The Cursed Alpha's Substitute Bride

He knocked on my door that evening. Caius.

I didn't know what he wanted but I had caught a glimpse of it.

Not immediately after dinner. Some time later than that. I had gone to my room and sat on the bed, crossed on my legs and done my breathing exercises the way Aldric had taught me and tried to process what had just happened in the great hall, which was significant enough that it needed processing before I could trust myself to speak to him without my voice giving something away.

Two hours after dinner. A knock came on my door - his knock, which I had learned. Three times, evenly spaced, with the controlled patience of a man who did not second-guess himself but had taught himself to pause before acting.

I paused my practice and walked to open the door.

He stood in the corridor with his hands clasped behind his back - a posture I had never seen on him before. It looked, I realized, uncertain. Not dramatically.

Just a man standing in a way that suggested he had arrived somewhere without a fully formed plan for what to do once he got there.

"I should have discussed that with you first," he began with. I looked at him for a few seconds and stepped back from the door.

He came in.

He stood in the center of my room.

In the same space Reva had occupied in her chair by my fire two weeks ago and looked at the fire instead of at me, which was the most vulnerable thing I had seen him do.

I thought about what to say because someone had to say something to avoid it being weird.

"Reva forced it," I said.

He shifted his gaze upon me.

"Reva gave me a convenient moment," he replied.

"I was going to..." He stopped. Restarted.

"The confirmation was coming. I had been arranging it. She just made waiting longer

something I wasn't willing to do." "She had forced my hand."

I processed that. Then I nodded and walked toward the fireplace.

"You were already going to confirm me?" I asked.

"Yes. Eventually." He replied.

I let out a quiet sigh.

"Before you even knew about the Bloodanchor ability?" I added.

*A pause.*

He but down on his teeth hard. So hard I saw his master muscle stick out.

"Yes," he confirmed. "I want to be clear about that. What you are doesn't change the decision. It was already made."

I nodded and looked at him again. Then I asked "are you sure it's genuine or because you have something to gain from this?"

He exhaled slowly like he was holding back something. Then he replied "whether it's genuine or not, I have to this for a greater cause."

I smiled and took note of this.

The fire popped.

Outside, wind moved against the estate windows with the low moan of a winter that wasn't finished yet.

I thought about the road. The curtain. His voice in the dark - "Ashveil sent me the wrong sister," and the way he had said it not as a complaint but as an observation.

A man noting quietly that what he had received was not what he had been told to expect. And that the difference was interesting.

"Ha, Luna-designate," I said. "That's not - that's not a small thing."

"No, indeed it's not" he agreed.

"It means- "

"I know what it means, you don't have to explain that to me"he interrupted.

He turned from the fire then. Looked at me directly, the way he rarely did - the full weight of those gold eyes, the curse markings along his face pulsed once, slowly.

"It means that whatever happens with the curse. Whatever the training produces. Whatever Zoran does - you have a position in this pack that cannot be removed by anyone in it."

Reva, he meant. Reva and everyone like her.

"Ohh interesting. So now you're protecting me" I said.

"I'm acknowledging what was already true," he replied.

"I see" I added.

And something in how he said it -

the careful distinction, the precision of it, made me understand that for Caius Dravhen, those two things were not the same.

He moved toward the door. Stopped, hand on the frame. Turned back to look at me.

"The training," he said. "Be careful. Aldric is thorough but the ability is untested in you

and the curse is active. If something goes wrong during a session, stop immediately and come to me."

"Come to you?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes" he said. Simply.

As though it was obvious. As though the idea of me going anywhere else in a crisis had not even occurred to him as an option.

He left finally.

I stood in my room for a long moment and breathed and felt the mark on my neck pulse once again, warm and settled this time - a rhythm that had begun to feel less like something foreign and more like something that had always been mine.

I grinned.

*Luna-designate.* I muttered to myself.

I had come here with nothing. No name anyone recognized, no power anyone acknowledged, no future anyone had bothered to plan for.

And somehow, in the most dangerous house in the known territories, with a cursed man I hadn't chosen and a pack that hadn't wanted me - I was beginning to have something.

I was beginning to have a place.

I was beginning to have power.