Claimed By The Banished Alpha

Chapter 9: The Confession

Sylvia Fenris’ POV

“You lie.” “You lie.” The words came out shaky, my whole body suddenly cold despite the warmth of the morning sun climbing over the fence posts.

“You couldn't have done it. Everybody knows you weren't born when the banishment happened,” I said.

“You said so yourself," he said with an apologetic voice.

I said each word louder, panic and denial blending until they were indistinguishable.

"No, the banishment,” I continued.

His eyes locked with mine. He wouldn't let me look away from what he was about to say.

“But your mother didn’t die when they banished her, Sylvia. She died six years back. In a skirmish on the border. I was fifteen years old. Old enough to fight in a war I didn’t understand, yet young enough to still believe everything my father told me about the people who exiled us, he continued.

“Six years ago?” I asked.

“I was told my whole life that my mother died in a hunting accident. A wolf attack near the northern border, tragic and senseless; nothing anyone could have done to prevent it,” I explained.

“The funeral came back to me in fragments: black cloth, my father’s face cut from stone, Aunt Rosalind’s hand gripping mine so hard it left bruises,” I continued.

“No one had mentioned a skirmish, nor had ever mentioned Bloodstone wolves anywhere near that border,” I said.

“I had been told that the wilderness itself had taken her, some cruel accident of nature that nobody could be blamed for, a grief I could carry without ever having to point a finger at anyone, clean and simple and wrong,” I paused.

"That's not what happened to her." He corrected me.

My voice was almost a whisper, and even as I spoke, some small, terrible part of me already knew I was only trying to convince myself of something I no longer believed.

“She died in the hunt. An accident… That’s what I’ve been told all my life,” I stated.

"That's what they told you?, probably, they told you such a thing because that was what they wanted you to believe” he said.

Something like pity flickered across his face, and I hated it, hated him for looking at me like that, as if I were a child who still believed in bedtime stories to keep the dark away.

“The Crescent Moon Clan doesn't recognize border wars, Sylvia. That’s bad for morale and not good for the Alpha's reputation. It's easier to call it an accident than to admit that the Bloodstone Clan crossed into contested land and your father's Alpha ordered a retaliation that got out of hand,” he explained.

He said it like a man who had spoken a truth he had borne alone for far too long, finally laying it down between us.

"Stop." I put my hands over my ears like a kid, as if that could stop the words from getting where they had already gone.

“Stop talking. “Just quit.” My voice cracked on the last word, small and pleading in a way I hated.

“I was there,” he said again, this time quieter. Like the confession was oozing out of him whether he wanted it to or not.

"I didn't kill her. I want you to know that, I was fifteen years old and scared to death, and I didn't kill anybody that night.

But I was one of the pack that crossed into that territory, and I have spent six years wondering if I could have stopped it, if I had been faster or stronger, or if I had fought harder against my own father's orders instead of just following them like a good obedient son,” he confessed.

His voice cracked on the last words, and for a second I saw past the wall he usually had up, saw the fifteen-year-old boy who never got the chance to be anything but a soldier in a war he didn't start.

“You said the mate bond couldn't be a mistake, right?” I asked.

My hands were shaking so bad I had to cross my arms tight across my chest to hold myself together.

"You also said that the moon goddess doesn't make mistakes,” I enquired.

"Sylvia, please, just let me explain the rest of it,” he pleaded.

"Don't." I moved away from him, every instinct in my body telling me to run, to put space between me and the ocean-dark eyes that had made me feel safe two weeks ago, that had made me stupid enough to kiss him on a moonlit porch as if it meant anything good.

Cold wood sliced through my shirt as my back hit the fence post behind me.

“Don’t touch me. Do not follow me. Just don't,” I warned him.

I ran and ran and ran. I didn't stop running until I reached my dorm room, until I had locked the door and pressed my back against it and slid down to the floor, my whole body shaking with something too big for tears, some mixture of grief and betrayal and a horrible, traitorous ache that refused to go away just because my heart wanted it to.

He did not run after him. I don't know if it was better or worse. A part of me had wanted him to pound on the door, to argue, to give me a reason to keep hating him cleanly instead of this tangled, complicated mess that I couldn't untangle no matter how hard I tried.

There was only silence. Just my own ragged breathing in the vacuum. That night I dreamt of my mother's face, soft and smiling, like she had looked at me before bed when I was small enough to believe nothing bad could ever reach me.

In the dream, she hummed an old lullaby, brushed hair back from my forehead, and just as she bent to kiss my temple, her face changed into something older and sadder, blood blooming dark across her collar.

I woke at three AM in sheets soaked with sweat with a name on my lips that wasn't hers but his(Thoros).

Then afterwards, I lay in the dark for a long time, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my heart to slow down, waiting for the guilt of saying his name instead of hers to fade into something manageable. It just never made it.