The Alpha Who Tried to Unmate Me

Chapter 7 – The Archive of What They Did

By the time dawn bled into the clinic windows, my head felt like it had been used as a drum.

Bren slept under heavy sedation; his aura had settled into a tattered, uneasy hum. The Dock Nine report sat half‑finished on my tablet. Every time I tried to describe the psychic whiplash I’d felt on the concrete, the words tangled.

“Stop glaring at the screen like it owes you money,” Arlen said, dropping into the chair opposite me with two coffees. “You’re not going to bully the trauma out of existence.”

“Worth a try,” I muttered, taking the cup. “What are you doing here? Your shift ended hours ago.”

“Curiosity,” she said. “And the fact that I got a ping from Ishan asking if he and Daxen could ‘borrow’ you for a while. Sounded ominous. I wanted front‑row seats.”

As if summoned, knuckles rapped on the glass of the small conference room. Daxen didn’t wait for an invitation before opening the door. Ishan followed, a slim black case in his hands.

“Vexen,” Daxen said. “Sira. Croft around?”

“In surgery,” Arlen said. “You get the discount junior package.” She tipped her head at me. “No refunds.”

“We came for her,” Daxen replied, jerking his chin my way. “And for this.” He nodded at Ishan.

Ishan set the case on the table with almost reverent care, snapped it open, and lifted out a matte‑black tablet thicker than the usual.

“Encrypted drive,” he said. “Internal pull from Marq’s network. It won’t stay undetected for long. I thought you might want to see your own obituary before they try to write it.”

“Cheerful,” I said. “You always this fun at parties?”

“Only the ones with war crimes on the playlist,” he said mildly, and powered the tablet on.

A security splash screen flashed, then dissolved under Ishan’s touch. Rows of file codes filled the display. Cold text. No faces. No screams.

He scrolled until he found one: L‑01‑VX. My initials tucked in among the numbers like a joke.

My stomach knotted. “That mine?”

“Yes,” he said. “Volen doesn’t bother to be creative with his naming conventions.”

He opened it.

My intake photo again, younger and more hopeful than the version I kept trying not to remember. Below it, clinical bullet points: family history, pack affiliation, combat aptitude. Then:

Bond designation: C. Vaelir (Alpha heir). True‑mate markers: probable. Compatibility index: 93.2% pre‑program.

Pre‑program.

I stared. “They tested us before the tests?”

“They were watching long before the public rollout,” Ishan said quietly. “Your pairing was flagged early as a potential… stress test.”

My pulse thudded in my ears. He scrolled.

Phase I: Baseline recordings collected. Olfactory + aural signatures stored. Initial bond pattern mapped.

Phase II: Controlled destabilization. External stressors introduced. Observed increased dependency patterns in subject L‑01.

I felt suddenly cold. “They didn’t just wait for us to break. They pushed.”

Daxen’s mouth tightened. “We figured that part out the day they paraded your ‘incompatibility’ charts in front of half the council.”

Ishan didn’t look at me. “Phase III: Severance protocol, modified. Objective: rerouting test—attempt to transfer residual bond pathways to alternative target per political directive.”

The words swam.

“Alternative target,” I managed. “Who?”

“That line’s redacted,” Ishan said. “But the timestamp matches the week Navarre’s file was opened.”

Seris. Of course.

My chest ached, phantom and present all at once. They hadn’t just cut me off. They’d tried to plug him into someone else using my bond as conduit.

“And it failed,” I whispered.

“Mostly,” Ishan said. “Outcome: severance successful. Rerouting incomplete. Residual fragment retention in subject L‑01 noted.”

Fragment. That jagged piece of bond still lodged under my ribs like shrapnel.

“Why keep my file active?” I asked. “If I was such a neat ‘success story’?”

Ishan flipped to the last page. One final note waited there, stamped with Volen’s authorization code.

Subject L‑01 demonstrates high tolerance for bond trauma. Recommendation: retain for future protocols. Olfactory/aural patterns to be used for replication models and cover scenarios.

I stared at the word cover until the letters blurred.

“Cover scenarios,” I said. “Like making every crime scene smell like me.”

“Exactly,” Daxen said. His voice was rougher than usual. “They used you to break yourself. Now they’re using what’s left to break everyone else.”

Arlen swore under her breath. “You’re telling me they’ve been carrying her around in their pocket as a get‑out‑of‑jail‑free card?”

“More like a loaded gun,” Daxen said.

I forced my fingers to unclench. “What about the others? Selyne. The rest of that ‘batch.’”

Ishan tapped the screen and pulled up another file. V‑02‑VR. Selyne Varra’s intake photo looked like a distant cousin to my own—tired eyes, squared jaw, a hint of stubbornness.

Same phases. Same protocols. Different last line.

Outcome: Severance unstable. Rerouting failed. Subject exhibits escalating aggression and dissociative episodes. Risk category upgraded to critical. Authorization granted for termination if containment proves ineffective.

My breath stuttered.

“They tried to erase her,” I said.

“And they failed,” Arlen said. “Now she’s erasing them.”

Silence settled, heavy and ugly.

Finally I straightened. “Okay,” I said. “So I’m their template and she’s their ghost. They built this mess out of us.”

I met Daxen’s eyes, then Ishan’s.

“Then we don’t just solve a string of attacks,” I said. “We pull every loose thread in this archive until their whole program comes apart.”

Daxen’s mouth curved in something that almost passed for a smile.

“Now,” he said, “you sound like someone I’d actually follow into a fight.”