MARKED BY THE ENEMY ALPHA

Chapter 6: Choosing Sides

I don't go back to my room after leaving Corvin's study. I go straight to Kaelan's office instead, and I don't knock.

He looks up from his desk, and whatever he sees written across my face makes him stand immediately, papers forgotten beneath his hands. "What happened?"

"Your father knows." My voice comes out steadier than I actually feel, steadier than seems possible given how badly my hands are shaking at my sides. "Not suspects. Knows. He said my pack's name, Kaelan. He said mine."

The color drains slowly from his face, and for a moment neither of us says anything at all, the office suddenly feeling far too small for everything sitting unspoken between us. "What did you tell him?"

"Nothing. I didn't have to." I press my palms briefly against my eyes, forcing myself back into some semblance of control before continuing. "He already had it, has had it, for longer than either of us realized, apparently. He asked whether you already knew. He wants to see what you choose, now that you'll have to decide for certain."

Kaelan is quiet for a long moment, and in that silence, three years of careful walls between us threaten to come down all at once, everything we've been dancing around finally forced into the open.

"I already chose," he says finally, quietly. "At the watchtower. I chose before I even had all the pieces in front of me."

"You don't understand what that actually means." I step closer, needing him to hear this properly, needing him to really understand the weight of it. "I came here to destroy your pack, Kaelan. To find whoever gave the order and make them answer for what happened to my family, every single one of them. That was the plan for three years, long before you were ever part of it."

"And now?" His eyes search my face, searching for something I'm not sure I know how to give him yet.

"Now I don't know what the plan is anymore," I admit, and it costs me more than I expect to say it out loud. "That's the truth. That's the only truth I have left to give you, and I'm sorry it isn't cleaner than that."

He crosses the small room and takes my face gently in his hands, far gentler than I have any right to expect from the son of the man who burned my home to the ground. "Then we figure out a new plan," he says. "Together. Whatever it costs either of us to build it."

"Your father will never allow it."

"My father," Kaelan says, low and certain, something hardening in his voice, "is not the only Alpha's son in this pack with power of his own. And he's about to learn that the hard way, if it comes to it."

Outside, a horn sounds across the courtyard, three short blasts, the old signal for an emergency pack gathering, one I haven't heard called in all three years I've lived here. My blood runs cold instantly.

"He's not waiting," I whisper. "He's calling everyone together right now, this very moment."

Kaelan's jaw sets, gold eyes hardening into something I haven't seen from him before in three years of watching him navigate careful pack politics, not suspicion, not tenderness, but the cold, focused resolve of an Alpha's son preparing to challenge his own father in front of the entire assembled pack.

"Then let's go find out exactly what he's planning to do about us," he says, and takes my hand firmly in his.

We walk out together, side by side, toward whatever Corvin has already decided our fate should be, and for the first time in three long years, I'm not walking into danger completely alone.