Traded To My Alpha's Cursed Twin

Chapter 2- Lena

He walked straight to the desk and poured himself a drink.

Didn't offer me one. Didn't speak. Just stood there with his back half turned, swirling the glass like I hadn't just asked him a question that should have stopped the whole room cold.

"I asked you something," I said.

"I heard you."

"Then answer me. How do you know Caden Ashveil?"

He turned around. Set the glass down. Looked at me with those eyes - Caden's eyes, same shape, same dark color, completely different in a way I couldn't name yet - and said it like it was nothing.

"He's my brother."

I heard the words. I just couldn't make them fit anywhere.

"Your brother," I said.

"Twin. Identical." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. "Though I'd argue I got the better half of the genetics."

"You're Caden's twin." My voice came out strange. Flat. "He has an identical twin brother and he sent me here - he signed papers and put me in a carriage and sent me to his twin brother's pack - and he didn't say a single word to me about it."

"No. He wouldn't."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because I'm the one they don't talk about." He said it clean. No self-pity. Just fact. "I'm the cursed one. The problem. They sent me North four years ago and everyone agreed to pretend I stopped existing." He picked up the glass and drank. "Caden is the golden boy. I'm the thing they're ashamed of."

I grabbed the back of the chair in front of me because my legs had made a decision I didn't agree with.

"He knew," I said. "When he marked me - he already knew about you. About the curse. About all of it."

Daphen's eyes dropped to my throat. Right to the spot. Like he had a map.

"Yes," he said.

"And he marked me because-"

"Because the curse on my bloodline can only be broken by the mate of my blood." He came around the desk slowly. Stopped a few feet away. "Not my mate. The mate of my bloodline. Someone already bound to Ashveil blood." His eyes held mine. "He marked you and then he handed you to me because you're the only one who can save what's left of my pack."

I let that sit.

All of it.

Every ugly piece of it.

"So there was never a debt," I said.

"No."

"Never an alliance."

"No."

"He marked me on purpose." My voice came out low. "He chose me specifically. Kept me quiet specifically. And then stood at that altar and claimed my sister and packed me off North - because I was already useful and he needed to get rid of me anyway." I looked straight at him. "Is that right?"

"I can't speak for his reasons-"

"Is that right, Daphen?"

His jaw tightened. "Yes. That's right."

I laughed.

It came out jagged and wrong and I didn't try to stop it because what else was there. What else do you do when you find out the man you loved looked at you and saw a transaction.

"And you," I said. "You knew I was coming."

"Yes."

"You knew why.

"Yes."

"So everybody knew." I let go of the chair. "Caden knew. You knew. The Elders who signed the papers knew. And I was just -" I shook my head. "I was just standing there in the dress my sister picked out thinking today was the day everything became real." I looked at him. "What does breaking the curse actually require?"

"An heir."

"Of course it does."

"Lena-"

"Don't." I held up a hand. "Don't say my name like you know me. We just met." I walked to the door. "I'm going to my room."

"We're not finished-"

"Yes we are." I stopped in the doorway and looked back at him. "You've given me enough to think about for one night. We can talk tomorrow about whatever comes next. But right now if I stand in this room for another five minutes I'm going to say something that makes the next eight months very difficult for both of us."

He stared at me.

I walked out.

The room they gave me was stone-walled and heavy-curtained and freezing. A bed. A table. A window that looked out over dark pines and nothing else.

I sat on the edge of the bed for about thirty seconds before the door knocked.

"I said I'm fine-"

It opened anyway.

Daphen. Holding a plate of food and a steaming cup like it personally offended him to be doing it. He crossed the room, dropped it on the table, stepped back.

"Kitchens close at nine," he said. "You need to eat."

I stared at him. "You brought me food."

"You need to be strong enough to be useful. That's the only reason."

"Useful." I repeated the word back at him. "That's what I am."

"That's what you are to this pack. I'm not going to dress it up." He folded his arms. "You deserve to know exactly where you stand."

