The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 21: Choice

🔹THORNE

Ivanka stepped forward, her voice sharp and cutting. "The betrothal stands. It has always stood. This... creature... is nothing but a knot in the threads of fate, something twisted and wrong that needs to be cut away before it tangles everything we’ve built."

I went still, my wolf snarling beneath my skin at the presumption, at the audacity of them speaking as if they had any claim over what the Moon had decided. "The betrothal," I said flatly, "was made by our grandmothers. Not by me. Not by the Moon."

It had always been my duty.

I can not love.

"And yet it binds," Ivanna said, her voice steady again, controlled. "Just as strongly as any mate bond. Perhaps stronger, because it was chosen with strategy and wisdom instead of left to the whims of fate." She took a step closer, her hazel eyes fixed on where she thought mine were behind the cloth. "She walked through the Red Mist without an amulet, Thorne. Every other soul who’s made it through alive wore protection—charms woven by our witches, blessings carved into bone and silver. But she didn’t. She survived naked and unprotected, and that’s not luck. That’s something else."

"She didn’t die from your eyes," Ivanka added, her tone pointed. "The fire that burns through lesser wolves, that turns them to ash where they stand—she looked at you and lived. She’s already sleeping in a comfortable bed, eating our food, being treated like a guest instead of the prisoner she is." Her lip curled with disgust. "What ease will change next? What protocol will be altered for the devil’s spawn? How much of our security, our traditions, our very identity will we sacrifice at the altar of a mate bond that should never have been allowed to form?"

Ivanna’s voice dropped, becoming something softer but no less dangerous. "Uma is agitated," she said, and I knew she meant her wolf. "She can feel something is not as it seems about that woman. Something wrong, something twisted. So yes, I gave her poison. Not to murder her—though that would have been a mercy this clan deserved—but to give her a choice. To see if she had the courage to spare us all the destruction she’ll bring, or if she’s as much of a coward as her bloodline suggests."

She paused, letting that sink in.

"She didn’t drink it," Ivanna continued, her tone hardening again. "Instead, she decided to play the victim. To run to you crying about how she was being mistreated, how she was being threatened, knowing full well you’d react exactly as you have—protecting her, defending her, treating her like she matters." Her voice turned sharp as a blade. "She shares a mate bond with you and can do magic tricks with silver moths, and suddenly we’re supposed to forget what her mother did? Forget that Morgana would never afford one of our kind the same mercy?"

Ivanka’s voice rose, passionate and furious. "If one of us had been dragged into Hollowhowl’s dungeons, do you think Morgana would have hesitated? Do you think she would have given us comfortable beds and hot meals and protection from her subordinates? No. She would have tortured us. Broken us. Killed us slowly and enjoyed every moment of it." Her hands clenched into fists. "And now her daughter is here, in our home, wrapped in your protection because of some cosmic joke the Moon decided to play. It’s an insult, Thorne. To your mother’s memory. To everything we’ve fought for."

Silence fell heavy in the room, thick enough to choke on.

Nyx shifted on my shoulder, her talons digging in slightly, and through her eyes I could see both women standing rigid, waiting for my response, believing they were justified in everything they’d said and done.

My wolf was snarling, furious at the challenge to what was mine, at the suggestion that the mate bond could be ignored or dismissed. But beneath the fury was something colder, something that recognized the truth in their words even if I hated hearing it.

They weren’t wrong about Morgana.

They weren’t wrong about the danger.

They weren’t wrong about what this looked like to the clan—their Alpha protecting the daughter of the woman who’d murdered his mother, all because fate had decided to bind them together with a bond neither of them wanted.

But they were wrong about one thing.

"The betrothal," I said quietly, my voice carrying a finality that made both women go still, "was never set in stone. Childhood promises made by grandmothers who wanted to secure alliances, nothing more. It was never formalized. Never consummated. Never blessed by the Moon."

I paused, letting that settle between us like a blade.

"And now the Moon has spoken," I continued, my tone flat and devoid of emotion. "Whether I wanted it or not, whether any of us wanted it or not, Althea is mate-bonded to me. That makes her the biggest lead we have on the Silvermoth, on Morgana’s network, on the inner workings of the Allied Packs." I leaned forward slightly, letting the weight of my authority fill the space between us. "I will not let anything happen to her. Not you, not the council, not even she herself can change that. No one touches her but me. Because regardless of how I feel about it, she is my mate, and that bond makes her mine to protect, mine to interrogate, mine to use as I see fit."

I straightened, my voice hardening.

"Attempting to kill her is treason. Not because I want her. Not because I care about her. But because she is the one asset we have that Morgana will come for, that the Allied Packs will negotiate for, that the High Alpha has already branded as his." My jaw tightened behind the mask. "And I will be damned if I let anyone waste that advantage because they couldn’t control their personal grudges."

Ivanna’s face went pale, her carefully maintained composure finally cracking completely.

"You would choose her over me?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Over everything we were supposed to be?"

As though I was ever given a choice.

"I’m not choosing her over you," I said, and my voice was colder now, stripped of anything that might be mistaken for sentiment. "I’m making a strategic decision. She is leverage. She is information. She is a weapon we can use against the people who have enslaved and murdered our kind for generations." I paused, and when I spoke again, my tone was quieter but no less final. "The bond complicates that. It means I can’t kill her, can’t let her die, can’t risk losing the one connection we have to everything we need to destroy. That’s not a choice, Ivanna. That’s a burden fate decided to place on me, and I will carry it because that’s what it means to lead."

I stood, and both women took an involuntary step back.

"You will not touch her again," I said, my voice dropping to something cold and lethal. "You will not speak to her, look at her, or come within ten feet of her unless I explicitly command it. And if I find out you’ve tried to harm her again—through poison, through manipulation, through any means whatsoever—I will strip you of your rank and exile you from this clan." I paused, letting that sink in. "Do you understand me, Delta Weiss?" 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Ivanna’s jaw clenched, her hazel eyes blazing with fury and hurt and something that looked dangerously close to betrayal. But she nodded, sharp and stiff.

"Yes, Alpha."

"Good," I said. "Now get out."

They left, Ivanka’s rage palpable in every rigid line of her body, Ivanna’s face blank once more but her hands trembling slightly at her sides.

The door closed, and I was alone again with Nyx and the echo of words I couldn’t take back.

The betrothal was void.

Althea was mine.

And I had just declared war on everyone who would stand in the way of that truth.

Even if I hated her.

Even if I wanted nothing more than to see her suffer for what her mother had done.

The mate bond had claimed me, and there was no escaping it now.

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