Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 48
Sabine’s claim turned both mate bonds painfully sharp. Jackson’s wolf surged with outraged certainty, while Alexander became so still that gold burned around his pupils. Selene felt their reactions through connections that had shaped her life, yet origin had suddenly become another weapon pointed at everything she trusted.
She refused to ask which bond was false. Sabine had offered that question because either answer would force Selene to measure two complicated men by the authority of a hidden system. “Show evidence,” she said. “Your confidence is not proof.”
Approval flickered across Sabine’s face. She praised Selene for resisting emotional pressure as if the response belonged to a successful training sequence. The satisfaction made Selene’s skin crawl more than open hostility would have.
Elara stepped between Sabine and the sleeping vessels. Her former mentor looked exactly as she had two decades earlier, preserved by stolen life patterns while her patients aged in captivity. “You promised the network would heal damaged bonds,” Elara said. “You never told us you planned to create them.”
Sabine corrected her. She had not created love, loyalty, or desire; she had engineered recognition and allowed ordinary attachment to form around it. One Alpha was selected for proximity, the other for power, ensuring Selene would remain protected between two territories while conflict pushed her Anchor toward awakening.
Jackson’s shame crossed the bond before he could hide it. If his connection had been manufactured, then the instinct he used to justify secrecy and possession had never been sacred. Selene answered the thought without mercy or cruelty. “A bond did not make you mistreat me. You chose that.”
He accepted the judgment. “And whatever created the bond did not make me change afterward.” His voice stayed steady despite the possibility that fate had never promised him anything. “If every supernatural thread disappears tonight, what I owe you remains.”
Alexander faced the same uncertainty differently. He reminded Sabine that his wolf sensed Selene before he entered Blood Moon and before any physical contact could activate an ordinary imprint. Sabine smiled and said distance had been the point; the strongest Alpha in the country needed to believe fate itself had summoned him.
Neris moved toward the vault controls, using her Counter-Anchor sight to inspect the bond records. Sabine tried to command her by the name Nerissa. Neris did not slow. “You studied the body before I existed. That does not make you my mother.”
The records divided into natural lunar signatures and architect modifications, but Sabine had encrypted the identity attached to each path. Revealing it required Selene to sever one bond permanently. Governance displayed the choice with false neutrality, already preparing to classify whichever man she rejected as an unnecessary safeguard.
Selene ordered the system to audit Sabine instead. The request struck an origin restriction: founding architects could not be investigated by a derivative consciousness. Sabine had built immunity into the same network that evaluated everyone else.
“That is why Lucian could never replace me,” Sabine said. Behind her, he regained consciousness and pulled uselessly against silver restraints. Hatred passed between mentor and student, revealing an alliance based on dependence rather than loyalty.
Lucian admitted he had corrupted Sabine’s system to escape her predictions. Every cruel experiment was his attempt to produce a consciousness she could not model. Selene had succeeded, but Sabine intended to absorb the result and restore control at a scale Lucian had only imitated.
The sleeping vessels began convulsing as Sabine redirected power from their chambers. Their stolen life patterns sustained her preserved body and encrypted the mate-bond evidence. Any attack on her would now drain the prisoners first.
Selene spread her awareness across the vault. She could not free hundreds of people at once without exposing herself to Sabine’s waiting consciousness, but local rescue teams were already connected through the distributed rule. She sent each team one chamber sequence and let them adapt rather than controlling every movement herself.
Glass opened in waves. Healers caught weakened bodies while Neris guided disoriented minds toward their own names. Sabine’s calm finally fractured when collective action solved a problem she designed to require a single ruler.
She activated the dual-bond containment protocol. Silver hooks buried themselves in both connections, forcing Jackson and Alexander to experience every injury the other had caused Selene. Jackson staggered beneath years of remembered humiliation, while Alexander felt the cold isolation of every moment his protection became pressure.
Selene tried to close the bonds, but Sabine used the resistance to tighten them around the Alphas’ hearts. The system demanded that she identify the authentic mate. Choosing correctly would spare one man; refusing would allow both bond channels to become fatal.
Jackson looked at Alexander across the rising light. Rivalry urged each wolf to prove himself, exactly as Sabine expected. Instead, Alexander asked Selene what she needed, and Jackson repeated the question without trying to answer first.
Before Selene could respond, one encrypted bond record opened by itself. It showed Jackson’s heartbeat failing as the containment hooks claimed the connection marked original. The evidence appeared too conveniently, yet the pain crashing through Selene’s bond was terrifyingly real. Sabine smiled at her horror, confident that urgency would succeed where persuasion had failed. “There is your proof,” she said. “Cut Alexander’s manufactured bond now, or the mate fate truly chose for you will die.”
