📖 The Story Continues
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Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 5
News of Alexander Kane’s acceptance swept through Blood Moon faster than any official announcement. Servants whispered in the kitchens, warriors repeated it across the training yard, and council members appeared early for meetings they normally avoided. Nightwind was not sending an envoy. Its Alpha was coming himself.
Jackson stared at the formal card on his desk as though another explanation might emerge from the embossed lines. Alexander rarely crossed another pack’s border without political purpose, and Blood Moon had no alliance with Nightwind. “What exactly does he want?” Jackson asked, hearing warning where everyone else heard prestige.
Luke suggested Alexander might simply be attending an engagement celebration. Jackson gave him a flat look. Moving an elite convoy hundreds of miles required planning, security, and a reason more compelling than cake. Beyond the window, workers raised a ceremonial arch that suddenly looked less like a triumph and more like a stage for an unknown confrontation.
The Beta offered a more flattering possibility. Blood Moon had doubled its territory, secured valuable trade routes, and strengthened its warriors during Jackson’s rule. Perhaps the strongest Alpha in the country had finally begun to see them as competition worth observing.
Pride eased Jackson’s suspicion. He had spent years forcing older packs to take Blood Moon seriously, and the thought of impressing Alexander satisfied him more than admitting unease. “You think he’s worried?” he asked. Luke wisely answered that Alexander was at least interested.
When Luke laughed at Jackson’s concern over a guest list, a pen flew across the desk. The Beta ducked, still grinning, until Jackson assigned him responsibility for the entire celebration—security, lodging, banquet, ceremony, and every moment of Alexander’s visit.
Luke’s amusement vanished. The party fell on his eighteenth birthday, a day Jackson had promised him away from duty so he could welcome his mature wolf without council work. Jackson rejected every protest and called the punishment leadership, enjoying the complaint more than any dignified Alpha should.
Luke started toward the door muttering about tyranny, then stopped. Humor left his face as he remembered another eighteenth birthday approaching inside the same house. “Does Selene still not know?” he asked quietly.
The question erased Jackson’s satisfaction. He looked toward the servants’ wing beyond the forest and allowed silence to answer first. “No.” The word came reluctantly because Luke was one of the few wolves who knew the truth—and the only one willing to challenge him about hiding it.
“You need to tell her,” Luke said. Jackson called the situation complicated, but his Beta refused the excuse. “Only because you made it complicated. Selene is your mate.” The sacred word settled through the office, exposing a secret Jackson had buried beneath years of contempt.
Every werewolf understood the mate bond as the Moon Goddess’s highest choice: one soul recognized by another, one scent a wolf could never mistake, and one connection powerful enough to reorder a life. Somehow, Jackson’s fated mate was the orphan his pack treated as a servant.
He had first sensed the bond years earlier during an accidental encounter, long before Selene’s wolf should have been able to answer. The impossible recognition embarrassed him, so he questioned it, ignored it, and ordered Luke to remain silent when the Beta witnessed his reaction.
Selene did not resemble the Luna Jackson had imagined. She possessed no known family, status, or wolf, and influential pack members mocked her openly. Claiming her would invite questions about his judgment and force him to confront every humiliation Blood Moon had allowed beneath his authority.
Luke reminded him that her birthday would awaken the bond whether he confessed or not. Selene would feel what he concealed and understand he had watched her suffer while knowing fate connected them. Jackson could command silence from his Beta, but not from the power already moving beneath her skin.
His wolf had become harder to restrain with each passing day. It bristled at the bruise on Selene’s cheek, tracked her scent through crowded halls, and surged whenever she challenged him. Jackson told himself the response was possession, because admitting fear felt worse—especially the fear that Selene might learn the truth and reject him.
Across the territory, Selene carried boxes of decorations into the great hall. No one had told her the engagement celebration fell on her eighteenth birthday. To Blood Moon, the coincidence meant only that the servant reaching adulthood would be available for more work.
She climbed a ladder and fastened silver ribbon along the balcony while workers debated Alexander’s reputation below. Some claimed he could silence a council with one glance; others insisted he had never lost a challenge. Each repetition of his name stirred the strange warmth beneath Selene’s ribs.
The sensation swelled until her fingers locked around the railing. Her heartbeat stumbled, then matched a deeper rhythm from impossibly far away. Through the noise of hammers and conversation, a male voice brushed the edge of her mind—low, powerful, and somehow familiar.
Coming. The single word carried no threat, yet Selene nearly lost her balance as longing and danger moved through her together. She did not know the voice belonged to Alexander, or that another mate bond was already hidden in the Alpha office behind her.
Hundreds of miles away, Alexander opened his golden eyes as his wolf surged toward Blood Moon. By the next evening, he would stand inside Jackson’s territory searching for the woman fate called his mate. Selene’s eighteenth birthday was about to expose that two Alphas carried the same sacred claim—and neither pack was prepared for what her choice might destroy.
