Traded To My Alpha's Cursed Twin

Chapter 3- Lena

I didn't sleep.

I lay on that bed staring at the ceiling until the candle burned out and then I lay in the dark thinking about one thing.

The Shaman knew my name two years ago.

I was up and moving before I made a conscious decision.

The north corridor was empty and freezing and the light was bleeding under the last door.

I knocked once.

"Come in, Lena."

I stopped cold. She already knew.

I pushed in. Small room. Warm. Candles jammed onto every surface, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, shelves packed with jars and bundles and things I couldn't name. An old woman sat by the fire - white hair, smoke-colored eyes, the look of someone who had been sitting in that exact chair waiting for this exact moment for a very long time.

"Sit," she said.

"You knew my name two years ago," I said. "How."

"The Moon Goddess showed me." She pointed at the chair. "Sit down before you fall down."

I sat.

She leaned forward and without warning pressed her fingers directly to the mark on my neck. It burned so savagely hot I jerked back and knocked the chair into the wall.

"What the hell-"

"That is not Caden's mark," she said quietly. "It never was." She pulled her hand back. "That bond called to you before he ever put his teeth to your throat. His bloodline needed yours and he felt it and didn't understand it and so he did what frightened stupid cowardly men always do - he took ownership of something that was never his to own."

"Then whose is it."

"Yours." Flat. Direct. "It has always been yours."

"That is not a damn answer-"

"The curse on this bloodline," she cut me off sharply, "was placed by a female wolf who was betrayed and abandoned and left to die with nothing by the Ashveil family." Her voice was hard as stone. "She cursed them so the only thing that could ever break it was a bond freely given. Not bought. Not arranged. Not forced. Freely and truly given." A pause. "Every woman brought here before you came by arrangement. The bond was never free. The curse turned on them and they died."

My stomach dropped. "All three."

"All three." She nodded. "Vera's sister Amara was the closest. Good girl. Real heart. But even she - the arrangement poisoned it before it could grow into anything real." Her eyes held mine. "Your bond to this bloodline is different. It was real before any of this mess started. But it will only break the curse if you choose it freely. Nobody can force you. Not the arrangement. Not Daphen. Not me." She leaned in closer. "And if you fake it - if you go through the motions without truth behind it - you will end up in the ground just like the others."

I sat with that.

"Does Daphen know it has to be a free choice."

"Yes."

"And he still brought me here like a damn package."

"He has watched eleven wolves die," she said simply. "He has felt the curse eating him alive for three years. Eight months left." Her eyes didn't flinch. "Desperate men do ugly ugly things, child."

I stood up. "Where is he."

He was in the corridor right outside the door.

Arms folded. Jaw tight. Like he'd been standing there long enough to hear most of it and had decided he wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

I didn't give him a single second.

"You knew," I said. "You knew it had to be a free choice and you still let Caden put me in that carriage without telling me one damn thing. Not about you. Not about the curse. Not about the three women who died. Nothing."

"Yes."

"You let me walk through those gates completely blind."

"Yes."

"Why." My voice cracked and I didn't try to fix it. "What the hell gave you the right to make that decision for me? Who do you think you are?"

"The last three women I told the full truth to tried to run." His voice came out low and raw. "I let them go every time because I'm not going to chain someone here against their will. And they died anyway. All three of them. Because once this curse touches you it doesn't just let you walk away clean." His eyes were dark and steady. "So yes. I kept you in the dark. I had no right to. And I know that."

"No right to?" I stepped straight into him. "You want to talk about no right? I carried that bastard's mark for four months. Four months I kept his filthy secret and protected him and waited like a complete fool while he was busy signing papers to ship me off to his secret twin brother like I was something he needed to get rid of." My voice was shaking now and I let it shake. "And you knew. You knew exactly what I was and exactly what was happening and you stood in that courtyard and looked me over like I was livestock and said absolutely nothing."

"I know-"

"Stop saying I know!" It came out raw and loud and bounced off the stone walls and I didn't care who heard it. "Stop saying I know like that fixes anything! Say something real or shut your mouth!"

Silence.

Then - "I'm sorry."

I stared at him.

"I am sorry," he said again. No performance. No softening. Just the words, flat and direct and real. "You deserved better than what both of us did to you. I can't fix it. I can only give you the truth from here."

I breathed.

"Amara," I said. "You cared about her."

His face did something painful. "Yes."

"And you watched her die anyway."

"Yes."

"And you still brought me here."

"I didn't-"

"Don't say you didn't have a choice." My voice dropped to something quiet and dangerous. "Every single person in my life has not had a choice. And I am always the one paying for it." I looked at him straight. "I'm not leaving."

He stared at me.

"I'm not leaving," I said again. "Not because of any arrangement. Because the bond is real and I would rather stay and fight than crawl back to a pack that threw me away like garbage." I stepped back. "But from this second - everything. No more deciding what I can handle. No more managing what I know. Everything. Or I walk."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"There's more," he said quietly. "Something I haven't told you."

"Then tell me."

"My office. Now."

He poured two drinks.

Slid one across without asking. I took it and didn't thank him.

"The curse has a second condition," he said.

I went completely still. "What kind."

"The heir doesn't break it alone." He didn't look away. "The bond between the mother and the Alpha has to be genuinely real before the heir is conceived. Not legal. Not arranged. Not performed." His voice was low and hard. "Real. It has to actually mean something to both of us or the whole thing falls apart."

I stared at him. "We met yesterday."

"I know."

"You have your brother's face."

"I know."

"And you're telling me we need to actually-"

"I'm telling you the condition." His voice cracked sharp like a whip. "I'm not sitting here pretending it's easy or fair or that I have the faintest idea how two people are supposed to build something real in eight months after everything that's already been done to you. I'm just telling you the goddamn truth because that's what you asked for."

He slammed his glass down.

"That's all I've got, Lena. Eight months, a pack that's dying, and the truth. Take it or leave it."

I looked at him.

At the anger and the guilt and the exhaustion all living in the same face. At everything Caden performed that this man simply carried. Quietly. Without asking anyone to notice.

"Deal," I said. "We figure it out together. No more secrets. No more bullshit."

I stood and walked out.

Three steps down the corridor and I heard it.

Voices. East wing. Low and urgent and trying hard not to carry.

I stopped dead.

One voice I didn't recognize.

The other one hit me like a punch to the throat.

I knew that voice.

I had loved that voice.

I had cried over that voice for four months.

I moved toward it on silent feet and pressed flat against the cold stone wall beside the half open door and I stopped breathing and I listened.

Caden.

Caden was inside this pack house.

"She can't find out the real reason I sent her here," he said. Low. Tight. Deliberate. "Not yet. Not until it's already done and she can't stop it."

"And if she works it out before then?" The other voice.

A pause.

"She won't." Caden's voice was so certain it made me sick. "She never does. She sees what she wants to see. Always has."

My hand slammed over my mouth.

The mark on my throat burned like it was on fire.

And then he said one more thing.

One quiet, cold, completely casual sentence that told me the real reason he had marked me had nothing to do with the curse.

Nothing to do with Daphen.

Nothing to do with any debt or alliance or bloodline.

He had done it to make sure I could never leave.

Not this pack.

Not this bloodline.

Not him.

Ever.