Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 25
The command hall held its breath after Ethel spoke the name. “Lucian Blackthorn.” Recognition moved through the room colder than confusion. Jackson tightened, Alexander’s gaze sharpened, and Selene’s body remembered fear before her mind found a face.
Lucian belonged to Blood Moon history, a senior Alpha who commanded covert operations under Jackson’s predecessor. Official records claimed he died fifteen years earlier, though no body had been recovered and his portrait vanished after the Bloodwind conflict. Older warriors remembered him as disciplined and persuasive, a man who made forbidden orders sound like necessary sacrifices for pack survival.
Ethel revealed that Lucian disappeared inside institutions he helped build. The sealed report named him as the commander who ordered the heir extracted and re-registered. Later payments moved through traders connected to several packs, proving the network survived his supposed death.
Luke questioned the documents. Ethel displayed matching authorization marks across altered patrols, payment orders, and the request for a memory seal. Forging all of them required access equal to the original operation, making denial more difficult than belief.
The crime had removed Bloodwind’s succession while preserving Selene for a purpose the files did not explain. Her unusual power supplied one motive: Lucian may have intended to control the convergence after she matured rather than allowing ancestral authority to pass elsewhere. Every year of captivity had therefore been part of a waiting experiment.
His name struck a lock inside Selene’s memory. She saw cold eyes beneath a hood, a hand wearing a black-thorn ring, and sickly green light feeding the spell suppressing Lyla. The image dragged her backward until she pressed both palms against her temples.
Alexander moved toward her, but Jackson blocked him instinctively. Alexander warned that dominance no longer reached Selene through the seal. Years of forcing obedience had left Jackson without a gentler path into her trust, and the truth held him still.
Inside memory, three-year-old Selene cried behind a silver barrier. Two hidden Blood Moon officers stood beside Lucian while a map of Nightwind lay open. Symbols connected all three pack territories around a mark shaped like Selene’s future crest, proving her captivity belonged to a plan larger than succession. A spellcaster asked whether the child should be killed.
Lucian refused. Killing a guarded heir might release ancestral force into another relative; keeping Selene alive contained it within a controllable body. “Reassign her identity,” he ordered. “Seal her wolf. Make her forget until we are ready to use her.”
Adult Selene screamed that she remembered him. The scene shattered and silver power burst across the command hall, dropping guards to their knees. Ethel recognized the runes tearing away from her crest and ordered everyone to let her finish.
Jackson and Alexander both stopped when silver barriers rejected them. Selene was not reacting to mate bonds but fighting the man who imprisoned her mind. No Alpha could substitute his strength without stealing the victory from her.
The Bloodwind crest spread across her shoulders like living silver. Lyla joined the ancestral current, giving Selene enough strength to remain herself while forbidden magic broke apart. Each severed rune returned a piece of sensation, memory, or instinct Lucian had classified as dangerous. Selene felt the temptation to destroy the seal blindly, then chose precision so no trapped part of her mind was lost with it.
The ancient voice confirmed Lucian erased her and expected the seal to last until her power belonged to him. Breaking it would reveal Selene’s location, but fear no longer outweighed the right to own her consciousness.
Selene’s eyes opened fully silver. “I will find him.” Her voice traveled through the manor with an heir’s authority. Jackson immediately ordered her to remain inside Blood Moon while an enemy hunted her.
“You do not command me anymore.” The words shattered the assumption that a mate bond made Selene his subject. Jackson’s wolf recoiled, while Alexander understood that his connection would also survive only if it met her as an equal.
Ethel confirmed Lucian was alive. Intelligence placed him inside Nightwind territory under false identities, protected by political allies. Witnesses reported the black-thorn ring near remote council estates, but each disappeared before speaking publicly.
Alexander remembered blocked investigations, advisers urging distance from Bloodwind, and patrol reports altered before reaching his desk. If Lucian manipulated all three packs, even the strange timing of Selene’s bonds might belong to an unfinished design.
An explosion struck the manor’s lower level. Windows shattered in the eastern passage, alarms rose, and scorched wolfsbane entered the vents. Servants screamed as emergency doors sealed, while guards received conflicting orders through compromised communication stones. The attackers crossed a fortified border too quickly to be ordinary rogues, proving someone inside the estate had assisted them.
Lyla sensed charms hiding disciplined wolves loyal to Bloodwind’s enemy. Alexander and Jackson moved to shield Selene, but she raised one hand. Their concern was reasonable; locking her away because of it would repeat Lucian’s logic.
“I survived his work for fifteen years. I will not hide because he finally sees me.” Selene walked toward the explosions with silver power gathering at each step. Guards moved aside as the three Alphas followed, realizing they were no longer protecting a helpless servant—they were struggling to keep pace with the heir Lucian had failed to erase.
