The Alpha Rejected Me, But I Carry His Heir

Chapter 10: What the Alpha Never Chose

Rurik is there before a third shot can even come off the second archer. He crashes out of the trees like vengeance with a body halfway-shifted and whatever it was in that window either decides it’s had enough witnesses for one night, or knows that vengeance alone at least does the job promptly. Branches crack against another, something thuds against soft ground, and footfalls are already disappearing into the night beyond.

Kaelen vaults that sill while Rurik is still landing, and finds nothing left to catch but cold and the coppery reek of blood.

I remain crouched behind the altar until my shaking stops. When it refuses to halt any longer, I make it stop – I push it back – and I crawl toward Maera’s collapsed form. She’s gone. I knew it.

The arrow was too precise; this wasn't the work of someone careless.

But I close her eyes with two fingers, sit beside her in the ruined chapel where she used to serve a Goddess and I pledge her a promise I am less certain I can ever fulfill. I will find them. Whatever you died to tell me — I’ll follow through.

Then I take the west-gate seal still cool in my hand; shove it deep into the lining of my cloak; once again, become the Silvercrest heir; there is no time for grief; there are wars to survive.

Rurik reappears. He brings nothing back with him. His chest heaves with a fury that made me glad it is only him and not whatever attacked Maera in our stead.

“Lost them past the north wall.

They knew the ground. They were smart enough that I couldn’t catch them where patrols weren’t supposed to be”-he glances down at her and some of the harder planes of his face soften.“ She dies trying to get me half of what I know you need to hear.”

“Then I’ll find the other half,” I replied, standing. “Just not tonight. Tonight we have to get back inside those walls before they can know what we are doing out here; and I need the person behind this wanting me framed by the innocent or dead.

Either way gets me the thing I want; neither way is something to try and stop.”

We are on our way back to the east wing, and then, things once again go terribly wrong. Kaelen. Kaelen Thorne. He is here in the hallway; as he should be.

Someone, somewhere, felt that the severed tie tightened between us; someone must have known I was in danger and made him come for me—because he is dressed for the hunt.

There is a blade at his hip, and the look on his face when he looks past me, notices blood dripping from my hands, and freezes; goes from irritation and fury and something else—to terror; in the time it takes that second archer to lose a third arrow.

“Whose blood is that?” He is halfway between us and his hands fly up in a desperate attempt — I don’t know—to check if I am wounded, but I step away just before he can touch me. “Nova, whose blood is it?”

“Not mine.”

My voice feels flat. My muscles are tired, but my heart feels like it’s pounding out my throat.

“Maera’s.

Your pack healer. She’s dead in the north chapel with an arrow through her throat; and she was killed trying to deliver a message to you that you need to know.” His face has gone completely still; a stone tablet, “Maera is in her quarters. She hasn’t been out in weeks; she’s dying-”.

“She was dying. Tonight she’s dead, and she's dead because she was meeting with me.” I stare straight into his eyes and took an option I hadn’t even considered for tonight.

“She told me the truth about that night that you decided to hate me so much that you spit out words in front of the entire pack.

The night you cast me out.”

Something flickered across his face—guilt again. Guilt, always—if I can use it against him, use it for my own advantage. “I know what I did. I’ve never claimed otherwise.”

“You didn’t,” I say. And now my voice cracks. “You said the words.

You severed the bond.

You threw me out like garbage. But Maera-Maera was a witness. She sat somewhere inside your pack house and watched as this enemy you know nothing of—someone else—slowly twisted you against me. They poisoned your mind, convincing you that our bond was weak, and I was not worth it, until the truth became lies and the lie was accepted, so fiercely that it was said.

Someone made you reject me, Kaelen; and then they spent five years making sure I wouldn’t come back.

And tonight they killed the only person who knew how they convinced you otherwise.”

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. Five years of his own guilt-whatever hate I felt against it, whatever malice I had cultivated using it against him, whatever shame I had enjoyed seeing him suffer in his own hall—began to splinter around a truth that he did not want to acknowledge.

“No,” it comes out gravelly, broken.

“No. I chose it. I remember standing there and choosing it.

I remember hating you.”

“And that is what makes it evil.” My throat burns. “They didn't force your body; they forced your mind to go to the exact position they wanted.

You didn't reject me for being cruel, Kaelen.

You rejected me because they manipulated you—they stepped in the space I should have occupied, between my life and yours, and took one life’s bond for the other’s. And so congrats. You can let yourself feel a little bit less guilty; because I was right to spend the last five years hating you, but that hate was used by someone else, manipulated for them—by someone who still walks the streets of Silvercrest or Ravenclaw or wherever they claim their power from.”

It is a long moment in which the only sound is our breathing. And then Kaelen Thorne-Alpha of Ravenclaw-the most powerful wolf in these mountains-slides down the stone wall until he’s sitting with his knees tucked beneath his chin and his eyes covered by his hands pressed to his temples, and he makes a noise that I don’t recognize-a sound like something major breaking.

“Aria,” he croaks-that name-my grandmother’s name. “Rowan. My god, Aria.

Five years.

I’ve lost five years of them, because someone…” His hands fell. His eyes are suddenly blazing and wet at the same time. “Tell me who and I will hunt them down to the ends of the world if I have to. I don’t care who or what it is, or which pack, or what alliances they possess; just give me a name.”

“I don’t have one yet.”

I crouched down to face him-because some truths can only be spoken to an equal, face to face. “She died before she could tell me, Kaelen.

But she told me two things.

First, it’s not Seraphine. Seraphine is another viper’s bait designed to make us think we know who is behind this, where he can pull the string, and we will fight what they are pulling towards our throats, in order to protect something they actually do not have; whereas anything Seraphine is doing right now he can use that against you. Secondly—the people responsible here aren't trying to usurp you as king; they are trying to kill us.

All of us.”

I watch this sink in, “Which means the children that we were desperate not to have beenn't just secrets any longer—they are the people the person or people responsible for tonight have dedicated their efforts to thwarting.

And now that they are here… they are targets.” His voice is low, sharp now, the grief replaced with a lethal calm. The Alpha-true Alpha-finally awake.

“My children are targets.”

“Our children,” I let the word fall between us like a grenade. I have never said that word. Never allowed myself to say it.

Not once, not among the threats and insults and bartering—but now, I say it, and his eyes snap at mine.

It lands somewhere that affects him like nothing else tonight; harder than the murder in the chapel, harder than the shame in his own head; “Our children.”

“Our children,” he echoes.