Fated to the Wrong Alpha

Chapter 12 – Corren’s Ghosts

The training room smells like sweat, rubber, and anger that hasn’t found a target yet.

Corren’s alone when I walk in. No sparring partner, no audience. Just him and a line of scarred practice dummies that look like they offended him personally.

He drives his fist into the nearest one hard enough that the chain suspending it squeals. The bag swings, rebounds, and he hits it again, sharp and precise, like he’s trying to punch through something only he can see.

His wolf’s so close to the surface the air tastes like storm.

“You know,” I say, leaning against the doorframe, “most alphas call it a night after almost getting ritually dissected in their own elevator.”

He doesn’t turn right away. One more hit. Then another. His shoulders heave once before he steps back, breathing hard, raking a hand through sweat-damp hair.

“Most alphas,” he says, “don’t have saboteurs using their dead fiancée as a calling card.”

The word dead scrapes.

I close the door behind me, the soft click echoing in the big room. “You’re sure she is?”

He finally looks at me. No suit now—just a worn black T-shirt, hands taped, knuckles raw. He looks younger like this. More dangerous, somehow.

“No,” he admits. “That’s the problem.”

I walk closer, the mats soft under my feet. “I smelled her in the crowd. Or something that used to be her. Ritual herbs, blood, lilies. Same tang as the attack.”

His jaw flexes. “I know Elira’s scent. If she was alive and walking through my territory, I’d…” He cuts himself off, eyes closing for a heartbeat. “But you felt it through our bond.”

“Yes.”

The bond hums at the word, remembering that shock of other presences braided into it. Elira’s panic. Someone else’s grief. A whole tangle of lives jammed where only two should be.

I stop a few feet from him. Close enough to see the faint tremor in his hands. Far enough that we’re not accidentally touching.

“Tell me about the wedding,” I say quietly.

His mouth twists. “You really know how to seduce a guy, Voss.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” He scrubs a hand over his face, then lowers it, expression shuttered. “Why?”

“Because someone in that elevator said we were supposed to die with the last attempt,” I answer. “Because you keep talking around that day like it’s radioactive. And because whatever they did to me at sixteen and to you then? It’s the same spellbook.”

He studies me for a long moment, weighing, measuring. Then he exhales, a rough, reluctant sound.

“Fine,” he says. “You want the story? You get the whole thing. No gossip, no Council-approved version.”

I nod and wait.

“I met Elira when I was twenty,” he begins. “Our fathers arranged it. Political, obviously. Our packs needed the alliance, her clan wanted footing in the city. We were told the bond would ‘settle in time.’”

“Did it?” I ask.

He laughs once, short and humorless. “Depends who you ask. To the Council? Yes. To my wolf?” He shakes his head. “It never sat right. There was always…static. Like we were tuned to different frequencies.”

“Did you care about her?”

“Yes.” The answer is immediate, no hesitation. “Not the way they wrote in their stories, but…she was kind. Smart. Angry in all the quiet ways. She deserved better than to be currency.”

My chest tightens. “So do you.”

His gaze flicks up, sharp, then away. “Three days before the wedding, she told me she was having nightmares. Waking up with pain in her chest, like someone yanked on a chain that wasn’t attached to me.”

My pulse stutters. “Like my episodes after my ritual.”

He nods once. “She asked if I ever felt…pulled. I lied. Said no. I thought it would make it easier to go through with it if we both stopped asking the wrong questions.”

He looks past me, to some point on the far wall.

“Day of the wedding, she walked down the aisle, smiled in all the right places. I kissed her hand. We said the words. We were supposed to go to the blessing circle beneath the hall after the human ceremony. Seal everything in front of the old magic.”

“You went,” I say, barely above a whisper.

“She didn’t.” His throat works. “I waited in the circle. Candles, sigils, elders. Taren at my shoulder. Her father muttering about auspicious timings. She was late. Then later. Then gone.”

“Just…gone?”

“No trace.” His hands clench. The tape creaks. “They said she must have run. Cold feet. Or that my bond rejected her and the magic took its due.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“I believe someone used that circle for more than blessings.” His eyes meet mine, bleak and furious. “And I believe whatever they did to her, they did to our bond. To mine. To yours. To this.”

Our connection pulses between us, sharp with shared memory and overlapping pain.

“And now,” he says, voice low, “whoever stood under our feet in that elevator thinks they can finish the job.”

Silence stretches, full of unasked questions.

“Do you regret it?” I ask. “Not marrying her.”

He flinches, just a little. “I regret not getting her out before they got their hands on her. I regret being blind when my wolf was howling at a closed door. But us? Standing where we are, right now?” He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know what word fits that.”

“Lucky?” I suggest, because my heart is stupid. “Cursed?”

“Both,” he says roughly. “Definitely both.”

For a moment, we just breathe, our wolves circling each other in the space between us, wary and wanting and hurt.

Then I straighten. “Whatever they did in that circle, they didn’t erase it. Not from you. Not from her. Not from me.”

His mouth curves, but there’s no humor in it. “So we find the bastard who thinks he’s the author of our story.”

“And we take the pen,” I finish.

His gaze lingers on me, on the mark under my shirt, on the place where the bond thrums like a living vein.

“Careful, Voss,” he says softly. “Talk like that, and people might start thinking we’re actually on the same side.”

My wolf presses forward, unafraid.

“Maybe,” I say, holding his gaze, “we finally are.”