Somehow that was the most honest thing anyone had said to me in months. No performance. No dressing it up. Just the truth, flat and clean.

"Fine," I said. "How long do you have? Before the curse becomes irreversible."

His shoulders shifted. "Eight months."

"And the heir breaks it completely."

"Yes."

I looked at the food. Looked at him. "What happened to you? The curse - what does it actually do to you?"

"It kills the Alpha first." His voice came out quieter. "Then spreads to the pack. They lose their wolves. Get sick. Die." A pause. "It's been three years. We've lost eleven wolves already."

Eleven.

"Go get some sleep," I said. "We'll sort out the details tomorrow."

He looked at me for a second - something unreadable crossing his face - then walked out and shut the door.

I ate. I didn't think. I just ate and stared at the dark window and let myself be numb for exactly as long as I needed to be.

I was almost asleep when the door flew open and cracked against the stone wall hard enough to make the cup jump off the table.

I shot upright.

A woman stood in the frame. Tall. Dark-haired. Pack colors, senior rank. The kind of face that had decided something before she even walked in.

She looked at me like I was a problem she was tired of having.

"So you're the new one," she said.

"Who the hell are you?"

She walked in without being invited. Stopped in the middle of my room like she owned it.

"Vera. Gamma of the Ashen Pack." Her eyes moved over me. Head to toe. Not impressed. "I need you to understand something before you get too comfortable in that bed."

I swung my legs over the side. "Then say it."

"You're not the first woman brought here to break the curse." She stepped closer. "You're the fourth."

The room went very still.

"The first lasted three weeks. Tried to run. They found her at the border." Her voice didn't waver. "The second made it two months before the curse started pulling at her too - we don't fully understand why. The third-" She stopped. Her jaw worked. "The third was my sister."

I didn't move

"My sister came here full of hope, just like you probably did, thinking she could fix something and have a life on the other side of it." Her eyes were hard and wet at the same time. "She's been in the ground for six months."

"I'm sorry," I said. And I meant it.

"I don't want your sorry." She pointed at me. "I want you to understand what you walked into. Daphen isn't going to tell you any of this because he needs you compliant and willing and he's decided the best way to do that is information on a need-to-know basis." Her voice dropped. "But you need to know. Whatever he told you tonight - whatever deal you think you've made - this curse doesn't just need an heir. It needs the right one. And if you're not it-"

"Then what?" I said.

She looked at me.

"Then you end up like my sister."

The silence after that was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.

"Does he know?" I asked. "That you're in here telling me this?"

"No."

"What happens when he finds out?"

"He'll be furious." She said it without blinking. "But I'd rather he be furious at me than watch another woman walk into this blind." She turned to leave.

"Vera."

She stopped.

"Is there a way to know?" I asked. "Before - is there a way to find out if I'm the right one?"

She turned back slowly. Something shifted in her face

"The pack Shaman," she said carefully. "She knew about the others. She knew before it went wrong." She held my gaze. "She also told Daphen not to bring anyone else here until she'd done a reading. He brought you anyway."

My blood went cold.

"He brought me here," I said slowly. "Knowing the Shaman told him to wait."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Vera's mouth pressed into a thin line.

"Because," she said, "you're not just any bond to his bloodline." She looked at my throat. At the mark. Her eyes came back to mine and the expression in them was something between pity and fear. "The Shaman says you're the only one who was ever going to survive this. She's known your name for two years, Lena. Long before Caden ever put that mark on you."

The floor felt like it dropped out from under me.

"What?"

"Ask the Shaman yourself." Vera stepped back into the doorway. "Room at the end of the north corridor. She doesn't sleep." A pause. "And don't tell Daphen I was here."

She walked out.

I sat in the dark of my room in the Ashen Pack with my heart slamming and the mark on my throat burning hot and one thought running over and over and over in my head.

The Shaman had known my name for two years.

Two years before any of this happened.

Which meant this was never Caden's plan.

This was someone else's.