Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 17
Blood Moon did not sleep after Ethel found the sealed report. Rumors moved through patrols and servants, changing with every retelling. Some called Selene a Nightwind spy, while others claimed her silver eyes belonged to a forgotten royal line. She was no longer discussed as an ordinary maid but as a mystery, and mysteries frightened a pack built on rigid hierarchy.
Outside the infirmary, Selene found Ethel waiting. He no longer hid behind the distance of a visiting leader. Her name broke in his voice like something remembered rather than learned, and naked recognition in his eyes tightened her chest.
Lyla warned that his scent resembled theirs. Beneath mountain rain and old pine lived the same cold silver note awakening in Selene’s skin. She had never possessed family against whom to recognize the pattern, yet her wolf ached as if standing near home.
Ethel approached carefully and asked who gave Selene her name. She believed Blood Moon had chosen it because she was too young to remember. Questions had irritated her keepers, so she eventually stopped asking whether the name came from her belongings or someone’s convenience.
He asked about life before Blood Moon. Selene repeated the only story she knew: she was found near the eastern border after a conflict, feverish and alone, with no family willing to claim her. Ethel’s breath caught at every deliberate lie.
Alexander entered the corridor, followed by Jackson. Grief, wary protection, and territorial anger collided in the narrow space. Luke and Drake urged guards toward the walls before three Alpha auras turned a family revelation into a challenge between packs.
Ethel confirmed her estimated age and the date she was found. When Selene demanded an explanation, he reached slowly inside his coat. Jackson shifted as if expecting a weapon, but Ethel unfolded a cloth bundle and revealed a child’s silver bracelet.
The engraving remained clear: My Selene. Ethel held it on his palm without closing the distance. The moment Selene saw the moon-and-wolf design, warmth, grief, and recognition struck through defenses her memory could not explain. Her fingers tingled as if they remembered the shape of metal never fastened around her wrist, and the response frightened her more than disbelief would have.
Lyla gasped that the scent belonged to them. Selene denied ever seeing the bracelet or Ethel, but her blood answered before her mind. She gripped the wall while emotion from a stolen childhood threatened to pull her under.
Ethel explained that his wife commissioned the gift for their daughter’s third birthday shortly before she vanished. The child engraved in its silver was named Selene and carried a crescent birthmark no public record had ever described.
Jackson called the evidence speculation and insisted Selene was registered to Blood Moon. Ethel turned on him with a father’s quiet fury. “Is she? Or is that what your altered records were designed to say?”
Jackson hesitated. He inherited those records and never investigated why senior council members discouraged questions about the orphan. Whether he knew of the original abduction or not, his authority had preserved the silence that kept Ethel from his daughter. Ignorance could explain why he missed the original crime, but it could not excuse the years in which convenience made further questions unnecessary.
Alexander watched Selene rather than joining the argument. Her response to Ethel held no romantic pull; it was deeper, shaped by inherited power. His own bond sharpened as her bloodline woke, as though their connection had been waiting for her hidden identity to surface.
A painful pulse blurred Selene’s vision. Behind closed eyes she saw silver cloth, a child’s hand, and a woman humming beside a fire. Lyla sensed memories pushing against a barrier and whispered that Selene’s blood remembered the man before her.
Alexander stopped both Alphas from pressing closer. Selene was barely standing, and the corridor offered no privacy for a stolen life to reopen. His command protected her space rather than claiming control, a distinction she felt even through the pain.
Silver shimmered around Selene’s pupils. An unfamiliar current moved beneath Lyla’s presence, responding to Ethel’s blood and the bracelet. Outside the window, Tiffany watched the truth surface and understood that every offense against a servant could soon become an offense against Bloodwind’s heir.
The cut rope might expose Tiffany, and new guards made another attack difficult. She needed to act while confusion could still isolate Selene, before recovered memories named anyone who helped conceal the old crime. Her chance to survive the scandal was narrowing.
Ethel lowered the bracelet. “If you are not my daughter, why does every record lead to you? Why does my wolf know your blood, and why does my heart recognize you?” His voice cracked, but he did not demand an answer Selene did not possess.
“I don’t know who I am,” Selene admitted. For years, the sentence meant she had no family or rank. Now it suggested the identity she lived had been constructed by people who needed her powerless.
A vision layered itself over Ethel’s face: a younger man beneath silver banners, calling a child little moon while a woman laughed nearby. It vanished with tears on Selene’s cheeks. Deep in the foundations, Bloodwind magic answered her returning memory—and the stolen heir’s true power began forcing its way awake.
