Reborn To Kill The Alpha That Killed Me

Caught

"Well," Damon said, stepping into the small stone room like a man arriving fashionably late to his own party. "I did wonder how long it would take you to find her."

Kade moved instantly, placing himself between his father and me, every line of his body coiled tight with fury. "Let her go, Father. Whatever you think you're building, using two innocent girls as raw material for it isn't going to end the way you imagine."

Damon's expression did not shift. "Innocent is a generous word for a bloodline that has caused more war and death than any single pack in living memory, son. You don't know the history you're standing on top of."

"Then explain it," I said, forcing steadiness into my voice even as my pulse hammered. "If you're so certain we don't understand, explain what you think you know."

Something flickered behind Damon's pale eyes, an old hunger that had clearly been waiting a long time to be satisfied. "The Marrow bloodline and the Ashworth bloodline were once the same line, split centuries ago after a war neither side survived intact. The power to walk between lives, to bind or break fate itself, only fully wakes when both halves are reunited. Alone, either of you is merely dangerous. Together, properly bound, you become something no pack council could ever refuse to kneel before."

"You want to use us as a weapon," I said.

"I want to secure my pack's future for the next thousand years," Damon corrected calmly. "History remembers builders, not the small cruelties it takes to build something lasting."

The chained girl beside me made a small, broken sound, and something in me hardened past fear into something colder and far more useful.

"You've kept her in silver chains for years," I said. "Starved her, hurt her, and called it necessary. I don't think you care about legacy at all. I think you enjoy the power a little too much to ever pretend otherwise."

Damon's calm expression finally cracked, just slightly irritation flashing through his pale eyes. "You're young, Selene. You mistake control for cruelty because you've never had to hold together something as fragile as an entire pack's survival."

"Enough," Kade said sharply, stepping fully between us now. "You will not touch either of them tonight."

Damon studied his son for a long, considering moment, and something about his stillness made my stomach twist with dread.

"You've grown fond of her," he said quietly.

"That's unfortunate."

"Fond doesn't begin to cover it," Kade said, and the honesty in his voice, raw and unguarded, made my chest ache even in the middle of everything falling apart around us.

Damon sighed, almost sounding regretful. "I had hoped you would come to this willingly, the way a good heir should, understanding the necessity of sacrifice for the pack's future. It seems I'll have to make the choice easier for you."

He raised two fingers and snapped them once, sharp and deliberate, and I heard boots pounding down the corridor outside.

Far more guards than Isolde's distraction could possibly hold back for long

"Take the Ashworth girl to the ceremony chamber," Damon said calmly to the guards flooding through the doorway. "Gently, if she cooperates. Otherwise, however necessary."

Kade lunged forward, putting himself directly in the guards' path, but there were simply too many of them, hands grabbing his arms, wrestling him backward despite his snarled fury.

"Father, don't," he shouted, "if you do this, I swear to you, I will never forgive it."

"You will," Damon said calmly, watching two guards pull me toward the door despite my struggling. "Once you understand what we've built together, you'll forgive quite a lot."

I fought as hard as I could, twisting against the hands gripping my arms, but silver cuffs closed around my wrists before I could break free, the same burning cold I had watched scorch the chained girl's skin now biting into my own.

"Kade," I shouted, my voice cracking with something closer to fear than I wanted to admit.

He fought harder than I had ever seen him fight, snarling and desperate, but the guards holding him back were too many, too strong, and the last thing I saw before they dragged me around the corner was his face, twisted with a rage and terror I had never once witnessed in seven years of marriage.

They pulled me through corridors I did not recognize, down a staircase carved directly into the mountain rock beneath the academy, the air growing colder and thinner with every step, until finally a heavy door opened onto a wide stone chamber lit by dozens of candles arranged in a circle around a raised altar carved with symbols I somehow recognized despite never having seen them before in either of my lives.

The Marrow crest. The silver moon wrapped in thorned vines.

And waiting beside the altar, her hands folded calmly in front of her, stood a woman I had never met but somehow instantly understood.

"Hello, Selene," the woman said softly, her voice carrying an echo that did not belong to any ordinary wolf. "I've been waiting a very long time to meet the other half of myself."