Traded To My Alpha's Cursed Twin

I should have known when Isla smiled. That was the thing about my stepsister - she never smiled unless she'd already won. And she'd been smiling since six in the morning, since the moment she knocked on my door and held out the pale gold dress like she was doing me a favour. "Wear this," she'd said. "You'll thank me later." I wore it. God, I wore it. The claiming ceremony was in two hours, and the whole Ironveil pack had lost their damn minds. Flowers strung through every corridor, music bleeding out from the great hall, warriors who hadn't cracked a smile in months laughing like life was beautiful. The pack house smelled like cedar and candle wax and everyone else's happiness. I was in the bathroom with both hands gripping the sink, staring at my own reflection, trying to remember how to breathe. "You're doing that thing," my wolf Raya said inside me. "What thing." "The thing where you convince yourself something is fine when it is clearly not fine." "It is fine. Everything is fine. Today is the day it all becomes real, and everything is going to be fine." Raya said nothing. Which meant she didn't believe me either. I pressed my fingers to the mark hidden underneath my hair. Still there. Four months I had carried it - four months of hiding it, keeping his secret, waking up every morning telling myself that today would be the day he stopped pretending it didn't exist. Today actually was that day. It had to be. "Don't," I told Raya. "Just let me have today." I fixed my hair, smoothed the gold dress, and went downstairs. I found a spot at the back of the great hall behind the far pillar. The hall was packed - every wolf in Ironveil plus half the neighbouring packs, buzzing with excitement. The Elders stood at the front in their grey ceremonial robes. And Caden stood at the altar. My chest did the thing it always did when I saw him. That pull. That stupid, mortifying, completely involuntary pull. He was in a dark suit, shoulders back, jaw set, wearing that composed expression he used when he knew people were watching. He looked like an alpha. He looked like mine. I was smiling. In a few minutes, he was going to call me forward, and the hiding would be over. Done. Finally done. The doors opened. And Isla walked in. In white. The smile left my face so fast it felt like something tearing. She walked down that aisle like she'd been born for it. Head high, flowers trembling just enough to look like nerves. She looked like a Luna. She looked like exactly what this pack wanted. Her eyes, just for a second, found mine. She smiled. That wicked smug smile only Isla herself could pull. Oh god, Raya whispered. My hand found the pillar. I gripped it hard enough to hurt. Caden's eyes locked onto Isla and did not move. Not once. When she reached him, he took her hand, and I watched his face do something I had never once seen it do for me. He softened. The Elder began the claiming words. The crowd erupted. And the bond in my chest - his mark, his - started to scream. I don't remember walking out. I was on the east staircase with my back against the cold stone wall, sliding down it because my legs had stopped working. Someone below was laughing so hard it echoed. "She set me up," I said out loud. "She set me up and he let her and I wore the f*****g dress she picked out and stood in the back like a guest at my own-" I stopped. Pressed my hand against my mouth and did not cry. Did he know? Raya asked carefully. Did he know what she was planning? "Does it matter?" ..No. I suppose it doesn't. Footsteps on the stairs. I looked up. Isla. Still in white, twirling the bouquet lazily. "Knew I'd find you here," she said pleasantly. I got to my feet. "Walk away, Isla." "I just wanted to check on-" "I said walk away." She leaned against the railing like she had all the time in the world. "You know what your problem is, Lena? You actually thought it was going to be you. After everything. You still thought it was going to be you." "He marked me. He put his mark on my throat, Isla. You know that-" "He told me," she said simply. "Everything. The storm. The night. The mark. He came to me six weeks ago and told me everything because that's what you do with the person you're actually meant for." Her eyes moved to the exact spot on my collar. "He called it the worst mistake of his life. His words, not mine." "You're lying." "He chose me today, Lena. In front of every single person in this pack." She stepped closer. "What did he do for you? He asked you to keep a secret and you did, like a good little mouse, because that's all you've ever been to him. Something convenient and perfectly irrelevant." She smiled. "How did that work out?" My hands were shaking. "You