Fated to the Wrong Alpha

Chapter 11 – Old Scars

My mark still throbs hours later.

Not the sharp burn from the elevator—that’s faded to a dull ache—but a deeper, bruised kind of hurt. Like something old woke up under my skin and is now stretching, testing the bars of its cage.

Riya insisted on running scans. Corren insisted on hovering. Maelor insisted on pacing. Selene, mercifully, insisted on everyone getting out of my way long enough for me to breathe.

Now it’s just me and Riya in the quiet of the guest room, city lights smeared across the window like paint.

“Again,” she says softly. “Where exactly does it hurt?”

“Everywhere,” I say, then wince at her look. “Fine. Here.” I tap my sternum. “And here.” My fingers drift lower, to the place where the ritualist’s blade once bit into my skin years ago. The scar is faint, a pale crescent just under my ribs.

Riya’s gaze sharpens. “May I?”

“You’ve seen me uglier,” I mutter, already lifting my shirt.

The room’s cool air brushes my skin. Riya leans in, healer’s touch gentle, fingers hovering a breath above the scar. No green glow, no dramatic flares—just her, listening with her hands.

“Still reactive,” she murmurs. “Like someone tugged on an old thread.”

“You’re sure this isn’t just my charming personality?”

She huffs. “You joke, but…” Her brows knit. “Aeryn, when was the last time this mark did anything? Before tonight.”

“Never,” I say automatically—then stop.

A memory surfaces, slippery and unwelcome. Candles. Earth. The iron tang of blood and incense. My sixteen-year-old self shivering in a white dress while elders watched from the shadows. The moment the blade cut. The flash of…something in the dark. A shape I couldn’t quite see.

And later. Nights when my chest ached for no reason. A phantom pull toward someone who never arrived.

“Once,” I correct quietly. “When I was a teenager. After the ceremony. I would…wake up with this pain, like I was missing a step on a staircase. Like my wolf was trying to run toward something and smashing into a wall.”

Riya’s eyes soften. “You never told me that.”

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, best friend, my chest hurts when I think about people I’ve never met?’”

“You could have said exactly that,” she says, not unkindly. “That’s literally my job description.”

Guilt pricks. I look away, to the city. To the Lyall tower’s reflection in the glass.

“It went away,” I say. “Eventually. Or I learned to ignore it.”

“Or someone finished whatever they were doing to you,” she says under her breath.

I go very still. “Riya.”

She doesn’t flinch from my gaze. “You know it’s possible. They did something in that ritual, Aeryn. Something more than just ‘showing’ you a destined mate.”

I swallow. My mouth tastes like old metal. “I was supposed to see his face. Hear his name. Everyone talked about it like a fairytale. The moment the bond reveals itself.”

“What did you see?” she asks gently.

I close my eyes.

“Nothing,” I say. “No face. No name. Just…shadows. And then my mark burned so hard I blacked out. When I woke up, Maelor and two elders were arguing outside the circle. Selene was crying. They told me the ritual was…inconclusive. That my bond was unclear. That it was safer to set aside the luna training until they knew more.”

Riya’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “And they never ‘knew more.’”

“No.” Bitterness sharpens my voice. “They just quietly decided I was unsuitable for an alpha and very suitable for being lent out as a polite mouthpiece.”

For the pack. For the deals. For everyone but myself.

Riya sits back, eyes bright with the clinical kind of interest that means she’s putting puzzle pieces together.

“Tonight’s attack wasn’t just about you and Corren now,” she says. “Someone pulled on something that was already tangled years ago. Your mark reacted because it’s part of the same web.”

“Our bond,” I say slowly, “is tied to whatever they did to me back then.”

“And probably to whatever they did to Elira,” she adds. “And maybe others.”

My stomach twists. “So I’m not just his fake fiancée and maybe-mate. I’m a walking time bomb someone primed as a teenager.”

“That’s one way to put it,” she says dryly. “Here’s another: you’re ground zero of the mess they made. Which means if anyone can unravel it…”

“It’s the girl they broke first,” I finish, a little shaky.

She squeezes my hand. “Not alone. Never alone.”

Silence settles, thick but not suffocating. My wolf presses against the inside of my ribs, restless, eyes turned not toward Corren this time, but backward, toward that candlelit circle.

“How mad are you,” I ask, forcing lightness into my voice, “on a scale from herbal tea to homicide?”

Riya’s mouth curves, but her eyes stay hard. “On your behalf? Somewhere around ritual malpractice and light murder. But we’ll start with questions.”

“To who?”

She hesitates only a second. “Selene. She was there. She’s the one person I trust to tell us how much of that night was accident…and how much was design.”

I nod, throat tight.

“Fine,” I say. “Then we stop poking at scar tissue in private and start digging.”

My mark throbs once, like agreement—or warning.

Either way, I’m done pretending it’s just an old wound.