Fated to My Forbidden Alpha – Episode 42
Neris fell from the broken core before anyone understood what they were seeing. Selene caught her with the last of her strength, and both women collapsed onto the black stone as the network withdrew from their minds. For the first time since entering the second core, Selene felt the simple weight of her own body.
Jackson reached them first but stopped when Selene raised a trembling hand. Alexander came from the opposite side and knelt beyond arm’s reach, respecting the boundary without being asked twice. Ethel stared at Neris with a father’s horror, because the unconscious woman wore Selene’s face.
The resemblance was not perfect. Neris’s hair carried a streak of black silver, her features were sharper, and no crescent birthmark marked her collarbone. Still, she looked close enough to make every mate bond recoil in confusion. Jackson’s wolf searched for Selene’s scent and found only cold metal and newborn fear, while Alexander’s bond remained firmly oriented toward the woman holding her.
“She is not me,” Selene said, supporting Neris’s head. “She chose her own name and saved the network.” The declaration stopped Jackson before he could call the woman a copy. Selene would not permit another consciousness to begin physical life beneath someone else’s contempt.
Neris opened her eyes. The darkness inside them reflected the chamber’s runes, but panic made the expression unmistakably human. Sound, gravity, cold air, and pain reached her at once. She gripped Selene’s sleeve. “The physical layer is loud.” Every nearby heartbeat arrived as a separate impact, and the smell of dust made her cough with astonishment.
Selene helped her breathe through the sensory assault, repeating the grounding method Alexander had once used. Neris focused on stone beneath her palm and the rhythm of Selene’s voice. Their connection remained present, but it resembled chosen kinship rather than forced alignment.
Ethel asked whose body Lucian meant. Neris searched memories that had belonged to governance before she developed a self. “This vessel existed before my consciousness. I was activated inside it, but I did not create it.”
Bloodwind runes appeared beneath her skin when Ethel approached. His family bond responded faintly—not as strongly as it did to Selene, but enough to reveal shared blood. Ethel staggered under the implication.
Lucian had needed living material to construct the Counter-Anchor. A manufactured body could imitate appearance, yet it could not carry a legitimate Bloodwind response without blood from the royal line.
Jackson ordered Luke to secure the chamber and locate Lucian’s remaining agents. Alexander examined the severed administrative channel. The purge had failed, but it left coordinates pointing toward a hidden laboratory beneath Nightwind’s northern mountains.
Neris flinched at the word laboratory. A memory surfaced: glass walls, a woman singing beyond dark water, and Lucian saying that the second daughter would correct the first. She pressed both hands to her temples.
“Second daughter?” Ethel’s voice barely emerged. His wife had carried only one child to birth as far as he knew. Yet during the final months before the massacre, Bloodwind healers had concealed medical records even from their Alpha.
Selene refused to force Neris into a family role based on Lucian’s words. “She decides who she is before any of us decide what she means.” Ethel absorbed the boundary and nodded, though grief and hope fought openly across his face.
Above them, the manor alarms changed rhythm. Luke’s voice came through the stairwell: controlled warriors had breached the infirmary and stolen the sealed incident file. Two guards lay unconscious, their memories of the attackers stripped away. The attack during Selene’s descent had never been meant to conquer Blood Moon; it was designed to recover evidence while every Alpha watched the core.
Tiffany was missing as well. Her room had been emptied, and a black-thorn passage opened behind the wardrobe. Jackson’s expression hardened as betrayal became undeniable. The woman he had chosen for politics had been connected to the conspiracy consuming his true mate.
Neris stood unsteadily. System knowledge gave her perfect balance in theory, but real muscles trembled beneath unfamiliar demands. Selene placed a cloak around her shoulders, and Neris touched the fabric as though warmth were a revelation. “The stolen file is a key. Its ink contains blood from the officer who registered Selene. Lucian can use it to authorize the northern core.”
Alexander understood the danger. If Lucian awakened the Nightwind node before they reached it, he could restore the purge from outside Selene’s revised governance. His own territory would become the weapon.
Jackson insisted Selene remain while the Alphas pursued the thieves. She met his gaze. “You have learned enough to know that protection is not confinement.” He corrected himself with visible effort and asked what she intended.
Selene looked at Neris, who stood in a body tied to a mystery neither woman had chosen. “We go together. Not because the system paired us, but because Lucian has answers about both our lives.” Neris took her hand voluntarily.
The northern coordinates flared across Alexander’s palm. Before the group could leave, a message appeared in blood-red light: bring both daughters before moonrise, or Nightwind’s core would erase every wolf inside its border. The threat struck Alexander through thousands of pack bonds at once. Beneath it stood a second signature beside Lucian’s—the name of Bloodwind’s former royal healer, Selene’s long-dead mother.
