Chapter 126: Even in Death.

Chapter 126

The morning mist clung to the damp grass of the Blackwood Pack territory. Aleric walked toward the main training house, his boots thumping against the dirt.

He was shirtless, the cool morning air biting at the sweat-slicked muscles of his back, but he didn’t feel the cold.

All he felt was the heavy, gnawing silence of the last three days. Ever since Selena’s eighteenth birthday, the pack house had felt like a funeral parlor instead of a celebration.

The Alpha’s son and the Beta heir—everyone had whispered it for years. It was supposed to be a done deal.

The “Golden Twin” of the pack, the perfect match. But when the clock struck midnight on her birthday, there had been nothing.

No sudden pull in the chest, no intoxicating scent, no spark when their skin brushed. Nothing but the sound of his own heart, beating in a vacuum.

“Aleric! Wait!” He didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. The sharp, demanding click of heels on the gravel was enough.

Selena caught up to him, her breathing shallow, her face a mask of perfectly applied makeup that couldn’t quite hide the frantic desperation in her eyes

She reached out, her fingers digging into his bicep to force him to stop. Aleric looked down at her hand, then up at her face.

Usually, the touch of the pack’s “prize” would have made his ego boast with pride. Now, it just felt like a weight.

“We need to talk,” Selena hissed, her voice low enough to keep the younger wolves in the training ring from overhearing.

“The Elders are asking questions. My father is asking questions. It’s been three days, Aleric.”

“And the answer is still the same,” Aleric rasped, his voice sounding raw even to his own ears.

He gently but firmly pried her fingers off his arm. “There’s no bond, Selena. We can’t talk our way into a fated match that doesn’t exist.”

“It has to exist!” She stepped into his space, her eyes flashing with a cruel, flickering brown. “I am the beta’s daughter. I am the strongest female in this territory. If it’s not you, then who? Some low-rank scavenger? A nomad?”

She let out a sharp laugh that made Aleric flinch. It was the same laugh she used when she talked about Isabella—the sister she’d left in the woods, the one who was supposed to be the “weak” link.

“Maybe the Moon Goddess made a mistake,” Selena whispered, her lip curling. “Or maybe… maybe you aren’t trying hard enough to find the spark.”

Aleric looked past her, toward the dense treeline where Isabella had vanished that day. Since Selena’s birthday, a name had been echoing in the back of his mind—a name he had tried to bury under years of loyalty to the “Golden Girl.”

“I’m not the one who decides, Selena,” Aleric said, his voice turning cold as he stepped away from her. “The Goddess doesn’t make mistakes. If we aren’t mates, it’s because the air is waiting for someone else.”

“Someone else?” Selena’s face contorted, her “golden” beauty twisting into something ugly.

“Who could possibly be better than me? Who is left?” Aleric didn’t answer. He just grabbed his discarded shirt from the fence and walked away, leaving her standing alone in the mist.

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that for the first time in three days, he wasn’t looking at her.

He was looking at the horizon, wondering where the “weak” sister was, and why his wolf suddenly felt like it was searching for a scent that had been gone for a very long time.

Selena watched his retreating back, her hands curling into tight, trembling fists. The humiliation was heavier than the morning mist.

Three days ago, the pack yard had been draped in gold and silver. The entire pack had feasted on her behalf, toasting to the “Union of the Century.”

Her father had stood tall, bragging to the neighboring Alphas about the power their bloodlines would produce.

And she had stood there, smiling until her cheeks ached, waiting for the lightning strike of the mate bond that never came.

With every passing hour of silence, those toasts had turned into whispers. Now, as Aleric ignored her—the Beta’s daughter, the prize of the Blackwood Pack—those whispers felt like a thousand tiny blades under her skin.

“How dare he,” she breathed, her voice shaking with rage. “How dare he walk away from me.” She turned her gaze toward the treeline Aleric had been staring at, her lip curling in a sneer.

She knew exactly who he was thinking about. She wasn’t stupid. She had seen the way his eyes softened whenever the ’weak’ twin’s name was mentioned in passing.

Isabella.

The thought of her sister was a bitter tang in the back of her throat. It had been weeks since Isabella had vanished into those woods.

The pack stories were ridiculous—rumors of her having the “scent of the unholy,” or moving with “inhumane speed” when she escaped the hunters.

Selena didn’t believe a word of it. Isabella was a fluke, a mistake of nature who couldn’t even shift.

To Selena, those stories were just a pathetic way for the warriors to excuse their own incompetence.

She’s dead, Selena thought, a cruel sense of satisfaction warming her chest. Rotting in some ditch or torn apart by rogues.

There is no way that pathetic, scentless shadow survived the real world. But the look in Aleric’s eyes… that was what truly stung.

“The air is waiting for someone else?” she mocked quietly, her nails biting into her palms.

The mere suggestion that the Moon Goddess would passed over her—the beautiful, strong, perfect twin—to choose that nameless, wolfless and weak girl as the Alpha heir’s mate was an insult she couldn’t stomach.

It was impossible. It was a joke. If Aleric thought for one second that he was destined for a ghost, he was more delusional than she thought.

“You’ll come crawling back, Aleric,” she hissed into the fog, her eyes darkening. “Because when the world finds out there is no bond, I won’t be the one left in the dirt. I’ll make sure everyone knows you were the one who wasn’t man enough to claim me.”

She straightened her shoulders, smoothing her hair. She had a reputation to maintain, and she wouldn’t let a missing bond or a dead sister ruin the life she had built.

But as she turned to head back to the pack house, a stray thought flickered in her mind, unbidden and cold: What if the rumors weren’t lies? What if she’s actually out there?

She shook it off instantly. No. Isabella was a nobody. And Selena would make sure she stayed that way…

…. even in death.

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