The Alpha's Fake Girlfriend

What Cassian Wanted

The footsteps stopped at the top of the staircase, and for a long moment nothing happened at all, just the soft creak of old floorboards settling under someone's weight. Then a familiar voice drifted down into the archive, unhurried, almost amused.

"You really shouldn't leave a door like that unattended, cousin. Anyone could walk right through it."

Alaric's jaw tightened, his whole body shifting into a stance Seraphina recognized now — the Alpha bracing for a fight he intended to win. "Come down slowly, Cassian. Hands where I can see them."

Cassian descended into view, hands raised in mock surrender, a faint smile tugging at his mouth even as his eyes swept the room and landed on the file still clutched in Alaric's hand. Something flickered across his face — not surprise, Seraphina realized, watching him closely for the first time all night without the usual haze of suspicion clouding her judgment. Recognition.

"You found it," Cassian said quietly, all pretense of amusement draining out of his voice at once, his shoulders dropping like a man finally allowed to stop performing. "I wondered how long it would take."

"You knew this was here." Alaric's voice had gone low and dangerous, each word measured and precise. "You knew this whole time."

"I've known since I was seventeen years old." Cassian's composure cracked for the first time all night, something raw and old surfacing beneath it, years of practiced smugness falling away all at once. "My mother told me on her deathbed. She said she'd carried the guilt of it for two decades and couldn't die without someone else knowing the truth, even if she never had the courage to fix what she'd helped start."

Seraphina stepped forward despite Alaric's hand rising to stop her. "Then tell us. All of it. No more games, no more anonymous texts, no more half-truths dropped just to watch us scramble."

Cassian's eyes moved to her, and for the first time since she'd met him, there was no calculation in them at all — only something that looked almost like relief, like a man finally allowed to set down a weight he'd been carrying alone for far too long. "Your mother wasn't human either, Doctor Lark. She was Eastern Hollow, born into a bloodline the Elders considered dangerous. A line that produces wolves capable of breaking any bond, any seal, any binding placed on them, given enough time and the right catalyst."

"Dangerous how?" Alaric demanded, stepping closer, the file still gripped tight in his hand.

"Because your mother feared what would happen if that bloodline ever mixed with the Voss line directly." Cassian's gaze didn't leave Seraphina's face, steady despite everything unraveling around them. "Twenty-five years ago, your mother and Elyse's grandmother struck a bargain. Seraphina's birth mother was pregnant, unmarried, hiding from a pack that wanted her line controlled or eliminated entirely, one way or another. Your mother offered protection — safe passage, a new identity, a human family to raise the child — in exchange for one condition. The child's wolf would be sealed. Permanently, or as close to permanent as the ritual could manage."

"Why would my mother care about protecting a stranger's child?" Seraphina's voice shook, disbelief and fear tangled together.

"Because she wasn't a stranger." Cassian exhaled hard, like the words had waited twenty-five long years for permission to exist. "Your birth mother was Alaric's father's sister. His aunt. You're not just tied to this family by some prophecy or accident of fate, Doctor Lark. You're blood. Voss blood, mixed with Eastern Hollow blood, exactly the combination the old Elders feared most."

The room went silent except for the hum of the ventilation system. Seraphina felt the floor tilt for what felt like the thousandth time that night, every certainty about her own life dissolving into something she no longer recognized.

"That makes us cousins," Alaric said slowly, something between horror and disbelief crossing his face as the weight of it settled fully.

"By blood, distantly, through a line severed decades before either of you was born." Cassian shook his head. "It doesn't matter for the bond, if that's what you're afraid of. The wolf doesn't recognize human family trees the way we do. But it matters for everything else. It matters for why your mother sealed her. It matters for why Elyse's family witnessed it. And it matters for what happened three months ago."

"You said you didn't kill Elyse yourself." Alaric's voice had gone dangerously quiet, controlled in a way more threatening than shouting.

"I didn't." Cassian met his eyes without flinching. "But I know who did, and I've spent three months too much of a coward to say her name out loud, because saying it means admitting my own mother helped set the entire tragedy in motion twenty-five years ago and never stopped it once she saw where it was heading."

"Then say it," Seraphina said, standing straighter despite the exhaustion pulling at every muscle in her body. "Whoever it is, say it now. No more circling. No more half-answers. I've had enough of those tonight to last a lifetime."

Cassian's throat worked once before the words came, like the name itself cost him something physical to release. "Delphine Renshaw. She's the last surviving Elder who voted on the original sealing order. She's spent twenty-five years making certain Seraphina's bloodline stayed buried, and when Elyse got close to exposing the whole arrangement, Delphine had her removed before the truth could reach the Council floor."

"Removed." Alaric's hands curled into fists, the word landing like a blow he'd been bracing for since the study fire had burned low hours ago. "You mean murdered."

"I mean exactly that." Cassian's composure finally shattered completely, exhaustion and guilt bleeding into every word, three months of carried silence finally spilling out all at once. "I've been trying to force this out into the open for three months, Alaric, without proof, without breaking my mother's dying wish for silence, and without getting myself killed the same way Elyse was. Every anonymous message, every appearance where you thought I was circling like a vulture — I wasn't hunting you. I was trying to push Seraphina toward finding exactly what you just found, because I couldn't hand it to her directly without Delphine knowing where it came from."

Seraphina stared at him, months of assumed villainy collapsing into something far more complicated to hold onto. "The break-in at my apartment. The looped security footage. That wasn't you."

"No." Cassian's jaw tightened. "That was Delphine's people, making sure you never found your adoption file before you found this one. She's been one step ahead of both of you the entire time, and she still is, because right now she doesn't know we're standing down here with proof strong enough to end her."

Alaric looked down at the file in his hand, then back at his cousin, something in his expression shifting from suspicion into a wary, uncertain trust. "The Summit is in less than thirty days. If Delphine sits on the Council, she'll fight this with everything she has."

"She'll do worse than fight it." Cassian's voice dropped low, weighted with genuine dread. "She tried once to erase this bloodline before it could threaten the balance of power among the packs. If she realizes tonight that she's failed, she won't hesitate to try finishing what she started twenty-five years ago — on Seraphina, on Elian, and on anyone standing close enough to either of them when she moves against them."

Somewhere above them, a phone began ringing insistently, the sound sharp and out of place in the archive's heavy silence, cutting through the tension like a blade. Cassian's expression went pale as he checked the screen, his hand tightening around the device.

"It's my contact inside the Council office," he said, voice tightening with a fear Seraphina hadn't seen from him before, not even in the hospital hallway or her ransacked apartment. "Delphine just called an emergency session. Tonight. She's not waiting for the Summit anymore. Someone must have warned her we were down here."

Alaric's eyes flashed gold, the fire of the last several hours finally finding a single, clear target after a night of scattered fear and half-answers. "Then neither are we." He turned to Seraphina, something fierce and resolute settling over his features, the exhaustion of the night burning away beneath sheer determination. "We take this file straight to the Council floor ourselves, tonight, before Delphine has time to bury it a second time. If she wants a fight in front of the Elders, we'll give her one she can't walk away from."

"And if she tries to stop us before we get there?" Seraphina asked, already moving toward the stairs.

Cassian fell into step beside them, something like purpose finally replacing the guilt that had weighed him down all night. "Then she'll have to go through all three of us. And after twenty-five years of silence, I find I'm finally ready for that fight."