have no rank here anymore," she said quietly. "No claim. Nothing. And if you stay I'll make sure every Elder in that hall knows what you let him do to you before the ceremony." She turned and walked back up the stairs. "Oh," she said, not looking back. "The dress looks beautiful on you, by the way." I went to my room, pulled the bag from under my bed and stuffed the rest of my things into it with shaking hands. I was leaving tonight. I was done. I had my bag on my shoulder and my hand on the door when it opened from the other side. Two warriors I didn't recognize filled the frame. "Lena Voss." "Yes." "Alpha Caden. Now." I looked at the bag. I looked at them. "Right," I said. "Of course." He was standing with his back to me when I walked in, hands braced on the desk, staring out at his celebrating pack. "Lena." "You summoned me." I kept my voice even. He turned. His face did something - a flash of guilt - then shut down into that careful official expression. "There's an alliance," he started. "Don't. Just say it to my face." "You're being sent North. Tonight." "Say that again." "Alpha Daphen has agreed to-" "You're trading me. You put your mark on my throat and now you're trading me." "It's a formal alliance-" "It is not a formal alliance, Caden, it is you selling me to pay a debt!" My voice cracked. "Four months I carried your mark and didn't tell a single person because you asked me not to and I trusted you. And now you're standing there in the suit you wore to claim my sister telling me you're sending me North like I'm what? Currency? What am I to you, Caden? What have I ever been?" He looked at the floor. "I know." "That's it? I know?" "What do you want me to say?" "Who the hell is Alpha Daphen and why do you think you have the right to hand me to him?" He was quiet too long. "He's cursed," he said finally. "His whole pack is dying because of it. The arrangement requires an heir, Lena. You go North, you give him an heir, the debt is cleared." The complete shape of it settled over me. "I would have chosen you," I said quietly. "I carried your mark for four months and every single day I chose you. And you were using that time to sign papers." "The order's already been-" "I know. I'm not fighting it." I looked at him one last time, trying to find something worth remembering, and found nothing. "I just needed you to know what you threw away." I opened the door. "Lena." His voice came out rough. "Don't," I said. "You don't get to sound like that now." I walked out. The black unmarked carriage was waiting at the east gate. I got in, put my bag on my lap, watched Ironveil disappear. The lights, the smoke, the sound of celebrating. Then nothing. We're going to be okay, Raya said. "Stop saying that." Someone has to. Three days north. Dark roads and frozen trees. By the time the iron gates of the Ashen Pack appeared I had a plan. Survive. Learn everything. Show nothing. Never let them see me break. The pack house was massive and dark-stoned and severe. No warmth. No welcome. A man walked out. Tall. Broad. Dark clothes. He moved like someone who had never once had to justify his own existence. He crossed the distance and stopped. Looked me over once. The way you assess livestock. "The offering from Ironveil," he said. Then he lifted his eyes fully to mine and every thought evaporated. That jaw. Those dark eyes. The exact way his shoulders sat. I knew that face. I knew every line of it. "Your face," I said. He went very still. Not confusion. The stillness of someone who had been waiting for exactly that reaction. "Is that a problem," he said. The mark on my throat was burning - actually burning, hot and insistent, which it had never done before. "How do you know Caden Ashveil," I said. The courtyard went silent. Every warrior completely still. Daphen looked at me with something that wasn't surprise or confusion - something far older and darker - and underneath it, just for one second before he locked it down completely: Rage. "Inside," he said quietly. "Right now." "Answer me first-" "Inside." His voice dropped to something that hit like pressure against the chest. "I will not ask again." His eyes dropped for just a fraction of a second to the side of my throat. To the exact spot. He knew. He already knew it was there. "You knew," I breathed. "Before I even arrived-" "Inside, Lena." He said my name like he'd said it before. "Now. Before I say something in front of my warriors that I'll have to manage afterward." From the look on his face this man was looking at me like I was something he'd been waiting for. Something specific. Something chosen. Not because of the debt. Not because of the alliance. Something else entirely. Something Caden hadn't told me. I walked inside.