The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 101: Same Bedchamber
🦋ALTHEA
"No," he said, but his voice was rough, scraped raw as if he’d been screaming. His hands came up to cover mine, pressing them harder against his face as if he needed the contact to believe I was real. "Are you?"
"I’m fine." The lie came easily, automatic, even though my body still ached from the shift and my mind was still reeling from the memory that had surfaced—the High Alpha’s face looming over me as an infant, his voice promising things I didn’t understand. "Thal—"
"Will recover," Thorne finished, his gaze flicking briefly to the boy on the cot before returning to me. "The Crone told me. You stayed with him."
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
His hands tightened on mine, and something passed between us in the silence—gratitude, maybe, or relief, or something heavier that I didn’t have a name for.
The moment stretched, suspended like a held breath. I became acutely aware of how close we were standing, how his scent wrapped around me like smoke and cedar and something darker that made my wolf purr in satisfaction. This was dangerous. This feeling, this pull, this softness that made me want to lean into him and let him carry some of the weight I’d been shouldering alone.
I had to remember the promise I made to myself and to Zyra.
Give your body, never your heart.
I told myself I only worried because empathy was a fundamental part of what I was. I tried to convince myself I had nothing to do with the horror that had clawed at my chest as I held his limp body after the chaos had subsided.
That was just the bond, I reasoned. It was trying to pull me further into a vortex that would only spell my doom.
Again...
I should have asked him what happened. I should have demanded to know why the shadows rose, why Umbra had taken control, and what had triggered the Nightfall that harmed people he clearly loved and nearly destroyed the fortress. But the question that came out of my mouth was different, sharper, born from the memory that still burned behind my eyes.
"What do the coordinates mean?" I asked.
Thorne went still, his entire body tensing beneath my hands.
"The ones Umbra spoke," I continued, my voice gaining strength. "42° North, 19° East. What are they?"
The room went silent. It wasn’t the careful quiet of a sleeping patient, but the heavy, suffocating silence of a secret laid bare. I felt the shift in the air. Everyone in the infirmary—the healer at her worktable, the Gamma standing guard by the door, even Nyx perched on Thorne’s shoulder—turned to stare.
The others standing behind him seemed to hold their breath, as if they could imagine my question away.
They are hiding something. Something big.
"How do you know those coordinates?" Thorne’s voice was carefully controlled, but I heard the sharp edge of something dangerous beneath it.
"Because he said them," I replied, not understanding why the truth would be shocking. "Umbra. He spoke them, and then he said, ’The moon is a lie.’" I paused, watching his expression shift into something unreadable. "I know what they mean. I’ve been there."
The silence shattered.
The Zetas standing behind Thorne gasped. Ivanna’s eyes met mine briefly, widening in shock.
"You what?" one of the Zetas asked, stepping forward.
"I’ve been there," I repeated. My hands fell from Thorne’s face as I stepped back, suddenly aware of the weight of their stares. "Those coordinates mark the High Alpha’s Labyrinth. I was sent there as a tribute before I escaped into the Mist. Before you found me."
Thorne’s expression cracked, something raw and terrible bleeding through. "The Labyrinth," he whispered. It wasn’t a question. "Rowan found the Labyrinth."
"Who’s Rowan?"
"My brother," he said, and the word sounded broken. "My Beta. He’s been missing for months. Lost to the Red Mist while scouting. We thought—" He stopped, his jaw clenching. "We thought he was dead."
I looked at him, aghast. "You let him into the Mist?" 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦
Thorne took a step toward me. "It was not his first time. He always came back."
"He always seemed to know the way," the Crone added, stepping closer. "Because he was a slave longer than most. After we found him three years ago, he spent his life trying to map the Mist—to find its source, its center..."
"But there is no center," I countered. It was the Witch Luna who had cursed the empire with her dying breath. Everyone knew that.
Ivanna’s gaze grew intense, dark with suspicion. In an instant, she crossed the distance between us, her movements sharp and predatory. "You believe the lies you have been fed about your mate’s own mother," she scowled, her face hardening into something ugly. "Yet you wish to snatch the Luna throne and rule by his side. I was right about you."
She whipped around to face Thorne, her voice rising with righteous fury. "She truly believes that your mother is the reason for the Mist and its plagues! Despite everything, she holds fast to the beliefs that saw Silverfang burnt to the ground."
I opened my mouth to speak, to defend myself, to explain that I’d only ever heard one version of history and had no way of knowing it was a lie—
But I didn’t get the chance.
The temperature in the room plummeted. Not gradually, but all at once, as if someone had opened a door to the void. The shadows that had been dormant since Umbra retreated began to stir again, wisping up from the floor like smoke given sentience. Thorne didn’t move—he didn’t need to—but his presence expanded until it filled every corner of the infirmary. The weight was crushing.
"This is not the place," the Crone’s voice sliced through the tension. "And this is not a conversation to be had with anyone other than mates."
"Alice, we both know that is not true," Ivanna snapped. "Not with how entrenched she has become in the affairs of the clan."
"That is for our Alpha to decide," the Crone countered. "It is for Thorne. And they will have ample time to do just that, since they will be sleeping in the same bedchamber."
