Fated to the Wrong Alpha

Chapter 17 – Breaking Protocol

By morning, we have three official reports, two unofficial rumors, and exactly zero patience left.

The official version says: electrical fault, minor ritual disturbance, no lasting harm. The rumor mill says: cursed engagement, doomed alpha, lunatic Voss witch. None of it says what we need:

Someone tried to kill our bond. Again.

The Council’s response is to suggest more oversight. More observers. More meetings.

Ours is different.

“We’re done playing by their rules,” Corren says.

We’re in his office with the blinds half-closed against the bright, too-cheerful day. Papers cover the desk: Riya’s scans, Taren’s old notes, Maelor’s carefully sanitized ritual records. A map of the city and surrounding territories is spread over everything, corners pinned with coffee mugs.

Dael leans against the bookshelf, arms crossed. Lyssa has her boots on the arm of a chair, because of course she does. Jarek stands by the window, pretending not to watch every twitch in my shoulders.

Riya has claimed a corner of the desk, fingers tracing symbols on the map in invisible ink.

“Be more specific,” Dael says. “Since we can’t exactly declare war on ‘ritual nonsense’ without anyone to swing at.”

Corren taps the name scrawled in the margin in my handwriting: Vaelis Crow.

“We stop asking the Council for crumbs,” he says. “We find him ourselves.”

Jarek’s jaw works. “You think they don’t already have people looking? If they can’t track him—”

“If,” Lyssa cuts in, “they’re actually trying. Big if.”

“They’re trying to cover their asses,” Dael mutters. “Finding him would mean admitting how deep they let him cut.”

Riya clears her throat softly. “I might have…a lead. On where he worked before he became the Council’s favorite ghost.”

All eyes swing to her.

“When I said I’d seen that sigil before,” she says, “it wasn’t just in Aeryn’s file. There were references in some of the older Voss archives Selene let me look at last year. Notes from when they first started…experimenting.”

Maelor’s neat, distant handwriting flashes in my mind. Experiments written over lives.

“Where?” Corren asks.

Riya taps a point on the map north of the forest circle we visited. “Here. An old temple complex in the hills. Officially abandoned. Unofficially, it’s where some of the earliest bond work was done for external clans. The notes mentioned a ‘consultant from the border packs’ who later took the name Vaelis Crow.”

“Of course it’s in external territory,” Dael says. “Why make this easy?”

“Because nothing about our lives is easy?” Lyssa offers.

Corren considers the map, then me. The bond between us hums, waiting.

“If we go,” he says, “it has to be off the books. No Council escort. No formal delegation.”

“Breaking three protocols just by thinking about it,” Jarek says quietly.

“And if we don’t?” I ask. “We sit here and wait for the next time someone decides to take a scalpel to us?”

His mouth presses into a line. “You know I’m not saying we do nothing. I’m saying we can’t pretend this won’t have consequences for our packs.”

I look at him. At all of them.

“I grew up being told to think about the pack first,” I say. “To swallow my own wants for the greater good. They used that to justify putting me in a circle with a man like Vaelis. To justify shelving me when I didn’t fit their plan. If we keep asking ‘what will the packs think’ before every move, we’ll never take the knife out of their hands.”

Lyssa whistles low. “She’s got you there, cousin.”

Jarek sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “I hate that you’re right.”

Corren’s gaze is steady on mine. “You understand what you’re asking,” he says. “A covert trip into technically neutral, practically hostile territory. If this goes wrong, the Council will say we provoked it. Our own elders might agree.”

“Good,” I say, feeling my wolf lift her head. “Then they can finally be angry at us for something we actually did.”

Riya hides a smile behind her mug. Dael’s mouth twitches. Even Corren’s eyes warm for a heartbeat.

“We’ll need a small team,” he says. “No more than we can cover if things go sideways.”

“Me,” I say immediately.

He snorts. “Obviously you.”

“Me,” Riya adds. “If this place is what we think, you’ll need a healer who knows how to read broken sigils without sticking her hand in them.”

“Me,” Lyssa says cheerfully. “Because I get bored when left unsupervised.”

“And because you don’t mind breaking faces if diplomacy fails,” Dael mutters.

He pushes off the shelf. “I’m coming. Corren can’t go into external territory without his beta unless we want sixteen different alphas screaming about protocol.”

Jarek hesitates, looking between me and the map. “I should stay,” he says slowly. “If Maelor feels you slipping his leash, he’ll push back harder. Someone needs to keep him from making things worse.”

“You volunteering to babysit our uncle?” I ask.

His smile is thin. “Somebody has to.”

Corren nods. “We leave at dusk,” he says. “Two vehicles. Off regular routes. No official notice.”

“That’s it?” Jarek asks. “No presentation to the joint council, no briefing with the elders?”

Corren’s eyes are hard, wolf-bright. “Elders have had decades to fix the mess they made,” he says. “They chose secrecy. We’re choosing something else.”

He looks at me then, and the world narrows to the hum of our bond, the map, the single word written like a curse and a promise.

Vaelis.

“We find him,” he says quietly. “We get answers. And if he’s the one who keeps reaching into our lives without permission—”

“We cut his hand off,” Lyssa says sweetly.

Riya winces. “Metaphorically.”

Lyssa considers. “Mostly metaphorically.”

I feel the faint, distant tug of the third thread, pulling north, into the hills.

“Either way,” I say, closing my hand over the map, over the name that shaped so much of my life without my consent, “we stop letting other people write the next chapter for us.”

The decision settles over the room like a storm front.

For the first time, it feels like we’re not just reacting to what was done to us.

We’re hunting it.