Mated to alpha prince I can't remember

What still burns

Lyra

The halls grow colder the deeper we go.

Stone gives way to darker stone, carved with runes I can’t read but somehow feel. They pulse faintly underfoot, humming like old magic — alive but slumbering. Kael walks ahead of me, his frame a wall of quiet tension, lit only by the flickering torch in his hand.

He hasn’t spoken since we left the balcony. I haven’t asked him to.

I should be afraid, I think.

But I’m not.

It’s the not knowing that scares me. The silence inside my own mind. The sense that everything I touch is a thread — and if I pull the wrong one, the whole thing will unravel.

When we finally stop, we’re standing before a massive set of iron doors. Not ornate. Not royal. Just ancient. They bear a single symbol I can’t name, but it makes my chest ache to look at it — like it’s been branded into me before.

“This is it,” Kael says quietly.

“What is this place?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he steps aside. “Touch it.”

I hesitate. The cold here sinks into my bones. But something pulls me forward — not his command, not even my curiosity. Something deeper.

I lift my hand and press my palm to the door.

The air shifts.

The iron glows faint gold beneath my skin. I feel heat… then pain. Sharp, sudden, slicing through me like lightning. I cry out and try to pull back—

But I can’t move.

The magic has me.

The vault flares with blinding light—

And then I’m somewhere else.

I’m standing in a field of ash.

Smoke curls through the air. The sky is burning, stained with crimson. Wolves — dozens of them — surround me, snarling, bloodied. My hands are coated in it too. But I don’t feel fear.

I feel fury.

Kael is beside me. Younger. His eyes are wilder, but he’s already a storm in human form. He has his sword out, blood dripping from the tip.

“You don’t have to do this,” he growls. “They’ll kneel. Just say the word.”

I turn to him, hair whipping in the wind, and I say—

“I wasn’t born to kneel. I was born to burn.”

The words slam into me like a fist.

The flash disappears—

—and I’m back in the vault

Gasping. Shaking. Stumbling backward.

“No,” I whisper. “No, that wasn’t me. That can’t be me.”

But I feel it inside me. The power. The rage. The crown made of fire and blood. That woman wasn’t scared — she was the storm.

I turn and bolt.

Kael shouts my name, but I don’t look back. I can’t. My legs carry me through the hall, up the stairs, anywhere but there. Anywhere but her.

I don’t stop until I crash into a corridor lined with faded tapestries, my body slamming against the stone wall. My breath comes in ragged gasps. My chest is too tight.

Then I hear him.

Kael’s boots echo as he approaches — slow, deliberate. He doesn’t yell. Doesn’t demand.

Just… walks.

And when he sees me trembling, cornered by a version of myself I don’t understand, he stops a few feet away. His eyes flash gold in the dark.

“You saw her,” he says quietly.

“I don’t know who she was,” I choke. “I don’t want to know.”

“She was you,” he says. “You were powerful. Untouchable. A warrior queen.”

“I don’t want to be that.”

“You didn’t always. But you chose it.”

“I didn’t choose this.” I back away another step, but the wall is cold behind me.

Kael’s jaw flexes. He’s breathing hard — not from the chase, but from restraint. His hands curl at his sides. I can feel him holding back. His need. His hunger. His grief.

“I shouldn’t have taken you to the vault yet,” he murmurs. “I knew it was too soon. But I needed you to see.”

“See what?”

“That you’re more than the girl waking up with no memories. You’re more than confusion and fear.” His voice breaks slightly. “You were mine. Not because fate said so. Because you chose me. Over kingdoms. Over blood. Over everything.”

My eyes burn. “Then why does it feel like I’m drowning now?”

His steps close the distance.

He stops inches from me, his presence searing. His hands lift like he’s about to touch me — then fall again. He’s shaking with it. Like he’s starving for contact.

“I can’t touch you,” he says hoarsely. “Not when you look at me like I’m the villain in your story.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I’m weak,” he whispers. “Because I need you like I need air. Even if I have to stand here and burn for it.”

I should shove him away.

But I don’t.

Because the truth is… I’m burning too.

Something inside me reaches for him — not logic, not memory, but something older. My body leans forward before I even know what I’m doing.

Kael sucks in a breath. His eyes dip to my lips.

He touches my cheek — the lightest graze of knuckles — and it feels like too much. Like I’ll come undone from one touch alone. His hand trembles.

“I want to be good,” he murmurs. “But when it comes to you, I don’t know how.”

He groans—quiet and tortured. His forehead presses to mine. His scent—cedar, storm, heat—wraps around me like a memory I almost catch.

“I think about touching you every second,” he confesses, voice barely there. “It’s like withdrawal. I dream of you in my arms and wake up gasping. But if I take anything from you without your choice, even a kiss… I’m no better than the monsters I swore to destroy.”

Our lips don’t meet.

But the ache between us feels like lightning.

His thumb brushes my lower lip—barely—and I shatter.

Tears sting my eyes. Not from pain. From how much I want something I can’t explain.

“I hate this,” I whisper.

“So do I.”

His voice is broken glass. And when he finally pulls away, it feels like frostbite. Like he tore out a piece of me I didn’t know I’d given.

“I’ll give you time,” he says. “But not forever.”

The words leave a hollow ache in my chest.

He steps back, like it costs him everything.

Then a voice cuts through the air behind us.

“Everything alright, Alpha?”

I spin, startled.

A man stands at the end of the corridor—tall, broad-shouldered, with slate-gray eyes and a scar that cuts through one eyebrow. He’s younger than Kael but carries the same quiet authority. His gaze shifts to me—sharp, but not unkind.

Kael’s jaw tightens. “This is Commander Theron,” he says, voice a little strained. “My Beta.”

Theron gives a short bow. “Apologies. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t,” Kael says quickly, though the heat in his voice is still cooling.

Theron looks between us. “I’ll be outside. We’ve had scouts report activity near the river border.”

Kael nods once, and Theron disappears down the hall, his footsteps quiet for a man his size.

The air between us is still charged.

Kael turns back to me—but says nothing.

He doesn’t have to.

I can still feel the shape of his restraint like a bruise.

And just before he turns to leave, he says something that makes my blood turn to fire:

“The other alphas know you’re alive now.”

I blink. “What?”

“They’ll come for you,” he says. “Some to kneel. Others to claim.”

Then he looks over his shoulder, golden eyes glowing.

“But they’ll have to go through me first.”