The Cursed Alpha's Substitute Bride

I found Kael at dawn in the east courtyard running drills with two of the younger pack soldiers.

He saw me coming and dismissed them with a single gesture. They scattered with the practiced speed of men who had learned not to be present when the Beta had private business.

He stood in the cold morning with his arms loose at his sides and waited for me to reach him with the patience of a man who had already anticipated this conversation.

"You already know," I said, when I was close enough. He didn't pretend otherwise.

"I suspected," he said. "Since your third day here. The way the curse responded to you wasn't proximity sensitivity. I've seen that before. It was recognition. The magic knew what you were before either of you did."

"How long have you known about Bloodanchors?" I asked.

"I've studied everything connected to this curse for three years," he said. "Bloodanchors appear in the oldest texts. I didn't think any still existed. The last confirmed one died forty years ago."

"My mother."

His expression went still. Not surprise. Adjustment. The recalibration of someone adding a piece to a puzzle that suddenly made three other pieces make sense.

"Your mother was Maren Ashveil," he said slowly.

"Maren of the Vael bloodline," I chipped in. "Ashveil was my father's name. She kept it when she married him. Aldric told me last night."

Kael was quiet for a long moment. In the pale early light of the courtyard, with frost still

on the stones beneath our feet, he had the look of a man rapidly restructuring everything he thought he understood about the situation he had been managing for three years.

"Does he know?" I asked. "Caius."

"No."

"I need to tell him." I said.

"I know," Kael said. "But not while Vex is still inside these walls. If Vex overhears anything - if he sends word to Zoran before Caius has time to process what you are and what it

means, Zoran will move immediately. He'll send more than an envoy next time."

"How do we get Vex out?" I asked in a frustrated manner.

Kael almost smiled. It was a small one, barely a movement, the ghost of an expression that hadn't fully committed because he tried hard not to. But I caught it.

"Caius will handle Vex," he said. "He's been looking for a reason to remove him since he

arrived. I'll give him one this morning."

"What reason?" I asked.

"Vex was in the east library corridor at midnight last night," Kael replied. "Outside your door."

Cold moved through my body instantly. Almost giving me goosebumps.

"He was watching my room?!" I shot back

"Documenting," Kael said. "He has a small recording device - an enchanted parchment that copies what it observes. He's been feeding information to Zoran daily since he arrived.

The door to your room, the mark on your neck..."

"He saw the mark?!" I asked profusely.

"Through the gap under your door when the firelight caught it as you moved," Kael said.

"Yes. Zoran knows about the mark."

Silence. I breathed through it carefully.

"Then Zoran already knows what I might be right?" I asked confused.

"Well, he knows you carry a partial mating mark from a cursed Alpha and that the curse

behaves differently around you," Kael said. "He doesn't have the word Bloodanchor yet.

But he's close enough that it doesn't matter."

I looked up at the east wing windows. Somewhere up there, Dorian Vex was probably already at his enchanted parchment, recording the sight of me and Kael talking in the courtyard.

"Get him out today!" I fumed.

"Agreed" Kael said warmly. I shall try and handle it. He moved past me toward the main entrance then he stopped.

"For what it's worth," he added, without turning around, "what was meted out to you - the suppression, the years of it, that's not something any of us will pretend didn't happen. Not in this house. Not anymore."

I stared at his back while he walked away.

*In three years of Ironveil, I would later learn, Kael had never said anything like that to

anyone.*

He walked away before I could respond. Which was probably, I thought, exactly the

point.

He saw to it that Vex was escorted from the estate by midday.

I didn't see it happen. I heard it through voices in the main entrance hall, Caius's low cold tone that needed no volume to carry, Vex's smooth reply that was several degrees less smooth than usual. A door. Silence.

Pip came to the library door twenty minutes later with the expression of someone

delivering very good news. Smiling. Giggling.

"He's finally gone," Pip sighed. "Left without his bags. Someone's sending them after him. The Alpha told him that the next time a Greyveil envoy crosses Ironveil's border without formal invitation, they won't be leaving on their own feet."

"What did Vex say?" I inquired.

"He just...smiled" Pip replied. Which was somehow the most frightening possible answer. "And then he left."

A man who smiled when he was expelled knew something you didn't. That smile was a message - not to Caius, not to Kael.

But to me.

We will meet again, that smile said.

And next time I will not be asking.