is today special?”

“Oh, today is very special,” she shot back, oblivious to who she was going up against. “I’m late, I’m stressed, and I’m trying to get to a meeting that might literally save my mother’s life. So forgive me if I’m not in the mood to apologise to your overpriced toy.”

Something in him stilled.

He looked at her again — really looked.

The panic.

The exhaustion.

The desperation.

He recognised all of it.

“You hit my car,” he said, voice low.

“And your car hit my car,” she countered. “It’s called equality.”

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Then her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, eyes widening.

Without another word, she shoved past him and took off running.

“Hey!” Derek barked. “We’re not done here!”

She didn’t look back, but she might as well said that they were, in fact, done.

She sprinted down the street, disappearing into the crowd like a chaotic, sweaty comet.

Derek stood there, stunned.

“What the actual fuck just happened?”

A human woman had just crashed into his car, insulted him, and fled. She clearly didn’t have insurance. Hell, she probably didn’t even have the right to drive. She did not look all there in the head, but he knew what caring for a sick loved one could do.

He dragged a hand down his face.

He should have stayed in the forest.

Derek pulled out his phone and called Declan’s number.

His Beta answered on the first ring. “Alpha?”

“I need you to send someone to Westbourne Road,” Derek said, pinching the bridge of his nose, anticipating that his Beta and friend will have too much fun with this. “My car’s been hit.”

A pause. “By who?”

“A woman,” Derek muttered. “Small. Loud. Unhinged.”

“That narrows it down,” Declan deadpanned.

Derek ignored that. “Send a tow truck for her car too. It’s abandoned.”

“Abandoned?”

“She ran.”

Another pause. “Ran… from you? Did you perhaps make her run?”

Derek’s jaw ticked. “Don’t be an idiot. Find her. Track her down. I want her name.”

“On it.”

He hung up before the amusement in his Beta’s voice could irritate him further.

By the time Derek reached his company headquarters, he was in a foul mood. At least there were no more incidents.

The moment he stepped inside, the receptionists straightened, smiles blooming like flowers desperate for sunlight.

“Good morning, Mr. Blackwell,” one of them said, voice breathy.

“You look very sharp today,” another added, twirling her hair.

Derek grunted. He wasn’t in the mood.

He strode past them, ignoring the lingering stares, the whispered comments, the scent of too‑strong perfume. Human women always reacted like this — drawn to the Alpha aura even if they didn’t understand it.

He hated it. His mind went briefly to the mess of a woman that hit his car. She didn’t have the reaction these women have to him, and a part of him was annoyed. Then he got angry for being annoyed by that. He didn’t need anyone’s attention.

He preferred the forest. Silence. Space.

Marcus, his Gamma, met him outside the conference room, looking stressed.

“We’ve got a problem,” Marcus said.

“We have several,” Derek corrected. “Start talking.”

Marcus handed him a folder. “The missing materials weren’t logged as missing. They were logged as delivered.”

“By who?”

“The system doesn’t log that info. Just the date and time. And a lot of people were in the system, working, when that happened.”

Derek’s eyes narrowed. “So someone is doctoring records. And the funds?”

Marcus hesitated. “They were transferred. But not to our supplier.”

“To who, then”

“We’re still tracing it.”

Derek felt the familiar burn of anger coil low in his chest. Someone was stealing from him. From his pack. From Freya’s legacy. And he failed to nip it in the bud.

He vowed that he would find them.

And he would end this.

The day dragged on. Meetings. Numbers. Lies. Too many lies and things that didn't make sense. Things that Marcus should have spotted sooner. There were too many people involved in sensitive things.

He cursed himself for not being there and instead choosing to delegate and trust blindly. For not being a better Alpha after Freya was gone.

Something was wrong in his company — deeply wrong — and Derek could feel it like a splinter under his skin.

He stayed late, long after the staff had gone home, reviewing documents, cross‑checking signatures, hunting for the thread that would unravel the entire mess.

He was halfway through a suspicious invoice when his phone rang.

His heart rate picked up upon seeing the surrogacy agency’s number and almost missed the call from his frozen state of shock.

Almost.

He answered. “Blackwell.”

A bright, professional voice chimed through the speaker despite it clearly being after hours.

He hadn’t heard her voice in months, but he knew it instantly. Annabeth Hale — part witch, part human, and stubbornly determined to live her life on the human side of the veil. He didn't mind her. She knew enough about the supernatural world to be useful, but identified herself as human and he respected her choice especially since she seemed to genuinely respect his choices too. Not often single men wanted to become fathers.

“Hello, Mr. Blackwell. This is Beth from the Hale Fertility & Surrogacy Agency. I’m hoping I don't catch you at a bad time, but I was calling to inform you that we have a candidate who matches your requirements.”

Derek froze.

A candidate.

Freya’s eggs.

His heir.

The future of his pack.

“We’d like to offer you a meeting with her,” Beth continued. “She’s passed all the required testing and would love to surrogate. I’m happy to facilitate the meeting at your earliest convenience.”

Beth knew that the eggs were werewolf, that the surrogate needed to be stronger than the average human. Shifter pregnancies were demanding, dangerous, and only a handful of human women in the world could handle them. Those women were always in high demand as per what the agency has told Derek and Freya when they started this journey.

Freya had cut years off her already too short life undergoing the egg‑harvesting procedures. She’d insisted. She’d smiled through the pain. She’d told him she wanted him to have a future — even if she wouldn’t be there to see it, but this way, part of her will.

And then she died before they ever had the chance to look for a surrogate.

Derek leaned back in his chair, heart thudding once — hard.

“I can meet her next week. Any day she can. Just send me the details,” he said.

“Of course, Mr. Blackwell. I’ll check with her and come back to you with a day and time.”

The call ended.

Derek stared at the dark office around him long after the call ended, the silence pressing in on him like a weight.

He was doing this.

This was it.

This was the moment she had prepared him for. The moment he had avoided for the last three years, since Freya was gone.

He exhaled slowly and reached for his phone again, scrolling through his contacts until he found the name he needed. Corrine. Freya’s best friend.

Her sister in everything but blood.

The one person who had loved Freya almost as fiercely as he had.

She had made her disapproval of the surrogacy clear — loudly, repeatedly, and with colourful language — but she deserved to know. She deserved to be there.

He pressed call.

The line rang once.

Twice.

Derek leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.

He should have felt relief. Hope, even. Instead, something inside him twisted — sharp, familiar, unwelcome.