The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 55: Crash?

🔹THORNE

The one seeing eye of my grandmother flickered with pain before she snuffed it out and spoke, her voice low. "I can never forget."

"It seems you have," Zeta Riven countered. "Because now the same moon, the same fates, have threaded a tether between Thorne and a woman who will be his damnation."

"Yet you defend her at every turn," Zeta Lysandra spat. "Now, one of us lies in a coma he might never wake from."

Still, my grandmother spoke up. "Kael’s fate was never in the hands of some abused girl. She can barely lift herself without someone trampling her underfoot."

"Then explain the letter," Lysandra pressed. "Explain the evidence. Explain why the animals obey her like some forest wraith."

"Perhaps," Alice said quietly, her milky eye turning toward Lysandra with unnerving precision, "because she is what you fear most."

The room stilled.

"Neither a spy," Alice continued, "nor a weapon. She is a mirror."

"A mirror?" Riven scoffed.

"Of Seraphina," Alice said simply.

Silence crashed down like a felled tree. Even I was paralyzed.

"You forget," my grandmother continued, her voice steady and unshakable, "that Seraphina—our Witch Luna, Thorne’s mother—was also rejected by her coven. Cast out. Hunted. Deemed too dangerous, too other to be allowed to live among them. They called her a hag. She was sold to Thorne’s father."

Lysandra’s jaw tightened. "That was different—"

"Was it?" Alice challenged. "Seraphina was a thrall. Powerless and a pariah by their measure. Yet she commanded the wild and her own destiny."

Her gaze—both the seeing and unseeing—fixed on the Zetas.

"And when she came to us," Alice said softly, "broken and bleeding and more scar than skin—what did we do?"

No one answered.

"We saw her fire," Alice whispered. "Beneath the fear. Beneath the conditioning. Beneath the meekness forced upon her by those who should have cherished her. We saw what she could become."

She turned her head slightly toward me, though her words remained for them.

"I see that same fire in Althea," she said. "Buried deep. Smothered. But not extinguished."

"Pretty words," Lysandra said bitterly. "But words don’t explain why Kael is dying. Words don’t explain the coincidences. Words don’t—"

"She is the Silvermoth," Alice interrupted.

The room went still again. No one liked to hear that a famed hero could be pack-born, much less an omega.

"I am yet to be convinced," Riven breathed.

"I second that," Zeta Lysandra added.

"The Silvermoth," Alice repeated, her voice carrying the weight of prophecy. "The one who saves the lost. The one who guides Vargans through the mist to safety. She is not our enemy. She is our kin."

"Then where," Lysandra demanded, her voice shaking now, "are the people she claims to have saved? Where are these rescued Vargans? Why have we seen no evidence of her so-called mercy?"

Alice opened her mouth—

But I spoke first.

"Enough."

My voice cut through the room like a blade, cold and final.

Every eye turned to me.

"You want evidence?" I said, my tone level and controlled. "You want proof? Then you’ll have it."

I straightened, hands flat on the table, meeting each of their gazes in turn.

"This constant tension," I continued, "these challenges, these distractions—they serve no one. Least of all this clan. So I have made a decision."

Lysandra’s eyes narrowed. "What decision?"

"After the Solstice," I said. "We end this speculation. We find the truth."

I turned and walked toward the door.

"And if the truth damns her?" Lysandra called after me.

I paused, hand on the frame.

"Then I will be the one to carry it out."

The door closed behind me.

Umbra stirred restlessly beneath my skin, agitated in a way I didn’t care to examine.

You won’t.

"I will," I said aloud, alone in the corridor now.

Liar.

"It’s duty," I bit out. "Nothing more. If she’s a threat to this clan, if she’s working with them, if those Vargans don’t exist—"

Then what? You’ll kill your mate?

"She’s not—" I stopped myself.

Because she was.

The bond hummed at the base of my ribs, an insistent pulse I’d been fighting since the moment I found her in the mist. Every instinct screamed to protect her, to keep her close, to ensure no harm came to her.

But instinct wasn’t logic.

Instinct wasn’t strategy.

Instinct had no place in leadership.

"This isn’t about want," I muttered, resuming my walk. "It’s about what’s right for the clan. If she’s innocent, we bring back proof. If she’s guilty, we end the threat. Simple. Meeting adjourned."

Nothing about this is simple.

No. It wasn’t. But I couldn’t afford complexity.

I couldn’t afford to let the bond dictate my decisions, couldn’t let feelings—unwanted, inconvenient, dangerous feelings—compromise everything we’d built.

The journey after the Solstice wasn’t about saving her.

It was about confirming or eliminating a threat.

That was all.

Keep telling yourself that, Umbra growled.

I ignored him, even if he had taken on Nyx’s tone. My sanity was on its last leg with those two.

Because the alternative—admitting that some part of me, despite everything, despite logic and duty and the weight of my mother’s memory—wanted her to be innocent, wanted the Vargans to exist, wanted proof that she was what Alice claimed—

That was a weakness I couldn’t afford.

So I buried it.

Locked it away with all the other things I couldn’t let myself feel as I walked back toward my chambers, where she waited.

It was not because I wanted to see her; it was because duty demanded I keep her close. That was why I kept guards at her door and had clothes tailored for her.

Nothing more.

Liar, Nyx whispered before flying off as I stepped into my room, pulling the mask from my eyes.

I stopped in my tracks—her bed was empty.

My chest constricted without my permission.

She was not here.

A loud crash cleaved through the air, and my heart stopped. I paused for only a second before strapping on my mask and running, because I knew where the crash had come from.