Alpha's Rejected Heiress

Chapter 12: What Selene Knew

I found her down in the bunker.

It was past midnight. The rest of the tower was dead, the whole city practically holding its breath, but Selene was wide awake. She was running through combat drills alone. It didn't look like exercise; it looked like an exorcism.

She’d swapped her usual black turtleneck for a beat-up grey tank, and for the first time, I could actually see the damage. The scars. Jagged, vicious white lines chewing across her shoulders, tracking down her spine, and hooking over her ribs.

They weren't random. They were methodical.

She froze mid-strike the second my foot hit the mat. "You're supposed to be asleep."

"I finished the Ledger."

Something in her face just... dropped. Not shock. Resignation. It was the look of a person who had been bracing for a punch for two decades and finally felt it c***k against their jaw.

"The whole thing?"

"Enough of it."

I walked right onto the training mats. The concrete was freezing against my bare feet. I hadn't even bothered to change out of my meeting clothes—black slacks, silk blouse, my mom's diamonds still shoved in my ears.

I probably looked insane, standing in a basement in evening wear while she stood there looking like a war zone. But honestly? The dynamic felt right. For once, she was the one under the microscope.

"You were on the hit list," I said flatly. "Cross's master list of dead Silver Wolves."

Selene didn't blink. "I was."

"You survived."

"I did."

"He sent three Hounds to put you down. You ripped the throats out of two and crawled out of the third one's mouth."

Her gold eyes locked onto mine. "Your mother kept incredibly good records."

"She also wrote that you refused to tell her what actually went down in those woods. And that she never pushed it." I let the silence stretch for a second. "I'm pushing."

The bunker was dead quiet. The massive ventilation fans hummed somewhere in the walls. Outside, the moon was huge and heavy, physically dragging at the wolf buried in my chest.

Selene stared at me, then walked over and dropped onto the concrete ledge against the wall. The same spot she’d sat when she told me my mom liked trashy romance novels. She patted the concrete next to her.

I didn't move an inch.

"I was twenty-two," she finally started, staring at the floor. "Younger than you are right now. I hadn't even been Genevieve’s Beta for a full year. She was already building Silver Moon, already pregnant with you, already playing 4D chess for a future she wasn't sure she’d survive to see."

She paused. Looked down at her hands. Steady as a rock. Always steady.

"Cross sent his Hounds to our safe house in Geneva. Genevieve was in Paris at a corporate summit. She was the target, obviously. The public face. Cross figured if he slaughtered her Beta, she’d break cover and rush back to save me. He wanted her reckless."

"But she didn't come."

"No. She wanted to. Christ, she nearly tore Paris apart trying to get to me. But her security team physically stopped her. They knew it was a trap. So she stayed in France, and I caught the hit squad alone."

Selene’s voice didn't waver. Not a fraction. "Three Hounds. Mercenaries who’d sold their souls to Cross for a paycheck and a warm bed. They weren't evil, Aurora. They were desperate. And desperate wolves are a nightmare to fight."

I looked at the brutal, white-ridged scars carving up her chest. I had been so stupid, assuming they were just pack initiation marks. "How the hell did you walk away from that?"

"Blind luck. And absolute rage." She looked up. "Rage is high-octane fuel. It burns incredibly hot, and if you're lucky, it burns just long enough to keep your heart beating through the worst of it. I was furious that Cross found us. Furious that I was going to die before I ever met you. But mostly, I was just so angry that Genevieve was trapped in Paris, pregnant with the last Silver Wolf, and I couldn't be a human shield for her."

"What about the third Hound? The one you crawled away from."

Selene went totally silent. When she finally spoke, her voice dropped an octave. It sounded incredibly old.

"Her name was Maren."

The name just sat there in the cold air.

"She was a kid. Even younger than me. Her pack kicked her out because she had the nerve to challenge an Alpha who was beating his omegas. Cross scooped her off the street when she was starving to death. Offered her a new pack. A new reason to breathe. And she bought it."

"You knew her?"

"I knew her for the six hours we spent trying to tear each other to pieces." The words were dry, but I could hear the raw nerve underneath. "We leveled the safe house.

We tore through the garden and fought miles into the woods. She was faster than the other two. Way smarter. She didn't fight like a rabid street dog.

She fought like someone who actually had discipline. Someone who used to be loved."

"But you killed her."

"No."

I stared at her. "The Ledger explicitly says you walked out of her jaws."

"I did. Because I stopped fighting and made her a counter-offer." Selene’s gold eyes pinned me. "I told her Cross was using her as cannon fodder.

