The Alpha's Fake Girlfriend

The Second Name

Seraphina didn't leave Elian's side until the surgical team wheeled him toward the operating wing, machines and staff moving around her in a blur of practiced urgency. Only when the doors swung shut behind him did she finally turn back to find Alaric waiting exactly where she'd left him, phone still in hand, face unreadable.

"Tell me about Elyse," she said. "Now. Before I lose my mind waiting on that surgery."

Alaric glanced down the empty corridor, then guided her into a small family waiting room and shut the door behind them. "Elyse wasn't from my territory," he said finally. "She came from the Eastern Hollow pack, arranged through a treaty alliance six years ago. I didn't choose her the way you're imagining. The Elders chose her for me."

"An arranged mate."

"A political one. I respected her. I never claimed to love her the way the pack bond songs describe." His jaw tightened. "But three months ago, at a ceremony with more security than the Summit itself, a rogue pack broke through every layer of protection we had and killed her in front of forty witnesses. No demands. No message. Just her, targeted, dead within minutes."

"You said you didn't understand why. That you told yourself it was chance." Seraphina's pulse hadn't slowed since the message lit up her screen. "Do you believe that anymore?"

"No." The word came out low, almost ashamed. "I've reviewed the security footage a hundred times since that night. The rogues didn't attack the ceremony. They attacked her. Specifically. Like they knew exactly where she'd be standing before she got there."

"Someone gave them that information."

"Someone with access to my inner circle." Alaric's hands curled into fists at his sides. "Which means whoever sent you that text tonight either is that person, or knows exactly who is."

Seraphina pulled out her phone and stared at the message again, the words sitting cold and accusing on the screen. Ask him what really happened to Elyse. "They want me to think you had something to do with her death."

"I didn't."

"I believe you." And she did, more than she expected to. "But someone wants me to doubt that. Someone wants a wedge between us before the Summit, and they picked tonight, the same night your healer told us my wolf is waking faster than it should. That's not a coincidence, Alaric."

"No," he agreed quietly. "It isn't."

A knock interrupted them — one of Alaric's guards, breathless from running the length of the corridor. "Alpha. Cassian's been spotted at St. Aldric's. In the east wing, near the records office."

Alaric went very still, the kind of stillness that Seraphina was already learning to associate with barely restrained fury. "He followed us here."

"Or he already knew where to look," the guard said, glancing warily between the two of them. "Security footage shows him entering the building twenty minutes before the anonymous message hit her phone. We're pulling the full timeline now, Alpha, but it doesn't look good."

"Twenty minutes." Seraphina's mind raced back through the last hour — the drive, the emergency call, the corridor where her phone had buzzed with a stranger's warning. "That's before we even arrived."

"Which means he wasn't reacting to us being here." Alaric's expression hardened into something colder than she'd seen from him yet. "He was already positioned. Waiting for the right moment to strike."

Seraphina's stomach dropped straight through the floor. "You think Cassian sent it."

"I think Cassian wants us fractured before we ever reach the Summit stage." Alaric was already moving toward the door, fury coiled tight under his composure. "And I think it's time I asked him myself."

They found Cassian near the vending machines outside the records office, unbothered, sipping coffee like a man who had nowhere better to be. His smile widened the second he saw them coming.

"Cousin. Didn't expect to see you slumming it in a human hospital." His eyes slid to Seraphina, assessing. "Family emergency, I heard. My condolences on the boy's condition."

"Cut it, Cassian." Alaric's voice dropped low and dangerous. "You were near the records office twenty minutes before Seraphina received an anonymous message about Elyse. Explain that."

Cassian's smile didn't waver, but something behind his eyes sharpened. "I have every right to visit a hospital where our pack holds a standing medical contract, Alaric. As for anonymous messages, I'm afraid I don't send those. I prefer my accusations delivered in person, with my name attached."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting tonight." Cassian set his coffee down, stepping closer, voice dropping to something almost gentle, almost cruel. "Though if I were you, Doctor Lark, I'd ask myself why the Alpha's never once explained what really happened the night Elyse died. Ask him where he was standing during the attack. Ask him why the wards protecting that ceremony failed only in her section of the circle."

Seraphina felt Alaric go rigid beside her, a stillness that told her more than his silence ever could.

"Get out of this hospital," Alaric said, voice like ice cracking. "Now, before I forget you're still my blood."

Cassian raised both hands, unbothered, already backing away with that same maddening smile. "Threats, cousin? In front of witnesses? How very unstable of you. Almost like a man whose wolf is slipping." He glanced once more at Seraphina before turning down the corridor. "Ask him, Doctor. You deserve the truth before you sign your name to anything else."

He disappeared around the corner, footsteps unhurried, like a man who knew exactly how much damage he'd just done and intended to let it sit and fester on its own.

Alaric stood frozen for a long moment, staring at the space Cassian had occupied, his hands still curled into fists at his sides. "He's never spoken to me like that in front of an outsider before."

"Maybe he doesn't think I'm an outsider anymore." Seraphina wrapped her arms around herself, cold in a way that had nothing to do with the hospital's air conditioning. "Maybe he thinks I'm exactly the kind of witness he needs — someone close enough to you to matter, distant enough to doubt you."

"That's precisely what he thinks." Alaric's voice had gone hollow. "He's been waiting three months for an opening like this. A grieving Alpha, a mysterious new Luna, a scandal half-written before he even has to lift a finger to finish it."

The silence he left behind felt heavier than anything he'd said aloud.

Seraphina turned to Alaric slowly. "Where were you standing? The night Elyse died?"

Alaric's jaw worked, something breaking loose behind his composed exterior. "Forty feet away. Close enough to see it happen. Too far to stop it."

"And the wards? Why did they fail only where she was standing?"

"I don't know." His voice cracked on the last word, raw in a way she hadn't heard from him since the clinic, three days and a lifetime ago. "I've asked every healer, every warder, every Elder on the Council. No one has an answer that satisfies me. I've spent three months convincing myself it doesn't matter, because grief doesn't leave room for investigation. But Cassian's right about one thing." He met her eyes, and the guilt there was unmistakable now, impossible to hide. "I never looked hard enough. Because looking hard enough meant admitting I might have missed something that could have saved her."

Seraphina studied his face, searching for the lie Cassian wanted her to find, and found instead something worse — an ordinary man drowning quietly in a guilt he'd never let anyone witness until tonight.

"I don't think you did anything to hurt her," she said finally. "But I think you've been so afraid of what you might find that you stopped asking the right questions. And now someone else is asking them for you, using me as the wedge."

"I know." Alaric exhaled hard, dragging a hand down his face. "Which means we don't have thirty days to figure this out anymore, Seraphina. We have however long it takes Cassian to finish what he started tonight."

A nurse appeared at the end of the hallway before Seraphina could answer, calling her name, urgency written plainly across her face. Seraphina's blood went cold instantly, every worst-case scenario crowding into her mind at once.

"Miss Lark. The surgeon needs to speak with you. Right now, please."

Seraphina's legs carried her forward before her mind caught up, half-running down the corridor with Alaric close behind her, his hand hovering near her back the way it had all night, steady even when everything else wasn't. She didn't know anymore whether that instinct belonged to the contract or to something else entirely, and there wasn't time to untangle it — not with her brother's life balanced somewhere behind a set of double doors.

Both of them braced for whatever waited on the other side, because tonight, it seemed, nothing was finished yet.