Fated To The Alpha's Enemy

Chapter 5

Caleb POV

The Mate Hunt.

It means exactly what it sounds like: a desperate spectacle my older brother hosts every year in the hopes of finding a mate he was probably never destined to have.

I’ve avoided it every single time, even though it happens right here in Seattle.

Officially, I say I’m not the type who enjoys rubbing elbows with every Alpha, Beta, and desperate Omega flown in from all corners of the world.

But the truth?

I just hate my brother. Zion Ashwood. The Wolf Regent. The man sitting on a throne that was never meant to be his.

The ice in my glass clinks as I swirl the brown drink in my hand.

My mind fires up a million questions and a million answers, just to counter every thought my wolf brings up.

My eyes search for answers just outside my penthouse window.

Seattle at night wears a pretty face. She’s all Garcia lights and wet streets, like the city dressed itself up just to lie to you.

The buildings glitter like they matter, sharp lines cutting into a sky that never quite clears. Rain clings to everything—glass and steel alike. Fog moves through the streets like it’s alive, curling around corners and clinging to the heels of anyone dumb enough to walk alone.

From the top floor of my penthouse, I can see it all. The skyline. The illusion of peace. But I know better.

This city runs on blood and power, just like everything else. It just hides it better beneath the glow.

If Zion gets everything he wants—especially a legacy—then everything I’ve spent years trying to stop will come true.

Every Alpha I’ve stood behind. Every pack I’ve watched over from the sidelines. I did it because someone had to carry my father’s vision when he died. He built a system meant to protect the weak and keep the power-hungry in check.

Zion is poisoning it all.

If no one stops him, the world my father bled for while winning wars will be nothing but ashes under his throne.

I take another sip of my drink, letting the burn light up the darkest parts of my brain.

“How sure are you about this?” I ask without turning around.

Devon and Elias stand behind me. They are the only men who’ve ever truly had my back. Not by blood—by choice. I’d die for them, and I know they’d do the same for me.

“It’s the only thing people are whispering about in Seattle right now,” Devon says. “We confirmed it through some of the staff in Zion’s castle. He brought a Garcia-haired girl with him. Adora Garcia. He’s convinced she’s the one.”

I stare out over the city, the lights flickering like stars about to burn out.

Adora Garcia.

I roll the name over in my mouth like bad liquor. “Has he marked her yet?”

The silence behind me is loud. I can sense my Betas not agreeing with whatever I’ve got to say next, but letting Zion win is something I can’t let happen again.

I let him win once.

I was twelve. Old enough to know I shouldn’t have been in my mother’s room, but too uneasy to understand that my sick mother needed me in case she wanted help. I’d been crouching behind the armchair she liked to knit in, in the corner of said room. Zion was sixteen then—already strong, already cruel, already too hungry for the crown.

That night, I saw him slip something into her tea. I didn’t understand it then, not fully. I told myself it was medicine. I wanted to believe it was medicine.

But it wasn’t.

She got worse after every cup he brought her. Weaker. Greyer. Like her body was rotting from the inside out. And he watched her fade with a smile.

Our father followed her six months later. Grief, they said. But I knew better. The bond snapped, and it dragged him into the grave with her. And Zion? He didn’t shed a single tear.

He took the crown a year after the burial.

It took me years to gather the truth after having tons of doubts growing up. Years of digging through old records, bribing healers, and even blackmailing a servant who used to clean the Regent’s quarters. He revealed Zion had been angry at my father a month before our mother got sick. My father wanted me to take his throne. He’d even made it official. I would take the throne when I turned eighteen.

Not Zion. Me.

Because I was steady and strategic at a young age. Because my father said I had the heart of a real Alpha, not like my brother, who relied on muscle. Zion didn’t take it well. He’d trained all sixteen years of his life for that crown. In retaliation, he poisoned our mother first to take out my father through the bond they shared.

Ten years of silence and fishing for evidence, and once I got it, I brought it all before the Elder Circles of Zion’s court. The poison. The witness. The motive. I stood there shaking with proof in my hands, screaming that the Wolf Regent killed the king and queen of Wolves.

They were the highest wolves in the Regent’s inner circle, put there by my father, and yet they didn’t believe me. They f*****g laughed in my face.

I was just a second son with too much rage and jealousy for his big brother.

But now? Now I’ve got something more dangerous than brute strength.

I have a pack that follows me without question. I have allies in places Zion can’t reach. And I have loyalty—not bought, not forced, but earned.

That’s why Adora Garcia matters. She’s the one thing Zion can’t afford to lose.

“He hasn’t,” Elias mutters beside me. “Not yet. He plans to propose and mark her at the Mate Hunt.”

He pauses like he’s testing the weight of his next words.

“Alpha Caleb… it might be too late to move now. We could still find another way to challenge Zion. Something tactical. Political.”

I cut him off before he could finish.

“Every woman at that damn Mate Hunt is the same. Just another girl clawing for a title, a crown, a warm bed with enough power draped around her neck.”

I turn away from him, eyes locked on the city drowning in the moonlight. My voice drops low.

“She’s no different.”

Watching our mother fade under Zion’s poison, and watching our father rot from the broken bond he never recovered from, had taught me a cruel and deadly truth: Mates destroy you.

They’re soft spots. Vulnerabilities. And I’ve bled too long to ever want one.

But if Zion’s found his? Then I finally know how to break him the way he broke our parents.