Alpha's Betrayal, Her Second Chance

Chapter 4 — Plain Memory

I look at my husband—winter carved into a man—and understand what I failed to name before: in those eyes, warmth is policy, not pulse. The torches spit, the cliff waits, and the air is a blade between us.

Caroline Arden, remember, I tell myself. Not with riddles. Plainly.

So I remember the truth from years ago.

It was the hour between classes, when sunlight turned the dust in the school corridor into drifting gold. I was thirteen, a maid's daughter with a broom in my hands and second‑hand ribbon in my hair. My job was simple: sweep the sand the older students ground into the stone; keep out of important paths; pretend the world did not notice me.

“Move," a girl's voice sang, sweet and sharp at once. My bucket jolted. Gray water slopped over my shoe.

Joanna stood there with two girls who followed her laughter the way birds follow wind. Even then she wore certainty like a crown: chin tipped just so, hair tied with butter‑yellow ribbon, steps measured as if the hall were her private road.

“You're in my light," she said.

“I'm in the hall," I answered, keeping my voice even. “The light belongs to the windows."

Her friends giggled. It stung like nettles. “Hear that?" one of them said. “The maid teaches philosophy."

Joanna's smile tilted. “Taylor is meeting me at the stream after drills," she told them, dreamy as if confiding in a diary. “He promised to show me the staff spin. He says I have natural grace."

“Grace won't keep the haft from cracking your nose," I said before I could stop myself. “Practice will."

Silence pricked the air—thin, dangerous. Joanna's eyes slid to mine, bright and bored all at once. “Are you offering lessons, little maid?"

“Caroline," I said. “My name is Caroline."

One of the girls reached and flicked my ribbon. The bow came loose and fluttered to the floor. The other pressed a palm to my shoulder and pushed—just enough to tilt me, just enough to say that tilting me pleased her.

“Don't," I said. It came out too soft. The plea shamed me as soon as it left my mouth.

“Look," one friend murmured, fingers at my collar. “This seam is practically begging." She tugged. Cotton gave with a ragged sound. Cold air kissed my back.

“Ugly stain," the other said, craning.

“Not a stain," Joanna corrected, stepping closer, curiosity sharpening her face. She hooked two fingers in the torn cloth and pulled. Fabric ripped farther. The corridor's light slid across my skin and revealed what I had spent most of my short life hiding: a butterfly‑shaped mark under my left shoulder blade, wings spread as if caught mid‑flight. Not ink. Not scar. A birthmark, deep as a shadow.

“Enough," a low voice said from the far end of the corridor, the kind of voice people obey before they think about why.

We all turned. Taylor stood there with a staff against his shoulder, hair damp from training, a line of sweat darkening his collar. He took in the broken ribbon, the torn dress, the wide eyes. His gaze stalled when it found my back.

He set the staff aside and walked toward us—not hurrying, not posturing. When he reached me he shrugged out of his training jacket and held it out.

“I can't," I whispered. The leather looked like an oath I had no right to take.

“You can," he said. “Put it on."

I slid my arms into warmth that smelled faintly of pine tar and iron. For one neat instant I felt held. He faced the three girls, not unkind but immovable.

“Apologize," he said.

“We were playing," Joanna answered, voice all milk and innocence.

“You don't play with knives if you can't find the edge," he said. “Or with someone else's clothes." He reached down, picked up my fallen ribbon, and placed it in my palm. “Caroline walks the hall when she needs to. You walk around her."

Joanna's mouth tightened—only a little. She dipped her head. “Sorry," she said, like someone practicing a foreign word. Her friends mumbled echoes.

Taylor angled his body between us and the corridor's staring mouths, buying me a little privacy with his back. “Can you get home in this?" he asked, low enough that it was meant for me alone.

“I'll return it," I said quickly, trying to push the jacket back because owing him anything felt dangerous.

“Keep it until your door closes," he answered. “Tomorrow, give it to me." He paused, as if tasting the next line. “I'll come for it."

My heart did a foolish, traitorous skip. “You don't have to."

“I want to," he said. He turned his head. “Make way." The corridor opened like a curtain. He left as he'd come: one clean decision after another, each placed exactly where it belonged.

The hall exhaled. My hands shook. I tugged the jacket higher, trying to hide what could not be hidden anymore. That was when a familiar, gentler voice spoke from a doorway just behind me.

“Child," the Beta's wife said, “come with me."

Lydia Arden did not need to raise her tone to be obeyed. She wore plain linen and a tired smile and smelled faintly of lavender and lemon zest, the scent of a woman who writes lists and keeps them. She led me into an empty classroom and closed the door softly.

“May I?" she asked, fingers poised at the torn collar.

I nodded. She lifted the edge of the jacket by an inch—careful not to scrape leather over raw thread—and air touched the mark again. I saw her breath hitch, small and sharp.

Lydia brushed her own collar aside, just below the bone. There—fainter with age but the same shape—wings darkened her skin, a shadow‑butterfly answering mine. She stared at me the way a person stares at a long‑lost letter suddenly found in a drawer she'd stopped opening.

“I have had this since I was born," she whispered. “My mother, too." Her eyes shone. She swallowed. “What is your name?"

“Caroline," I said, suddenly afraid of the weight my name might start to carry. “Caroline Arden." The surname tumbled out before I could stop it. Habit and hope and hunger braided themselves into the slip.

