Chapter 24: Sent
989 Words
Sera's Pov
Gideon said the word and then went quiet, like he needed a second before he could keep going.
"Sent," I said. "What does that mean?"
He rubbed his hand across his jaw. His eyes did not meet mine right away.
"The mate bond is real," he said. "I want you to know that first. It cannot be faked. Nobody can manufacture that pull, not even the Vaels, not with all their money and all their old tricks."
"Then how..."
"They didn't make the bond," he said. "They made the chance for it to happen."
I sat back in my chair. My hands were flat on the table in front of me, and I made myself keep them still.
"Explain it to me slowly," I said. "Like I'm not following yet. Because I'm not."
Gideon nodded. He leaned forward a little, the way a man does when he is about to say something hard and wants to get it right.
"Fated mates are rare," he said. "But they're not random the way most people think. If you know a bloodline well enough, you can guess where a bond is likely to form. The old families study this. They've studied it for generations. So if you wanted a specific Alpha to bond with a specific woman, you wouldn't force it. You'd just put her close enough, often enough, and let it happen on its own."
"They put Liora near Caden," I said. My voice came out flat. "On purpose."
"Yes."
"And they knew what it would do to me."
Gideon looked at his hands again. "They knew the bond would push you out. A human woman with no formal place in the household, no mate claim of her own, standing next to a brand new Luna bond. They knew you would leave. They were counting on it."
"Why?"
"Because once you left Ironmoor, you'd be out in the open." He said it quietly, like it hurt him to say it out loud. "No walls. No pack protecting you without knowing why. Easier to watch. Easier to take, if it came to that."
I sat very still.
I thought I would feel angry first. That was usually how it worked with me, anger came fast and loud before anything else had a chance to settle. But this time it was different. It was slower. Heavier. Like someone had reached into my whole life and moved a piece on a board without asking me, without even letting me see the board.
"They didn't see me as a person," I said.
"No," Gideon said. "I don't think they ever did."
"They saw me as something to relocate."
"Yes."
I stared at the table. The wood grain ran in long lines, and I followed one of them with my eyes because it gave me something to do other than feel the full weight of what he'd just told me.
Three years. Three years of believing my life had simply happened to me, bad luck and bad timing and a man who didn't love me enough. And the whole time, someone far away had been arranging it. Moving Liora into place like a hand moving a chess piece, and waiting for the rest of us to play our parts exactly the way they expected.
I looked up at Riven. He'd been standing near the door the whole time, arms crossed, quiet, letting Gideon talk without interrupting. His jaw was tight. I could see a muscle working there, small but steady, the only sign that any of this was landing on him too.
"So Liora didn't know," I said. My voice was calm. I made sure it was calm. "Any of it."
Riven didn't answer right away. He glanced at Gideon first, a question, and Gideon gave a small shake of his head, the kind that meant he genuinely did not know either.
"We don't know what Liora knows," Riven said finally.
I let that sit in the room.
It should have been a small thing to hear. Five words. But it opened up a door I hadn't expected, a door I didn't want, because if Liora hadn't known, then she was caught in this too, used the same way I'd been used, just from a different angle. And if she had known, then everything about the gathering, the announcement, the bond, all of it had been a performance aimed straight at me.
I didn't know which was worse. I didn't know which one I wanted to be true.
"Find out," I said.
"Sera..."
"I need to know," I said, sharper now, my hands curling slightly against the table before I made them stop. "I need to know if she's a person who got swept into this the same way I did, or if she walked into that hall already knowing exactly what she was doing to me."
Riven uncrossed his arms. He came closer, slow, the way he always moved when he wanted to give me room to breathe instead of crowding me.
"We'll find out," he said. "I promise you that."
I nodded. My throat felt tight, and I swallowed hard against it, refusing to let it climb any higher.
Gideon watched the two of us for a moment, something careful in his face, like he was seeing something he hadn't expected to see between an Alpha and a human woman from another pack. He didn't say anything about it. He just folded his hands on the table and waited, patient, while I tried to find my footing again.
I thought about the empty chair Caden's eyes kept finding. I thought about Liora sitting in that house right now, miles away, maybe asleep, maybe not, carrying a bond she never asked for and a secret she might or might not even know she was carrying.
Whatever the answer turned out to be, I had a feeling it was going to change everything again.
- Writer
