The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 57: The Desperate Act

🔹️THORNE

I watched her grip tighten around the shard and the bond screamed for me to stop her. Despite what she had done—it was instinctual.

"I am only making you choose." She smirked. "Me or Seraphina."

As her name slipped out of her mouth, I took a step forward before I realized I had moved. I barely registered anything else, my focus narrowed until there was only her—ashen, defiant. She turned fully toward me.

"Don’t you dare utter her name."

Althea’s chin raised. "She is the reason you hesitate. The reason you keep me at arm’s length while the bond pulls you apart from the inside. You want me."

I grit my teeth as my decision settled into my chest. "I will never claim you. You will never have me."

Her face crumbled, pain bleeding through as she spat, "You are a fucking liar." She pressed the shard deeper, blood flowing.

Instinctively, shadows whipped out and grabbed her. One tendril snapped the shard away from her grasp as the others lifted her off the floor. But her smile remained there, eyes hazy like she was not even fully here.

Past the infuriation, confusion seeped through. What the hell was even going on? This always happened whenever I left her alone. Was this another work of the traitor? And if it was them, what was the end goal? How had she even gotten here, past the guards?

I faced the gammas, the guards I had placed at her door. "Was she responsible? Did you see her do this?" I demanded.

The four men stepped out, shaking. "Alpha, we saw her do this before we could stop her—"

"I put you all in charge of watching her!" I roared, the remaining shadows ripping loose like serpents. "How did she escape?"

"She used magic. We underestimated her."

Impossible! I wanted to counter—but I remembered she could kill gammas of her own pack. So it was not off the table for her. She could escape guards if she wanted to. Still, doubt was an incessant pulse at the base of my spine, telling me that there was more to—

"You are mine, Thorne Vargan," she declared.

I froze, turning back to face her, and till now she had that self-satisfied, knowing smile on her lips. "You cannot deny it. You lied to yourself for so long. You were never going to reject me."

My jaw clenched so hard I felt my teeth threaten to crack.

"You’ve been fighting it," she continued, her voice taking on a singsong quality that grated against everything I knew of her. "Fighting us. But deep down, you know. You’ve always known."

"What are you doing?" The words came out strangled, raw.

"I’m setting you free," she said, almost gently. "From her. From duty. From all the excuses you’ve built to keep me at a distance."

Her eyes gleamed but it was not with tears, not with fear, but with something wrong.

Something that didn’t belong in the woman who’d flinched so many times

The woman who had wrapped my wounds. The woman who’d whispered it’s for the best when I told her we shouldn’t be bonded.

"This isn’t you," I said, and the certainty of it settled in my bones.

Her smile widened. "How would you know? You’ve barely looked at me. You’ve kept me locked away, dismissed me, told me I’m nothing—"

"Because you were terrified," I snarled. "You could barely stand in the same room as me without shaking. You agreed we shouldn’t be bonded. You—"

"Maybe I was tired of being afraid," she interrupted. "Maybe I decided to take what’s mine."

The shadows around her tightened, lifting her higher as I closed the distance between us in three strides.

My hand shot out, wrapping around her throat but bI could not for the life of me squeeze. All I could do was hold her as I slammed her back against the stone wall.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I demanded, my face inches from hers. "Why are you doing this?"

For just a moment—a flicker, for a damn heartbeat—something shifted in her eyes and I could have sworn the haze cleared.

Her shoulder slumped, the tension bleeding out of her frame as if someone had cut her strings.

Her lips parted, and I saw her—the real her, the one drowning beneath whatever this was.

"I—" she started, her voice small, broken, real.

"Who would do this?!" The shriek tore through the memorial hall like a blade.

Ivanka.

She stood at the entrance, her face a mask of horror and rage, her hands trembling as she took in the destruction. "Who would desecrate the Witch Luna’s memorial?!" she wailed, her voice rising to a fever pitch.

And just like that—the light in Althea’s eyes died. The haze returned, thick and impenetrable, swallowing whatever had been surfacing. Her lips curved back into that wrong, knowing smile. "Choose," she said, her voice flat, detached. "Me or the memory of a dead woman."

"Talk to me," I growled, my grip tightening just enough to keep her focused on me, to pull her back from wherever she’d gone. "Althea—"

She laughed, sharping and laced with mockery. Nothing like the broken sounds I’d heard from her before.

"You’re already falling," she said, her eyes locked on mine with unnerving intensity. "Look at you. Begging me to explain. Desperate to understand. You can’t even see what’s right in front of you."

"What I see," I bit out, "is someone using you. Controlling you. Because this—" I gestured to the wreckage around us, to her bloodied throat, to the wrongness radiating from her, "—this is not you."

Her smile sharpened. "You don’t know me well enough to say that."

"I know enough." My conviction stunned me.

"Do you?" She tilted her head, the movement too fluid, too deliberate. "You know I’m broken. Scared. Weak. An omega who couldn’t even keep her own pack from destroying her. But maybe—" her voice dropped, honeyed and venomous, "—maybe that was all an act. Maybe I’ve been playing you from the beginning."

"Stop," I drawled.