Reborn As Alphaena's Daughter

The Death Flower

Alphaena’s POV

Alphaena sat at her desk, staring at the brooch with glowing golden eyes. Her aura made the whole room ice cold, but Fenrir didn’t show any signs of discomfort while he held his hand over the brooch and used his power to trace it, his hand glowing with a faint white light.

The glow stopped, and he removed his hand slowly. Then he grabbed the brooch, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it until it broke into smaller pieces.

Alphaena didn’t react. She leaned back in her chair and looked at him.

“So, what was it?” she asked coldly while Fenrir picked up the pieces and threw them into the trash can next to her desk.

“A tracking mark,” he answered and looked at her.

“This is not the first time Nyra has sensed danger before we did.”

Alphaena folded her hands in front of her mouth and bit her finger.

“I know,” she said, then stood up and walked to the window.

“I’m worried about her. It seems she senses something we don’t.”

Fenrir sighed and started tapping on his tablet.

“What is that?” Alphaena asked and turned around, staring at it in confusion.

“Oh, it’s a ‘tablet’,” Fenrir answered and showed her the screen.

“Nyra told me about it. She said she had dreamt about something like it and wanted me to make one for myself to make work easier.”

Alphaena frowned in disbelief; a four-year-old shouldn’t be able to dream about something like that, but here they were, and there it was.

“I have a theory as to why she senses those things and why she has dreams like this,” Fenrir said.

“She also helped the maids two days ago by giving them ideas to make some of their work easier.”

“So, what is it?” Alphaena asked impatiently and walked back to her desk, resting her hands on it.

“I think she has awakened her powers already,” he answered and tapped the tablet once more before showing the screen to Alphaena again.

“This is what I have recorded about Nyra over the last couple of days, starting from the day she saw you in her room and cried.”

Alphaena stared at the screen and read it slowly.

[Nyra seems to have matured quite a lot after her first breakdown.]

[Nyra seems to hate Lior and doesn’t want to play like before.]

[Nyra sensed something was wrong with the milk – poison.]

[Nyra was in immense pain after what might have been the first use of her power.]

[Nyra didn’t react to the body in front of her.]

[Nyra sensed something was wrong with the brooch and dropped it by “accident” into the tea – tracker.]

[Idea for tablet. Thank you, Nyra.]

Alphaena smiled faintly at the last sentence before reading the final line.

[Lior was previously indifferent to Nyra but now shows much more interest in her.]

“If it really is that her power has awakened, then she might get a lot worse before she gets better,” Alphaena mumbled and sat down.

“First things first. We need to investigate the tracker and find out who wanted to always know my position. Celine and her sons are not clever enough for something like this. Someone set them up for it.”

Fenrir nodded, knowing exactly where they were going now, and followed Alphaena out of the office.

No one was going to try to poison my daughter and ambush me through a tracker without getting hell for it.

The dungeon was dark, with only a few torches lighting it faintly, and the cells on each side were all empty except one.

Alphaena and Fenrir walked to the cell without hesitation and stopped right in front of it, their silhouettes cast on the ground in front of the prisoners: Celine, Derek, and Caleb.

“Please, Alpha Alphaena!” Celine pleaded the moment she saw them and grabbed the bars.

“It was only meant as an insult!”

Alphaena frowned, lowered herself, and grabbed her throat.

“If that’s true, then why did you panic when my daughter dropped it in the tea?”

Celine bit her lip helplessly while her sons stood back and stared, not daring to move from the spot.

“They told me to be careful with it until you wore it,” she rasped and coughed violently when Alphaena released her.

Her sons ran to her, one on each side, their eyes worried. Alphaena glared at all three of them and crossed her arms.

“So, you don’t know what it is?” she asked suspiciously.

“We don’t know!” Caleb shouted, completely shaken, and gritted his teeth.

“They just said it had been marked and that we needed to give it to you to get revenge!”

Alphaena smiled while sending an ice-cold chill through the cell and watched them shiver from the sudden change.

“You really didn’t know that the thing you gifted me was a tracker?”

They all stared at her in disbelief and confusion.

“Just a tracker?” Caleb growled and continued his rant.

“That’s not what he said!”

Celine looked at him and placed a hand on his arm to try to calm him down. She closed her eyes for a few seconds before opening them again and looking straight at Alphaena.

“We really didn’t know what mark it had,” she said truthfully and stood up.

“They only told us it would give us revenge for Maurice’s death.”

“Who did?”

“We don’t know. He was from the Western Border.”

Alphaena nodded slowly and pulled her aura back, turning around to leave.

“Wait! When are you letting us go?” Celine asked hopefully.

“What do you mean?” Alphaena scoffed and looked over her shoulder at her.

“You were part of an attempt to poison my daughter. Leaving was never one of your options.”

Celine’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened, and she started screaming every bad word and threat that came to her mind. Alphaena smiled and left, Fenrir following right behind her, tapping on his tablet and recording everything that had been said, still smiling over this new object functioning on magic.

Western Border had always kept to itself. Why the sudden change?

She looked back at Fenrir and then at the tablet.

Does it have anything to do with Nyra? Do they know something we don’t?

She turned back again and shook her head dismissively.

No, that seems impossible, unless we have a spy.

She sighed and rubbed her temples while they walked back inside the mansion. Nyra had changed a lot over the last few days and so had Lior. If her powers had awakened, Alphaena needed to help her through the worst of it, but for now, she was only going to watch her and let her be, hoping she might come to her herself.

Now I need to find out if we have a mouse in our home.

She stepped inside Nyra’s room and saw Lior next to the bed and Nyra sleeping under the duvet. She walked over and kissed her on the cheek.

Western Border had just placed itself in her path, and Alphaena had never stepped around an enemy in her life.