Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 10
Silence held the ballroom after Selene stepped away from the two Alphas. Elders exchanged alarmed glances while younger wolves leaned forward, fascinated by a scandal no one dared name. A servant stood between Jackson Richford and Alexander Kane, and both men watched her as though the engagement celebration had ceased to exist.
Selene wanted the nearest corridor to swallow her. Instead, hundreds of eyes pinned her beneath the lantern light while Lyla paced inside her mind. The wolf’s exhilaration had changed into unease, her attention darting between two connections pulling through Selene’s chest.
The bonds were becoming unstable. Before Lyla could explain, pain tore through Selene’s heart and turned the ballroom into streaks of light. Her knees buckled, and both Alphas moved before anyone else understood she was falling.
Jackson caught her arm first while Alexander closed the distance from the other side. The simultaneous response sent a fresh shock through the crowd. When Jackson’s fingers tightened around Selene’s wrist, silver light flashed beneath her skin.
The glow traveled from his hand toward her heart, intimate and brutal in its clarity. Gasps swept the room as mature wolves recognized a newly awakened mate bond. Jackson released Selene as if burned, but the Moon Goddess had already dragged his secret into public view.
Mate moved through the guests in whispers. The wolfless servant they had mocked for years possessed a sacred connection to the Alpha whose engagement they were celebrating. Council members stared at Jackson, recalculating every policy, rumor, and future alliance built around Tiffany.
Across the ballroom, Tiffany lost all color. Old moments rearranged themselves with merciless precision: Jackson watching Selene when he thought no one noticed, ending punishments before they became fatal, and refusing other mating proposals without explanation. His contempt had concealed a truth he valued more than Tiffany’s pride.
“She’s his mate,” Tiffany whispered. The girl she humiliated was no longer a disposable rival for attention but the woman fate had chosen for Jackson. Public embarrassment had made Tiffany cruel before; the destruction of the future she expected promised something far more dangerous.
Jackson’s wolf battered against his control, repeating mine with possessive fury. Fear of Alexander and the rejection he planned made the animal nearly impossible to restrain. Jackson refused to claim Selene before the same pack he had taught to consider her beneath him.
Alexander watched the visible bond without surrendering his own certainty. Selene’s scent, the warmth across hundreds of miles, and the pull that led him east all aligned. One wolf should not possess two fated mates, yet every instinct insisted the connection between them was real.
“Are you hurt?” Alexander asked. His voice softened in a way that startled wolves accustomed to stories of his ruthlessness. He stopped within reach without touching Selene, offering space where Jackson had imposed contact.
Selene looked up, and warmth soothed the pain Jackson’s hand had ignited. Safety and recognition settled through her while the crowded hall faded at the edges. Alexander felt the same answer strike through him with absolute force: she was the mate he had waited years to find.
Jackson stepped between them. “She’s fine.” His body blocked Alexander’s view, as though rank and position could erase the connection. Alexander’s golden eyes cooled when he asked whether Selene was truly fine, and nearby guests retreated from the power gathering around both men.
Selene straightened without Jackson’s help. Her wrist still glowed faintly, making privacy impossible. Lyla tested the shape of the two bonds and admitted both were present, though they did not feel the same. Neither difference nor destiny gave either Alpha permission to turn Selene’s pain into a contest.
A glass struck a table. Tiffany called for everyone to calm down, wearing a smile too rigid to convince anyone. Her gaze remained fixed on Selene with the cold concentration of a predator selecting where to strike, while Jackson deliberately looked away from the danger.
Beta Luke approached through the unsettled crowd. His expression warned that the night had produced another complication. When Jackson demanded to know what else could possibly happen, Luke lowered his voice and announced that the Bloodwind delegation had arrived.
“Alpha Ethel is here.” Alexander turned toward the entrance. The grieving father had refused to wait for Nightwind’s investigation and followed the same hunger for answers that sustained him for fifteen years. Only a few feet away stood the daughter he believed lost.
The name meant nothing to Selene, yet Lyla became abruptly still. An older magic approached through the ballroom doors, carried in the blood of a powerful wolf. It felt neither like Jackson’s bond nor Alexander’s, but like a memory Selene’s body had preserved beyond conscious thought.
Ethel entered with two Bloodwind guards. His gaze crossed Jackson, paused on Alexander, and continued through the gathering with the habit of a father who searched every unfamiliar crowd. Then Selene turned, and moonlight revealed the shape of her eyes and stubborn lift of her chin.
Fifteen years vanished from Ethel’s face. Selene had her mother’s eyes and the same defiant expression preserved in the portrait above his fireplace. His wolf roared awake as their gazes locked, and for the first time since his daughter disappeared, Ethel wondered whether the child he had mourned was standing directly before him.
