The Alpha Who Broke Our Bond

Chapter 15 – The Archive Room

The horn still echoed down the stone corridors when I reached the main hall.

Orlen’s runner—a wiry teenager with mud on his boots and panic in his eyes—had already delivered the bare bones: fresh tracks near the eastern ridge, strange marks on the trees, no bodies.

No Mirael.

The council would whirl around that for hours. I couldn’t stand to sit through it yet.

So I went to the one place in the house where panic wasn’t allowed.

The archive room lived off the back of Aren’s war chamber, tucked behind a heavy oak door that smelled of dust and ink and grudges.

“You’re not supposed to be in here alone,” a quiet voice said as I reached for the latch.

Seraith Moonweld stood at the far end of the hall, a slim shadow in healer’s grey, her white hair braided down her back. For a second, she was only my old teacher again—the woman who’d slapped a bandage on my scraped knee and then made me describe every step I’d taken wrong.

“I’m not supposed to do a lot of things,” I said. “Today is clearly an exception-heavy day.”

She came closer, eyes searching my face. There were more lines around her mouth than I remembered, and more shadows in her gaze.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I had a girl ripped out of my hand and someone used my skull as a tuning fork,” I said. “You could say that.”

Seraith’s mouth twitched like it wanted to frown and couldn’t quite commit. “And you think the archives will fix that?”

“No,” I said. “But I think they might explain why it keeps happening.”

For a moment, I thought she’d bar my way. Then she sighed, old and soft.

“At this point,” she murmured, “I suspect you’ll tear down the door if I say no.”

“Probably,” I agreed.

She pushed the latch herself and stepped aside. “Fifteen minutes,” she said. “And if Hedran catches you with his personal ledgers, I was never here.”

“Traitor,” I said fondly, and slipped inside.

The archive room was smaller than I’d imagined—no endless cathedral of shelves, just two long walls lined with cabinets and cubbies, a central table, a ladder on a rail. Dust motes danced in slanting light from a high slit window.

It smelled like old leather, dried ink, and the faint metallic tang of preserved spells.

I exhaled slowly. Focus.

I wasn’t here for battle maps or trade agreements. I was here for ghosts.

The central catalog stones—pale disks embedded in the table—glowed faintly when I brushed my fingers over them. “Children,” I murmured. “Missing. Transfers. Unassigned litters.”

A pulse of magic ran through the stone. Letters ghosted up from the surface, fuzzy at the edges. Shelves flickered with soft light, three points on the left wall, two on the right.

Of course it wouldn’t be one neat box labelled “Horrific Mistakes”.

I moved to the nearest marked shelf and scanned the leather spines. Most were logistical records—births, deaths, fostering agreements. The handwriting on the labels shifted from neat block letters to a cramped, spidery script I recognized as Vaelor’s.

Halfway down, my fingers paused on a thin, dust-coated ledger. No title on the spine, just a faint crest: two stylized wolves facing each other, a third shadow behind them.

I slid it out.

The binding creaked in protest when I opened it. Pages fluttered past: lists of names, dates, brief notes.

No recorded parents.

Transferred to auxiliary quarters.

Talent observed: heightened empathy / stealth / resilience.

Assigned to Project Umbra – see restricted file.

My stomach turned.

Umbra. Shadow.

I flipped further. There were notations in two different hands—Vaelor’s tight script and another, more flowing one I didn’t know. Lines connecting names between packs, little symbols in the margins.

One note made my breath catch.

Subject: D.G.

Origins: unrecorded; suspected mixed lineage between high-ranking members of both clans. Recommend classification: sensitive. Relocation approved to outer facility. Memory weave incomplete. Monitor for instability.

D.G.

Derrin Galestride.

My fingers tightened, smudging the ink.

Of course. Of course his aura didn’t sit right in either pack. Of course his “usual” dizziness tracked with hook scars.

“This can’t be all of it,” I muttered.

It wasn’t.

Halfway through the ledger, the entries became more frantic. Crossed-out lines, dates doubling back, notes like:

Project suspended pending outcome of Incident at Eastern Circle.

Ritual containment attempted. Subject L.V. volunteered for memory-binding. Alpha A.C. consent recorded under duress.

Some threads cut. Some… buried.

The ink on “buried” was darker, as if Hedran had pressed too hard or someone had gone back over it.

My vision blurred for a heartbeat—not with magic this time, but rage.

They’d kept this. Here. On a shelf like it was a recipe book.

Behind me, the door latch clicked.

I snapped the ledger closed and turned, ready to snarl.

Aren stood in the doorway, shoulders filling it, eyes sharp even in the dim light.

“If this is you breaking into state secrets,” he said, “we’re going to have to talk about your timing.”

“You have state secrets about me,” I said. “I think my timing is excellent.”

His gaze dropped to the book in my hands. For once, his control slipped before he could catch it. I saw recognition there. Shame. Fury.

“You weren’t supposed to—” he began, then stopped, jaw tightening.

“Read?” I finished. “Remember? Exist?”

We stared at each other across the narrow room, the air between us thick with dust and old spells and things unsaid.

“What did you find?” he asked quietly.

I opened the ledger again, turned it so he could see the neat, damning lines.

“Proof,” I said, voice too calm, “that shadow pups weren’t an accident. That they were made.”

I tapped the initials under my fingertip.

“And that some of them,” I added, “are standing in our training yard right now, wondering why their dreams smell like my nightmares.”

The silence that followed was the kind that only comes just before something breaks.

“I told you,” Aren said, very softly, “we were not the only ones who paid that night.”

His hand closed around the edge of the table until the wood groaned.

“And this,” I said, holding up the book like a wound, “is our receipt.”