MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET

Chapter Nineteen: What Comes After Surviving

Nobody said a word on the ride back. The silence pressed in, heavy as the woods around us.

Kaelan stayed close, his hand gripping mine whenever he could, like he was afraid to let go. Bianca rode ahead, flanked by two of Rhys’s warriors. She sat taller than I’d ever seen her, like surviving tonight had finally given her something she’d never found in all those years of being compared to me. Rhys brought up the rear, eyes sharp, every muscle tense. He looked like he was ready for anything to jump out of the shadows.

Nobody said Serrin's name once.

We didn’t breathe easy until we crossed back onto Sterling land. Mira fussed over us, her hands quick and anxious, but she said we’d live. No wounds that wouldn’t heal. Only then did it hit me everything we’d survived. We ended up in Rhys’s study, the four of us huddled around a fire that barely burned, too tired to care.

"She's not dead," Mira said into the silence, voicing the thing we'd all been avoiding. "I want to be honest with you about that, rather than let you believe otherwise. A ritual collapse like that doesn't kill the caster. It scatters them. Displaces them, the same way it displaced you, Kaelan, except with considerably more raw, unstable power still burning through her system when it happened."

"So she's out there somewhere," Kaelan said grimly, "carrying half of whatever that ritual tore loose, with every reason in the world to finish what she started."

"Most likely," Mira admitted.

"Then we've bought time," Rhys said. "Not an ending. Time." He looked between us, grey eyes steady despite the exhaustion carved into every line of his face. "That's nothing. We should treat it like it matters."

I should have felt relief. Instead, I was empty. The adrenaline was gone, burned out of me, and all that was left was something raw and aching.

"What happens to you now?" I asked Kaelan quietly. "Your father tried to have you killed. You survived it, publicly, with witnesses. He can't just pretend that didn't happen."

Kaelan's jaw tightened, some old exhaustion moving behind his eyes. "He can, actually. That's exactly what he's spent three days doing." He nodded toward a folded parchment Rhys's scouts had intercepted that morning, sitting untouched on the desk. "Official statement, released to every pack under Ashford authority. I've been declared 'unfit for succession due to prolonged exposure to a corrupting bond,' and quietly removed from the line of inheritance in favour of a cousin loyal enough not to ask uncomfortable questions."

"He erased you," I said, disbelief and fury tangled together in my chest. "After everything"

"He tried to have me murdered on the road to the capital," Kaelan said, with a bitter, exhausted almost-laugh. "Losing a title feels almost gentle by comparison." He looked at me then, something steady and certain settling into his exhausted expression despite everything. "And honestly, Ivy? I don't think I want it back. Not the way he'd have me hold it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I spent my whole life being taught that power meant control," Kaelan said slowly, like he was working the thought out loud for the first time. "Control of a pack. Control of a story. Control of who I was allowed to want, based entirely on how it would look to people I never actually respected." His eyes didn't leave mine. "The first time I ever did anything that felt like it was actually mine, actually chosen, not performed for an audience was standing in that courtyard, invoking a law I knew would cost me everything, because it was the only way to keep you safe. I'm not interested in going back to a version of power that never let me do that in the first place."

The fire snapped in the silence. Bianca sat in the corner, quiet, her eyes unreadable. Rhys didn’t move, but I could feel the tension in him, like he was holding himself together by force.

"So what do you want instead?" I asked softly.

Kaelan went quiet, really thinking about it. For once, he wasn’t trying to sound brave. He just wanted to be honest.

"I want to help take down a throne that's spent three generations murdering people for existing," he said finally. "I want to make sure whatever's left of my father's reign answers, publicly, for what he tried to do to that captain's family, and to you, and to every Seer his ancestors quietly erased before either of us was born." His gaze flicked briefly to Rhys, something like genuine respect passing between them for the first time since I'd known either of them. "I think, for once, that's a goal none of us has to fight each other to reach."

Rhys held his gaze a moment longer than strictly necessary before nodding, slow and deliberate. "Agreed," he said. "Though I imagine the how of it is going to be considerably harder than the wanting."

"It usually is," Kaelan said.

A soft knock broke the moment. One of Rhys’s warriors stepped in, nervous, holding a sealed letter. My stomach dropped the second I saw the wax stamp.

Not Ashford black-and-gold.

Not Draveth either.

A third seal entirely, one none of us recognised, pressed into wax the colour of dried blood.

"This arrived at the border ten minutes ago," the warrior said. "No rider. No tracks. It was simply... left. On the gatepost."

Mira’s hands shook as she took the letter. She turned it over, studying the strange seal, then broke it open. As she read, her face drained of colour.

"What is it?" I asked.

Mira looked up. Whatever she saw in that letter, it sucked all the warmth out of the room.

"It's addressed to all three of you," she said quietly. "And it isn't from Serrin, or your father, or anyone I recognise at all." She held the parchment out with a trembling hand. "It's signed by someone claiming to be the last surviving member of the council that ordered the original Seer purge sixty years ago."

Nobody moved. The room froze.

"They're not dead," Mira whispered. "And apparently, they've been watching everything that's happened since the ceremony — closely enough to know exactly where to send this."

She turned the letter around so we could all read the single line written beneath the unfamiliar seal.

The prophecy was never about one Seer, or two. It was about what happens when the third one finally wakes.