Chapter 188

Clara leaned in slightly toward him, her aura flaring just enough to make the fine hairs on Alaric’s arms stand up.

"Tell me, wolf boy" she whispered, her voice carrying the chill of a mountain grave. "Who exactly is Selena?"

Alaric flinched at the term "wolf boy," his pride bristling for a fleeting second before the crushing weight of the two females aura forced it back down.

He looked at the witch, then toward the sink, unable to meet her white gaze. "Selena is..." He paused, his throat working as he tried to find a way to describe her that didn’t make him sound like a complete fool.

"She was the pride of the South. The daughter of the Beta, a warrior in her own right, and the girl everyone expected would lead the pack beside me."

"Beside you?," Clara echoed, her voice dripping with dry amusement. "And I suppose this ’Selena ’ was your lover? Your chosen half?"

"No," Alaric said, perhaps a bit too quickly. He looked at Clara with a desperate intensity, the mate bond flared in his eyes.

"We weren’t... it wasn’t like that. We were close, yes. We were a team. Everyone assumed the Moon would pair us, but I never claimed her. I never felt the pull until—" He stopped, his eyes darting toward Clara.

Isabella let out a scoffing laugh that cut through his frantic explanation. She set her bowl down with a deliberate clack on the marble.

"Don’t leave out the best parts, Alaric," Isabella said, her golden-red eyes mocking him. "Don’t forget to tell Clara that she’s your supposed mate. The whole pack celebrated the ’inevitability’ of you two."

Isabella leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper "And most importantly, don’t forget to tell her that Selena—the girl who left me to die in that forest,—is my dear twin sister."

The revelation hit the room like a storm. Clara’s head tilted sharply to the side, her expression shifting from boredom to interest instantly.

"Twin sister?" Clara mused, her voice low. "You have a twin? The Moon truly has a wicked sense of humor."

Alaric looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. The shame was a thick, cloying scent in the air.

To describe his "Queen B" to his actual mate—all while Isabella reminded him that the woman he had stood by was the same one who had tried to murder her own sister—was a special kind of hell.

"I didn’t know she was going to leave you there," Alaric whispered, his voice cracking. "She told us you had run away by I still came looking for you , didn’t I?"

The desperation in Alaric’s voice was palpable, a plea for some shred of redemption in a room that offered none.

He leaned toward Isabella, his hands gripping the edge of the marble island so hard the stone seemed to groan under the pressure.

"I still came looking for you, didn’t I?" he repeated, his eyes searching hers for even a flicker of the girl who once looked at him with adoration.

"When everyone else wasn’t even bothered, I was the one who went into the forbidden woods. I was the one who found you in that trap, half-frozen and barely breathing."

Isabella didn’t flinch. She watched him with a detachment that was far more devastating than anger. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

It was true—Alaric hadn’t been the one to set the trap or lure her into the shadows of the forest. He had never raised a hand against her in all their years in the South.

But as she stirred the cooling broth in her bowl, the weight of his "rescue" felt like a heavy, suffocating shroud.

"You did," Isabella acknowledged, her voice dropping to a level that made Alaric’s heart hammer against his ribs.

"You pulled me out of the dirt and carried me back to the infirmary. You were the hero for exactly one hour."

She finally looked him in the eye, the golden-red ring of her pupils glowing with an unforgiving light. "But then you let Selena tell the pack I had simply ’tripped.’ You let her tell our parents I was too weak to keep up. You rescued my body, Alaric, but you left my spirit to rot in that pack house for days afterward because you were too afraid to call a murderer by her name."

Clara shifted in her seat, her white eyes fixed on the ceiling as if she could see the strings of fate tangling above them.

"A hero who hides the crime is just a silent accomplice to the next one," she mused, her voice low and biting.

"I was trying to keep the peace!" Alaric burst out, his voice echoing in the vast kitchen. "If I had accused the Beta’s daughter—your own twin—the pack would have split. I thought I could protect you better by keeping you close, by making sure she didn’t try it again."

"Protect me?" Isabella let out a sharp laugh. "You and I both know you didn’t protect me, Alaric. You managed me. You treated me like a liability that needed to be covered up so your future as Alpha wouldn’t be ’complicated’ by the truth of your mate’s sister."

She pushed her bowl away, the sound of the ceramic sliding across the marble final and cold. "The irony is, Alaric, that you were so worried about the pack’s image that you missed the fact that the ’blemish’ you were hiding was the only royalty your line would ever see. You saved me from the forest, yes. But Lucian was the one who saved me from you."

Alaric slumped back on his stool, the fight draining out of him. The truth was a bitter pill, made worse by the fact that he could still feel the agonizing pull of the mate bond toward Clara—a woman who viewed his "heroism" as nothing more than a series of pathetic compromises.

He had spent his life trying to be the perfect heir, only to realize he had been the architect of his own isolation.