Shattered by the Alpha

CHAPTER 4

Lena's POV

They gave us a small meeting room off the main hall.

I went in first and sat in the chair farthest from the door. Old habit — always know how far you are from the exit.

Damien came in a minute later with his Beta. He looked at the distance between us and said nothing about it.

The Beta — he had been introduced as Bastian — took a position near the wall and became very good at being invisible. I had the feeling he was actually watching everything very carefully.

Damien sat down across from me.

"Tell me about the mark," he said.

No warm-up. No small conversation first. Just directly at the thing neither of us wanted to be in the room with.

I respected it, actually.

"I went into the forest on Mating Night," I said. "There were rogues. A stranger drove them off. What happened after that — I did not fully understand at the time. I woke in the morning and he was gone and the mark was there."

Damien's expression did not move.

"You did not see him clearly," he said.

It was not a question.

Something about the way he said it made the back of my neck tighten.

"It was dark," I said. "I could not see his face properly."

"But you would remember his scent."

I looked at him very carefully.

He was watching me with an expression that had gone very controlled — the kind of control that takes effort. I had worn that expression myself often enough to recognize it.

"Yes," I said slowly. "I would remember it."

The room was quiet.

Bastian near the wall had gone even more still.

"Alpha Cross." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Is there something you want to say directly?"

He leaned forward slightly.

"I was in that forest on Mating Night," he said. "I came through the border from the east. There were rogues near the river crossing — I had been tracking their movement for a week. I drove three of them away from a woman they were surrounding."

My hands went flat against my thighs under the table.

"After that," he continued, "I lost a full night to mating heat. I marked a woman. She was gone by dawn."

The room felt much smaller than it had sixty seconds ago.

"I have been searching for her for months," he said. "My Beta can confirm this. I could not reach her through the bond because her wolf is silent."

He looked at me and did not look away.

"I have chosen you tonight," he said, "because when you walked across that room, I caught something underneath everything else. I need to know if I am right."

I should not have told him. Logically, the safest thing I could have done in that room was keep my face still and deny everything and let the coincidence remain a coincidence.

But I was so tired of being careful.

And some part of me — that quiet part, the wolf I could feel but not reach — was pulling toward him with a pressure I could not keep fighting.

"Cedar," I said quietly. "And river water. And something that has no name underneath both of those."

His jaw moved.

"Yes," he said.

We sat with that for a moment.

"I did not know you were going to mark me," I said.

"I know." He held my eyes. "I should not have. In heat, the wolf—" He stopped. "It is not an excuse. I know that."

"No," I agreed. "It isn't."

"Does the mark still hold?"

"It healed over. It is not visible. But yes. I can still feel it."

He exhaled — slow and controlled. But his hands, I noticed, were pressed flat against the table in a way that suggested they had needed something to press against.

"You are afraid of what this means," he said.

"I am afraid of several things," I said honestly. "Including but not limited to what you will do when you find out everything."

He frowned slightly. "There is more."

"There is always more." I stood up. My legs felt unsteady but I did not let that show. "I am not running from this. But I need time before I hand you the rest of it."

He looked up at me from his seated position. Powerful men rarely held still for this kind of exchange — for being told to wait by someone with no rank and no wolf.

He held still.

"How much time," he said.

"Long enough for me to trust that you will not destroy everything once you have it."

Something moved in his face — not quite surprise, not quite something softer than that, but in the same neighborhood.

"All right," he said.

I walked out.

In the hallway, I leaned against the wall and pressed my hand flat against my stomach.

I had not told him about the pregnancy yet.

I had only been certain for three days. A healer friend of my mother's, quietly consulted, quietly confirming what my body had already known.

I was carrying his child.

And he did not know.

And the ceremony that would formally bind our families was being drawn up in the hall right now.

I breathed in. Out. In.

You have survived everything so far, I told myself.

Figure out the next thing.