Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 26
The explosion from Blood Moon Manor’s lower level shattered the remaining celebration windows and shook dust from the rafters. Selene did not wait for orders. Silver energy traced the Bloodwind crest beneath her skin as she moved toward the smoke with the authority of an heir no longer trained to disappear.
Guards who once ignored her opened a path. Some looked ashamed as they recognized the servant they once ordered now carried the strongest authority in the corridor. Jackson, Alexander, and Ethel followed without taking the lead, although their wolves strained toward danger. The assault answered Selene’s awakening; whoever breached the manor had come for the truth she recovered.
Jackson warned her not to go alone. Selene reminded him that she had been alone for fifteen years. “If you want to help, walk beside me instead of deciding where I’m allowed to go.” He accepted the boundary despite every protective instinct urging command.
Alexander detected magic matching the broken memory seal, while Ethel warned that Lucian rarely acted with only one objective. Lyla growled at the name. Selene expanded her senses through the crest, finding scorched wolfsbane, concealed blood, and Alpha-level pressure below.
They reached a lower chamber whose reinforced door had been blasted inward. Darkness filled the room beyond, broken by sparks and one emergency lamp. A masked figure stood calmly at the center, surrounded by destruction arranged with unnerving precision.
Support columns remained intact, but every communication line and security charm had been severed. The intruder had known the room’s construction and disabled only what blocked access to deeper levels. Even the explosions had pushed debris away from the concealed floor seal rather than damaging it. Luke ordered guards to search for a second team, exactly as the masked wolf appeared to expect.
Jackson demanded identification. A controlled laugh answered while scent-distortion spells hid pack allegiance. Alexander confirmed the intruder was not Nightwind, and Ethel recognized the posture of an officer trained during the old Bloodwind conflict.
Selene stepped into the light and let her crest glow. “You crossed the wall for me. Stop pretending otherwise.” The mask tilted before the intruder called her an experiment that had finally awakened.
The word reopened memories of cold hands measuring her blood while she cried for her parents. Lyla recognized the altered voice from the sealing chamber. For one breath, the adult corridor overlapped with a child’s laboratory and Selene smelled the bitter potion again. She directed anger into silver lines around her wrists rather than giving the stranger the uncontrolled reaction they expected.
She demanded a name. The intruder answered that Bloodwind had never been intended to survive in its original form. Jackson’s wolf surged, and Alexander started to shield Selene before stopping himself when she deliberately stepped around him.
Ethel studied the stranger’s favored leg and concealed left hand. The habits belonged to old Blood Moon officers or someone trained by them. His silent warning redirected Alexander’s attention from an ordinary weapon to the possibility of a spell trigger.
The intruder described them with calculated cruelty: a rejected bond refusing to break, a second mate strengthened by truth, and a father carrying a dead line. Each statement revealed knowledge no ordinary spy could gather from the manor’s public scandal.
Either Selene’s original seal continued transmitting information or an insider supplied intimate details. Tiffany crossed Jackson’s mind, followed by advisers inherited from his predecessor. The conspiracy felt less like a past crime than a living presence in every corridor.
The stranger explained that Lucian watched what his preparations made inevitable. Selene’s awakening, both bonds, and her connection to three Alphas were not accidents around an old abduction. They were pressures inside a design still advancing.
“Bloodwind was not destroyed,” the masked wolf said. “It was sealed.” The battle, false records, and Selene’s captivity had concealed something larger than the missing heir herself, and her preserved blood remained the only key capable of opening it.
Ethel remembered passages from forbidden Bloodwind histories. During early territorial wars, their Wardens bound dangerous magic beneath contested lands. Those seals had protected human settlements as well as wolf territories, though later generations remembered only the danger. The sites responded only to royal heirs and were omitted from modern maps to prevent conquest.
If Blood Moon Manor stood over one of those sites, the enemy had chosen this territory for more than Selene’s imprisonment. The pack built its power directly above something Bloodwind once swore to contain, using wards its leaders did not understand.
The ground trembled. A pulse rose from beneath the manor, old and heavy enough to drive unprepared guards to their knees. Dust spiraled upward instead of falling, revealing that ordinary physical laws were already bending around the seal. The masked wolf whispered that it was waking, while Ethel went pale at magic that should not have survived intact.
The floor split to reveal stairs descending through silver darkness. Jackson caught Selene’s wrist and refused to let her go down; Alexander argued they needed to follow the signal. Their opposite answers still presumed the decision belonged to them.
Selene pulled free. “I am not asking.” Ethel followed first, choosing presence over permission, and both Alphas came behind him. As they descended, the masked intruder vanished—and far below, an ancient force opened its eyes and recognized the Bloodwind heir returning to its prison.
