MARKED BY THE ALPHA'S HATE

That was your mother in that room."

The world tilted.

Selene stared at Darius like the words had struck her physically. Her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat, a rising pressure she couldn't release.

No, she whispered, her voice cracked and hollow. "You're lying."

Darius said nothing. He stood there, shoulders broad, eyes shadowed, arms crossed over his chest like a wall she couldn't climb.

"My mother is dead." Selene took a step forward. "I saw her body. Burned. Your kind did that."

"Not my kind," Darius said flatly. "Victor's men did."

The silence between them buzzed with restrained violence.

"You're telling me she was alive?" she snapped. "All this time? And you what? You locked her in that cell? Let her rot?"

"I didn't know who she was until it was too late," he said. "By the time I pieced it together… she was gone."

Selene moved faster than he expected. Her palm cracked against his cheek with a sound that echoed off the cold stone walls.

"You kept me in the same house where my mother died, and now you throw it in my face like it's nothing?"

Darius didn't flinch. He stared at her, jaw tight, that unreadable mask cracking at the edges.

"I told you," he said, voice low, "this place is built on secrets. I wasn't spared from them either."

Tears blurred her vision, but she refused to let them fall. Not in front of him. Not here.

"What did you do to her?" she asked, her voice shaking.

He hesitated too long.

That hesitation was an answer in itself.

Selene lunged.

Her teeth sank into the side of his neck not deep enough to maim, but hard enough to make him grunt, to taste blood, to let her fury speak.

Darius didn't fight her. He let her bite.

When she pulled away, his blood coated her lips. Her breath came fast, heart thundering against her ribs like it wanted out.

"You don't get to rewrite this," she said. "You don't get to throw her ghost at me and expect me to heel like your pet."

"You're not a pet," he growled, finally moving toward her, eyes flashing amber. "You're a fucking storm."

Their chests brushed too close now tension thick between them. Not an attraction. Not softness. Just heat and grief and the weight of everything left unsaid.

"I saw her the night she died," he said, quieter now. "She told me to find you."

That stopped her cold.

"She knew they would come for you," Darius continued. "She knew you were important that your blood was the key to something bigger."

Selene's knees nearly buckled.

The room swam. Her mother hadn't just died she had left her something. A purpose. A path.

"She called you by name," he added. "And she said to tell you this: 'The blood remembers.'"

A sharp knock shattered the moment. The guard's voice cut through the door.

"My Alpha. He's here."

Darius's face darkened.

Selene looked between him and the door. Who's he?

But she already knew.

Victor Crane.

The shadow behind every order. The man who had raised the monster in front of her. The one who would have no problem finishing what Darius couldn't.

Darius turned his back to her, jaw clenched. "You need to stay in this room. Do not open that door unless I return for you.

And if you don't?

He paused, just long enough to make it feel like a goodbye.

"Then run."