I told her the second she took a bad hit, he’d put her down like a lame horse. I told her I knew exactly what it felt like to be garbage thrown out by your own pack—because I did. My pack exiled me at sixteen.

I told Maren that Genevieve was building a totally different world. A place where wolves didn't have to choose between getting beaten into submission or starving in an alley."

"And she actually listened?"

"She wanted to. That’s the vulnerability with desperate people, Aurora. They want a lifeline. Cross exploited that. I just threw her a different rope." Selene swallowed hard. "She let me walk. And then she vanished. I haven't known if she's breathing or rotting in a ditch for thirty-five years."

The bunker suddenly felt like a freezer. I wrapped my arms around my ribs, shivering. I really should have brought a jacket. I really should have prepared for this.

"Does Cross know she let you go?"

"I have no idea. If he does, he kept it buried. Maren was a premium asset. One of his best killers. If he executed her for treason, he did it quietly." Selene’s jaw locked. "But I think about her. Constantly.

I think about what would have happened if she actually took my hand. If she’d come back to Geneva with me and stood beside Genevieve."

"Did you try to track her?"

"Every single year. Every lead turned to dust. She was a ghost. If she's alive, she’s actively hiding." Selene looked at me. "That’s the piece I kept from your mother. Genevieve would have torn Europe apart trying to find her, and that kind of noise would have brought Cross right to our doorstep. I couldn't risk you."

"So you just swallowed it."

"I swallowed it. For three and a half decades." Her voice finally cracked. Just a hairline fracture, but it was there. "You asked me once if Genevieve trusted me. I told you trust is a landscape.

Well, Maren was the dark side of the moon. Genevieve knew I was lying about Geneva by omission. But she never pushed. She understood that sometimes you lie to people not to betray them, but to keep them breathing."

I thought about the desperate, frantic handwriting in the back of the Ledger. Trust Selene. She holds her own secrets, but her loyalty is absolute. My mom knew. She knew Selene was sitting on a bomb, and she trusted her anyway.

"Why dump this on me now?" I asked.

"Because you asked." Selene didn't blink. "And honestly? Because I am so exhausted from carrying it. Thirty-five years is a long time to wonder if you let someone walk into a meat grinder. To wonder if she's still out there, chained to Cross because she thinks he’s her only shot at survival."

I finally walked over and dropped onto the concrete ledge next to her. The massive white scars on her shoulders looked pale in the dim light. A literal map of a war I was just now enlisting in.

"Do you think she's alive?"

"Maren is a cockroach. She survives." Selene’s face went hard. "And Cross doesn't throw away perfectly good weapons. If she’s alive, she’s definitely in his inner circle by now. Which means when we finally go for his throat, she’ll be the one standing in front of him."

"Could you kill her? After what she did for you?"

Selene didn't answer for a long time.

"I've asked myself that every day for thirty-five years. I still don't know." She turned her head to look at me. "But I know this. You aren't just some corporate heir, Aurora. You’re the target Cross has been trying to assassinate since before you were even a heartbeat. And I have spent my entire adult life making sure you lived long enough to put him in the ground."

"Even if it meant lying to my face."

"Especially then."

I looked down at the heavy silver ring on my right hand. The metal wolf just stared back at me, totally indifferent.

"Webb pitched me an alliance tonight. He wants Cross dead."

Selene didn't even twitch. "Figures."

"What's your play?"

"What's your gut say?"

I thought about Marcus Webb. The dead eyes. The way he openly admitted he was going to manipulate me, like it was a selling point.

"My gut says he’s a rabid dog on a leash. He wants Cross dead as badly as we do. He’ll absolutely stab me in the back, but not until Cross is out of the picture."

Selene nodded slowly. "My thoughts exactly."

"So I take his deal."

"You keep him on the hook. Let him think you're buying what he's selling. Drain him for intel, safe houses, cash. Let him think you're just some naive kid playing dress-up." A dark, vicious smile touched her lips.

"And then, the second Cross is dealt with, you cut Webb loose the exact same way Maren cut me loose. No warning. No goodbye. Just gone."

"And what about Maren? If she's out there? If she's acting as Cross's shield?"

Selene’s eyes looked incredibly old.

"Then I pray to God she's been waiting for someone to offer her a better deal. Just like I was."

We just sat there. The bunker hummed. The city slept. Two wolves sitting in a basement, gearing up for a war that started three centuries ago.

And somewhere in the dark, a woman named Maren was either going to be the bullet that killed us, or the key that saved us.

I didn't know which one yet.

But I was going to find out.