MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET

Chapter Seventeen: The Door Left Unlocked

"It's a trap," Rhys said flatly, the moment I finished describing the vision. "She told you as much herself. 'I'll leave the door unlocked.' That's not an invitation, Ivy. That's a hunter telling you exactly where she's set the snare."

"I know what it is," I said. "That doesn't change that Kaelan's inside it."

"Which is exactly why it works as bait," Rhys pressed. "She's not stupid. She knows you'll come regardless of the risk. That's the entire strategy."

Mira froze the second I mentioned the second symbol under the Draveth crest. Her face went so grave my stomach dropped before she even opened her mouth.

"There's something you're not telling us," I said.

Mira's jaw clenched. "The sealed site isn't just where the purge happened. It's where the ritual that split the Seer bloodline started. The real prophecy. Not just one Seer per generation, not just whoever survives a fight." She looked at me, eyes dark. "The ritual needs both Seers there, willing or not. Whoever finishes it doesn't just survive."

"What does she take, then," I asked, though some sick, sinking part of me already suspected the answer.

"Everything," Mira whispered. "The other Seer's gift doesn't just end when they die there. It moves. All of it. Serrin wouldn't just kill a rival. She'd take the whole bloodline into herself. Sixty years of power, all at once." Her voice dropped. "That's why they sealed the site, Ivy. They knew what would happen if anyone finished the ritual."

Silence swallowed the clearing. Only the wind moved, whispering through the scorched grass.

"She doesn't need to kill me fast," I said, the truth hitting like ice. "She needs me alive. At least until the ritual's done. That's why she took Kaelan instead of coming for me at Sterling. She wants me to walk in on my own. Not dragged. Not unconscious. My choice."

"Which means," Rhys said, something hard entering his voice, "the moment you set foot in that place, you're not just risking your life. You're handing her the exact outcome she's spent this entire month trying to engineer."

"And if we don't go," I said, "Kaelan stays exactly where he is, chained in a room built for exactly this purpose, until she decides she doesn't need him as leverage anymore."

No one said a word.

Bianca, who'd been quiet since the vision ended, finally spoke, her voice smaller than I'd ever heard it. "What if you don't go alone?"

Every head snapped toward her.

"I'm serious," she said, forcing herself upright even though her hands still shook. "You said both Seers have to be there. Nothing about everyone else staying out." Her eyes locked on mine, fierce and wild, burning with something I couldn't name. Guilt, maybe. Or the need to prove her letter wasn't just words. "I got you into this. I told Serrin what you were before I knew what it meant. Let me help get you both out."

"Bianca, you can barely stand," I said gently.

"Then I'll stand anyway," she said. "I can't sit safe at Sterling while you walk into that place because of me. I don't have to fight. I just have to help."

Rhys's eyes moved between us, calculating, before settling on Mira. "Is there any way to break the ritual's requirements? Some loophole, some flaw in how it's structured, that doesn't end with Ivy walking in exactly on Serrin's terms?"

Mira didn't answer right away. She turned page after brittle page in the old book she'd brought from the pack house.

"There might be one thing," she said at last, tapping a spot near the bottom of a page thick with old script. "The ritual needs both Seers there. And both have to be willing. But willing is a tricky word." Her eyes met mine, sharp and hopeful. "If you refuse to complete it no matter what she does, the ritual can't work. It needs your consent. Even if she tries to force it."

"So I just... say no," I said slowly. "The whole way through."

"It's harder than it sounds," Mira warned. "The old records talk about people going half-mad trying to hold out. But it's something. It's a door she doesn't know you can open."

Rhys let out a slow breath. Some of the tension left his shoulders, replaced by something that almost looked like a plan. "Here's what we do. We go in together. Bianca and I make enough chaos to buy you time and pull guards off Kaelan. You hold your ground, refuse the ritual no matter what, and we get all three of you out before Serrin figures out her leverage is gone."

"And if she realises it faster than we can move?" I asked.

Rhys didn't flinch, but his gray eyes said he'd already thought about that and hated the answer.

"Then we improvise," he said. "The way we have every single time since the night you walked off Hartwell land with a bag over your shoulder and nowhere to go."

Mira started gathering supplies, muttering about wards and charms that might buy us a few seconds once we crossed the line. Bianca disappeared to find whatever weapons Rhys's armoury could spare for someone still healing from claw marks. I stood in the middle of it all, feeling the bond with Kaelan pulse under my ribs, alive, waiting, not knowing that everything depended on me walking straight into the place built to strip me of everything I am.

We left before dawn. Four of us, plus a dozen of Rhys's most trusted warriors, riding east toward the door Serrin Draveth promised to leave unlocked. Toward a ritual that's waited sixty years for a Seer to break.