My Alpha's Prank Made Me His Stepbrother's Mate

Chapter Two: The Woman Who Waits

Selene Voss had learned patience the way other wolves learned to hunt early, and out of necessity.

She'd buried one mate already. She wasn't foolish enough to think grief made a pack forgiving. When she married into the Darkfang line three years after Zayden's mother passed, she'd known exactly what she was walking into: a grieving Alpha, a wounded son who barely tolerated her presence, and a pack that watched her like she might be the wolf who'd come to pick the bones clean.

Let them watch. She'd buried harder things than suspicion.

Tonight she stood at the window of the east wing, watching the training yard below where her son sparred against two pack guards twice his size. Axton moved well controlled, economical, none of the wasted rage that made Zayden such a satisfying but sloppy fighter. Her son fought like someone who understood that strength meant nothing if it burned itself out before it mattered.

Good. He would need that control. Soon.

"You're doing it again," said a voice behind her. Selene didn't turn.

"Doing what, Corrin?"

Her brother stepped into the room, arms crossed, the permanent crease between his brows deepening the way it did whenever he thought she was about to do something he wouldn't approve of. "Watching him like he's a piece on a board."

"He is a piece on a board. So is every wolf in this pack house, Corrin, he's simply the one I intend to see win."

"He doesn't want the Alpha seat, Selene. He's told you that himself."

"He's twenty one and he's spent his whole life being told he's second to a boy who was born first by an accident of timing." Selene finally turned from the window, and whatever softness had touched her face while watching her son disappeared entirely. "What Axton wants is irrelevant. What matters is what he's owed."

Corin's jaw tightened. "Careful. That kind of talk is how you end up making enemies of the whole council."

"The council respects strength. It respects results. It does not respect a grieving Alpha who let his firstborn run wild for nine years because he couldn't bear to discipline the boy who reminded him of his dead wife." She crossed to the sideboard, poured herself a measure of dark wine, and did not offer her brother any. "Zayden has been coasting on his bloodline since the day he was born. Axton has had to earn every inch of respect he's gotten in this pack, and he's earned more of it than anyone gives him credit for."

"So what's the plan? Wait until the old Alpha steps down and hope the council picks your son over his own blood?"

Selene's smile was thin, private, the kind she never let anyone see for long. "The council doesn't decide everything, Corrin. Sometimes the goddess herself has opinions."

Corrin frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means the bonding ceremony is in three weeks." She swirled the wine, watching the candlelight catch in it like something molten. "And it means young men do very foolish things when they've been drinking and daring each other since they could walk. Zayden's little circle of friends has been running their mouths about a bet all month. Something about the ceremony. Something about his stepbrother."

"You knew about that?"

"I know everything that happens in this house, Corrin. That's rather the point of patience." She set the glass down, untouched beyond that first sip, and looked back out toward the training yard, where Axton had just driven one of the guards to his knees. Something in her chest, cold and calculating and undeniably maternal all at once, tightened with anticipation.

"Whatever foolishness Zayden is planning," she said quietly, "I intend to make sure it works in our favor. The goddess doesn't undo a sealed bond, Corrin. Not for pride. Not for a prank. Not for anything."

Corin's face paled as understanding dawned. "Selene. If you interfere with a bonding ceremony...."

"I'm not interfering with anything." Her voice was silk over steel. "I'm simply going to make certain that if a mistake is going to happen in that grove in three weeks, it happens the right way."

Below them, Axton looked up toward the window for just a moment, as if he'd felt his mother's eyes on him from across the yard. Selene lifted two fingers in the faintest suggestion of a wave.

He did not wave back. He never did.

But he didn't look away either and in that single unreadable moment, Selene Voss allowed herself, for the first time in twenty years of careful, quiet war, to believe that everything she had built toward was finally, finally about to fall into place.

She had no idea her son was about to fall in love with the one girl she could never fully control.