Hiding the Alpha's Heir

# Chapter 2 — The First Mate Page

The registrar barred Elara from the records room with both hands spread across the door.

“There is no mate registration under your name.”

Behind her, the ceremony went on.

Applause rolled through the stone corridor each time someone welcomed Celeste Vane as the future Luna. It reached Elara through the closed hall doors in softened waves, as if three hundred people were helping Darius bury her one clap at a time.

The bond beneath her ribs had not stopped tearing since his rejection. It pulled her back toward him even now, demanding that she return to the dais and beg the man who had chosen to make her nameless.

Elara held the blood-sealed clasp in her fist until its edge bit her palm.

“You watched us register.”

The registrar glanced toward the two guards who had carried the great book from the hall. The black leather volume rested on a table inside the records room.

“I witness many petitions.”

“This was not a petition.” Elara stepped closer. “Darius Blackwood and I placed our blood on the page. You pressed the registry seal over both marks.”

His eyes flicked to the clasp in her hand, then away.

One of Alaric's guards moved between them. “The future Alpha ordered you to wait in his study.”

“Then he can find me here.”

The guard reached for her arm.

Elara lifted the clasp where the people leaving the ceremony could see it. Several slowed. The young Omega who had stood with her hands half raised before Darius's rejection stared at the dried blood in the silver center.

“Ask him,” Elara said, loud enough for the corridor. “Ask your registrar why a lawful mate can be rejected by name in public, but cannot be found by name in his book.”

The guard stopped. A grieving Omega could be dragged away. A woman naming a missing record would give everyone a question to carry home.

The registrar lowered his voice. “Come inside.”

“The door stays open.”

His mouth tightened, but he stepped aside.

Elara entered the records room with the watching pack at her back. Shelves climbed from floor to ceiling, crowded with narrow ledgers and sealed boxes. The air smelled of dust, leather, and the bitter wax used by Blackwood officials. The great mate registry lay beneath a silver lamp.

The registrar opened it.

He turned past pages of paired names, blood marks, and official seals. Darius's scent still clung faintly to the paper. Elara's wolf surged toward it, and pain folded through her so sharply that she had to brace one hand on the table.

The registrar stopped.

At the top of the left page, the entries ended with number four hundred sixteen. The page opposite began with four hundred eighteen.

Between them, a narrow strip of parchment remained caught in the binding.

Elara forgot the pain.

“Where is page four hundred seventeen?”

“Pagination errors occur.”

“Not after the book has been bound.”

He shut the registry too quickly. The trapped strip vanished between the covers.

“There is no record under your name,” he repeated. “I cannot give you what does not exist.”

He offered the denial like a locked door. Elara heard fear behind it.

Alaric had not merely ordered the registry removed from the hall. Someone had removed a page from the registry.

Her page.

For one breath she saw the future they were trying to create. Celeste in Luna white. Darius at the head of the pack. Elara reduced to an Omega who had mistaken private attention for a lawful bond. Every promise could be called a lie she had told herself.

No. They did not get to choose which parts of her life had happened.

“Give me the blood-seal receipt.”

The registrar went still.

The guard beside her frowned. “He told you there is no record.”

Elara did not look away from the registrar. “A registrant has the right to the receipt made when blood is accepted and the page is sealed. It is recorded separately from the bound volume.”

She knew because her mother had made her memorize the rule before she ever entered this room. At the time, Elara had laughed and asked why anyone would need proof that official proof existed.

Her mother had not laughed.

“The receipt,” Elara said again.

The registrar's gaze moved to the open doorway. Too many people were listening now. If he refused, he would confirm that the missing page mattered. If he produced it, he would defy the family whose guards stood at his shoulder.

He chose a third cowardice.

“Receipt drawers are organized by date, not name. A search could take hours.”

Elara laid the blood-sealed clasp on the table.

“Month One. The night of the winter rain. Darius Blackwood came after the council lamps were extinguished. You locked the outer door yourself.”

The registrar's face tightened at each detail.

“Or I can ask everyone in this corridor to help you search.”

The young Omega stepped through the doorway. “I will.”

A kitchen steward followed her and stopped just inside, shoulders rigid. “So will I.”

The registrar stared at them. Minutes ago, neither would have risked displeasing the Blackwoods for Elara. Now Alaric's attempt to erase her had made witnesses where there had been none.

The registrar unlocked a narrow cabinet.

Inside were shallow drawers marked by month. He pulled out the first, ran a finger along packets of folded parchment, and withdrew one sealed with a faded thread.

Elara recognized her own blood before he placed it on the table.

The receipt was no larger than her hand. It bore no vows and no promises, only the dry language of an official transaction.

REGISTRANTS: DARIUS BLACKWOOD. ELARA VALE.

FIRST MATE PAGE: 417.

STATUS: BLOOD ACCEPTED. SEAL IMPRESSED.

The room went silent.

The guard read it over her shoulder. His hand fell away from his sword.

The young Omega whispered, “You were telling the truth.”

Elara almost laughed. The words should have restored something. They only opened a deeper wound. She had bled on a page, trusted a man, and stood before this same official. Still, truth had not belonged to her until a strip of parchment persuaded someone else to lend it back.

She picked up the receipt.

“Open the registry again.”

“You have what you requested.” The registrar's voice cracked. “Leave now.”

“The receipt proves the First Mate Page existed. The binding proves it was removed. I want the name of the person who took it.”

Boots sounded at the far end of the corridor.

Alaric's captain appeared with four more guards.

The registrar snatched the clasp from the table and pressed it into Elara's hand. “Go.”

“Who took the page?”

His eyes met hers for the first time. “If you want to live long enough to find it, go.”

The captain pointed at Elara. “Confine her to her room until Alpha Blackwood decides how to answer this disruption.”

Two guards closed in.

Elara folded the receipt once and slipped it beneath the lining of her sleeve. A sudden cramp caught low in her body, followed by a rush of dizziness.

The shelves tilted.

The young Omega caught her elbow before she struck the table. “She's bleeding.”

Elara looked down. A bright spot marked the inside of her wrist where the clasp had cut her palm and blood had run beneath her sleeve.

Only that. It was only her hand.

But the healer summoned from the hall took one breath near her and froze.

Alarm left the healer's face. Something more guarded replaced it. She glanced at the watching officials, then closed her hand around Elara's wrist.

“I need to examine her.”

Before the captain could object, the healer drew Elara behind a tall shelving screen at the rear of the room. The records hid them from the doorway. Applause from the hall and impatient boots covered the healer's whisper.

“When was your last moon cycle?”

The question cut through Elara more cleanly than a blade.

She counted backward. The private registration. The nights Darius had promised that secrecy was temporary. The morning sickness she had blamed on fear before the ceremony.

The bond pulled again, tying the child inside her to the man being applauded beyond the wall.

The healer pressed two fingers to Elara's wrist, then bent close enough that no one else could hear.

“You are carrying a child.”