The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 25: Tense Calm Before The Storm

DRAVEN

"You promised her to me, Morgana." His voice was low enough to make my spine straighten, eyes had gone pitch black—including the whites. "You promised you’d conditioned her. Are you certain you branded her like the others? I can’t find her." His brows were drawn as if he was trying to focus, reaching for something that I couldn’t see.

A chill raked through me.

We had convened in the High Alpha’s chambers for this meeting. His quarters were just like him—dark and dreary, with an edge of elegant flamboyance that made the space feel dangerous rather than refined. Heavy drapes blocked most of the light, and what little remained caught on gilt-edged furniture that looked more like traps than comfort.

I stood near the window, trying to appear attentive while keeping my distance from the conversation. Watching. Waiting.

I simply watched, apprehensive and perplexed. Althea was just a tribute. So why was the head of the Allied Packs so perturbed by her escaping him? He was the one who’d given her the chance to.

Morgana was still pale—paler than she’d been yesterday. This woman feared nothing, was ruthless enough to put the fear of the Moon in anyone she met. Ruthless enough to be the one to land the killing blow on the notorious Witch Luna. Ruthless enough to be a monster even to her own daughter.

But she was afraid now.

"She is branded. Her soul is bound to you. You should be able to find her unless she is dead."

Ever since Althea left, something had shifted. The shift was so profound that I was beginning to understand we’d only been treading the surface of something much deeper. I was content with staying on the surface. But looking at them—Morgana and the High Alpha—I could see they wanted to dive deeper.

Dread coiled in my stomach like a snake. There was nothing of greater importance to me than ensuring my Alpha rank remained untouched—which meant no one could ever know who was really responsible for ridding the pack of the red fever. The last thing I could afford was for someone to look too deeply and find some loose end I’d forgotten to tie up.

I had sacrificed Althea to ensure that the truth would no longer be dangled over my head.

It had been a necessary evil. I had no choice.

And knowing Morgana, her daughter would not be praised for feeding her blood to an unknowing pack. Her hatred would only twist further. I had seen it over the years. When Althea had raised wolf pups, Morgana had found her and punished her for possibly exposing the pack to their mother’s wrath. When she had alerted the pack to Wren falling, she’d been blamed for not doing enough. There had been incidents like that over the years, with no end in sight to the mistreatment.

Death was the only way Althea could escape her mother’s unwavering and seemingly unfounded, soul-deep resentment.

I wanted the truth buried with whatever would remain of her when the High Alpha did what he always did to tributes.

It was the end that benefited everyone involved.

Althea would finally be put out of her misery, and the pack would sleep safe without the truth shattering their trust in me.

I turned toward the window, letting my mind wander, dared to let my thoughts drift to her.

Althea.

Meek and kind like the princesses in the stories my grandmother told us when we were younger. Altruistic to the point that it was maddening to see, back when we were still young and ignorant of pack ranks and politics, back when I thought that kind of selflessness was admirable rather than dangerous.

She used to share her meals with omegas who had nothing. Used to tend to wounded animals she found in the woods, nursing them back to health in secret because Morgana would have killed them for being weak. Used to slip extra bread to the Vargan servants when she thought no one was watching.

I’d thought it was foolish then. Reckless. A waste of resources and energy on creatures that would never repay the kindness.

But maybe that was why as she being tortured and questioned concerning my wife’s assault, the animals she might helped and the ones I was convinced I had never seen her care for loitered about the pack house for months even after being chased off mutiple times.

And then their was the wolf attack after she was branded.

I still thought it was foolish. But somewhere along the way, watching her risk everything for people who couldn’t offer her anything in return, I’d stopped finding it irritating and started finding it... something else. Something I didn’t have a name for, something that sat uncomfortably in my chest whenever she smiled at me like I was still the boy who’d listened to grandmother’s stories beside her.

But that was before. Before I understood what it meant to be Alpha, what it took to hold power in a pack with a force like Morgana. Before I learned that kindness was a liability, that mercy was weakness, that the only way to survive was to be willing to sacrifice the things—the people—that made you vulnerable.

Althea had never learned that lesson. Had never wanted to. And that refusal, that stubborn, infuriating insistence on being good despite everything, had made her a threat I couldn’t afford to keep.

Especially since I knew why she always did what she did.

After being turned away by the one person she wanted to love her, she searched for love wherever she could—giving and then hoping to receive.

Her mother’s repulsion had lit a blazing flame of longing in her—a desperate, aching need to be seen as worthy.

And I had given her that until reality intervened—she was an omega and I could not claim her that way she believed she deserved to be.

I could not love a low-rank. Binding her to me would stain my echelon, a flaw in my armour that I had spent all my life burnishing. Even if I had used her blood—none of it changed what she was.

An omega, wolfless and in our world, nothing but a possible tribute.

The stars were not constellated in our favour.

I loved her.

But I loved someone else more—me.

The Hell hound would never pick a lowly omega that would drag down his clan so why would I? 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The sharp crack of a hand across my face snapped me back to reality.

My head jerked to the side from the force of it, and for a moment I couldn’t process what had just happened. The sting spread across my cheek like fire, my vision swimming as shock crashed through me like a physical blow.

Morgana stood in front of me, her hand still raised, her face twisted with fury.

"Fucking listen when the High Alpha is speaking to you!" she screamed, her voice shrill and cracking. "Do you think you can just stand there daydreaming while—"

Rage exploded through me, like a fuel to flame.