Chapter Fifteen

Victoria’s POV

My breath still hadn’t returned from being thrown back onto the ground, but that wasn’t what had me frozen.

It was them.

Celeste and my brother—locked in that weird, soul-shattering kind of silence that felt too loud for the room.

Then he said it.

Soft.

Barely above a whisper.

But I heard it.

"Mate."

The word echoed in my brain like someone had rung a bell inside my skull.

I’d heard him say it before. Once. When he thought no one was listening. When he explained what it would mean—what it would feel like. And I thought, when it happened, it’d be something he wanted.

But he looked stunned.

Celeste looked terrified.

“Fuck,” Celeste whispered.

And then she collapsed.

“Wait—wait, wait—what the hell just happened!?” I scrambled to my feet, stumbling over a broken chair leg as I rushed toward them.

He held her like something sacred, jaw tight, eyes unreadable. His silence scared me more than anything.

“Is she okay?” I asked, voice sharp. “Tell me she’s okay.”

“She just passed out,” he said, without looking at me. “She’ll be alright.”

I stared at Celeste’s face, pale and slack against his chest. Her shirt was ripped. Her arms were scratched. But she looked more real than I’d ever seen her. Wild and fragile and ancient all at once.

“You said—” I took a breath. “You said mate.”

He nodded once.

I blinked rapidly. “Celeste? My Celeste? My face-mask-and-popcorn, cry-laughs-during-romcoms, listens-to-sad-music-when-it’s-raining Celeste?”

He didn’t say anything.

And that silence said everything.

I pressed a shaking hand to my mouth, backing up a step. “She’s not human, is she?”

Still nothing.

I spun around, heart pounding. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She didn’t want us to know,” he said, voice low.

“And now what?!” I threw my arms up. “Now you’re just going to drag her into some destiny bullsh—”

“I’m not dragging her anywhere.”

His voice was sharp enough to cut me off.

He met my eyes, and for a second, he looked… just as lost as me.

“I didn’t ask for this, Vic.”

My heart stuttered.

Not because he said it.

But because I saw the truth in his face.

He didn’t choose this.

Neither did she.

And whatever this was—whatever it meant—it was already written. A string tangled in fate, pulled tight between the two of them, no matter how hard they tried to cut it.

I took a step forward.

“I just… I don’t understand. She’s been hiding so much from me.”

“So have you,” he said, and it wasn’t an accusation—it was a reminder.

Because neither of us were ever as open as we pretended to be.

Not really.

I looked at Celeste again, limp in his arms but somehow stronger than ever before. She’d fought off three rogues by herself. She’d protected me.

“I want answers,” I said finally.

“And you’ll get them,” he murmured. “But not here. Not now.”

I nodded, breath shaky. “Take care of her. Please.”

He adjusted her in his arms gently. “I will.”

**

Alpha King’s POV

The diner had emptied out, the scent of blood and fear slowly fading into the night. The rogues were dealt with—barely breathing now, left in a heap outside for cleanup. Victoria was resting, bruised and shaken, but conscious. And Celeste…

Celeste was unconscious, her pale skin marred by claw marks, her shirt torn, but her breathing was steady.

He hadn’t moved since catching her—since that moment.

She was his mate.

His mate.

The word felt foreign, like something stolen from someone else’s story and placed in his chest without permission. He stared at her—at the woman who had somehow slipped beneath every barrier he’d built; every wall forged from duty and disappointment. The woman whose laugh had haunted him. The one who had hidden so much, even from herself.

His fingers twitched at his side.

“Say it again.” His wolf, Ace, growled low in his mind.

“She’s our mate.”

“Ours,” Ace rumbled with possessive pride, his presence pressing hard against the edge of his consciousness.

The Alpha King shut his eyes, jaw tight.

How?

How could this be?

Their bloodline was cursed. That was the truth passed down for generations. His grandfather had said it in bitter tones after his own mate had never appeared. His father lived and died without one. It was a legacy of leadership without love. The crown they bore came at a cost.

And yet here she was.

“Not just anyone,” Ace said. “She woke the part of us we thought was dead. She is the shift in the curse. She’s real.”

Was it her?

Was Celeste the exception?

Or was she the sign that something deeper was moving beneath the surface of everything they believed?

And if the curse was broken for him… could it be broken for Victoria too?

The thought twisted something in him.

Victoria, who laughed even when life knocked her down. Who still believed in love and fate and fairy-tale endings, despite everything. She deserved this more than anyone. If destiny had finally stepped in, why him first?

“Because she was made for us,” Ace whispered. “And you know it.”

He looked down at Celeste again. The faint rise and fall of her chest. The soft sound of her breath. Her scent—no longer masked, no longer dulled. It wrapped around him like snow and moonlight and something he couldn’t name.

He wanted to be furious.

He wanted to reject it. To demand answers from the stars for why fate had waited this long to make a fool of him.

But mostly… he just wanted her to open her eyes.