Her mouth trembled into a smile that was half‑laugh, half‑sob. “Lydia," she said softly, as if giving me her name could steady me. “Lydia Arden." She looked at me with a tenderness that made my throat ache. “Do you remember anything from when you were very small? A lullaby? A word?"

“My mother hums instead of singing," I said. The word mother landed between us like a fragile cup. “Off‑key. She calls me 'little bee' because I never sit still."

Lydia closed her eyes for a beat. When she opened them, the softness had a spine. “I called a baby that once," she said. “Little bee." She took a breath that shook and steadied. “Forgive me. This is not the moment to make claims."

A shadow crossed the glass of the classroom door. Joanna. She had followed—of course she had—and now stood outside, peeking in, trying to read our faces as if they were a book with all the best pages missing. She smoothed her ribbon and set her mouth into sweetness. When Lydia glanced toward the door, Joanna stepped back quickly and vanished, leaving the breath of envy in her place.

“Child," Lydia said, bringing her focus back to me with deliberate care, “who raised you?"

“Lucy," I answered. “She works in the laundry. She saved to put me in the day school. She says I'm too quick with my mouth and too slow to duck." The corner of my mouth tried to lift; failed.

“Lucy," Lydia repeated, tasting the name like a bitter herb she might learn to live with. “I will speak with her." She smoothed the jacket at my shoulders. Her hand lingered for a heartbeat, the way a hand lingers when the mind is racing ahead. “Not now. Not in a hall full of ears. This must be done properly."

Outside, the bell rang. Footsteps thundered. Doors opened and closed like a line of small storms. Lydia waited for the noise to crest and pass.

“Caroline," she said, voice low and sure, “this may change everything. Or it may change nothing except the truth you are allowed to carry openly. Either way, we will do it step by step."

“What if it changes where I belong?" I asked. My chest felt too small for my breath.

“Belonging is not a favor," she answered. “It is a fact. If it is yours, it was always yours."

The door swung inward without a knock. Taylor stood there again, staff now nowhere in sight, breath steadier, eyes precise. He had the look he wore when measuring a room full of risks. His gaze flicked from my face to Lydia's and back.

“Is everything all right?" he asked, but it was not an empty politeness. He meant the practical version of the question: Is there a problem I should remove from your path?

“Everything is being set right," Lydia replied. She straightened, turning quiet into authority with the ease of long practice. “Thank you for your help in the corridor."

He gave the smallest nod, acknowledgment without vanity. His attention returned to me. “Tomorrow," he said, as if we were resuming a conversation we had agreed to have. “I will come for the jacket."

“I'll have it ready," I answered. My voice didn't shake. I liked that.

He hesitated a fraction, then said, to Lydia, “Do you need an escort home?"

“No," she said. “I'll take Caroline myself." Her eyes softened. “We will be careful."

Taylor's gaze rested on me for one more breath—cool river light meeting something warmer—and then he stepped back. When the door closed, silence returned like a held string released, singing itself flat.

Lydia tied my ribbon again with deft fingers. “Head high," she said. “Not because anyone is watching, but because you have a neck built for it." She walked me out into the cooler light of late afternoon and kept pace with my shorter steps as if walking slow were something she preferred.

We reached the street. Children scattered ahead, papers under their arms. Joanna stood across the way, flanked by the two girls who always echoed her. She stared, cheeks pale and eyes bright with the kind of hurt that insists it is a wound dealt by others, never by one's own hand. When our eyes met, she lifted her chin with practiced grace. I lifted mine without practice.

Lydia's hand brushed my sleeve. “Tomorrow," she said. “Come to the infirmary after lessons. Bring Lucy. We will speak privately."

“Will Taylor be there?" I asked, hating the hope in it and the fear behind the hope.

“If he is needed," she said gently. “This is first a matter for mothers."

I nodded. The word mothers felt like a door I had barely dared to imagine. I did not touch it yet. I only stood in front of it and learned the shape of the threshold.

That night I lay awake and watched moonlight turn the ceiling into water. My shoulder blades ached where the torn seam had scraped them; the butterfly under my skin seemed to beat its wings against the fabric, as if impatient to fly out into a name. I thought about Lucy's laugh, Lydia's steady hands, Taylor's jacket warming my back, Joanna's fingers at my collar pulling, always pulling.

In the morning I pinned my hair without the ribbon. I wanted nothing loose that someone else could claim. I did my lessons in quiet, my answers neat and spare. When the last bell rang, I folded my books and went to find Lucy.

“After work," I told her. “Please." She wiped soap from her arms and followed me, worry puckering her forehead as if it had lived there forever. We walked the path to the infirmary without speaking, two lives about to be pressed together to see if their edges matched.

At the door, Lydia waited with a calm I did not trust, because calm that deep is usually built over years of storms. She opened her mouth to begin—questions, tact, the first gentle cuts of truth—and I felt the world lean toward the answer it had been holding back from me since the day I breathed my first.

I did not know yet all that would follow—papers, tests, names rearranged like furniture, summers that would cut my heart and winters that would teach it to be still. I knew only this: years later, standing at the edge of a cliff with a rope biting my palms and a husband measuring souls like weights on a scale, I would remember this corridor, this jacket, this butterfly mark, and understand that the story I'd been fed was never the whole of me.

Plainly remembered, it begins here: Joanna's hand tearing cloth; Taylor's jacket around my shoulders; Lydia seeing the wings on my skin and recognizing the shape they made.

That is the truth I carry back to the edge of the ravine. And now I hold it like a blade.