Chapter Two: The Alpha's Judgement

The cruelest part wasn't that my secret was finally exposed. It was seeing the exact moment love turned into hatred in Tristan's eyes.

The silver chains wrapped around my wrists and ankles, locking me to the mahogany posts of Tristan's bed. The pure silver burned where it touched me, reacting to the faint magic of my wolf and sending waves of pain through my body.

I didn't scream. I had learned a long time ago, in the basement of my family's estate, that screaming only made the monsters hit harder.

"Tristan, please," I choked out, staring up at him. "Just let me explain."

"Silence!"

His voice hit me like a fist. The Alpha command forced my jaw shut, my teeth clicking together so hard I tasted blood. Tristan paced the edge of the bed like a caged animal, his hands flexing at his sides.

The oak doors creaked open. High Priest Malakar stepped into the room, his ceremonial robes dragging across the hardwood. In his hand he held a golden chalice and a curved obsidian blade. Behind him stood my father, Lord Sterling, his face pale and unreadable. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor, refusing to meet mine. My stomach tightened as a sense of unease settled over me. Something was very wrong.

"Alpha King." Malakar bowed his head. "You summoned me."

"The woman in my bed." Tristan pointed a shaking finger at me. "She smells of cedar and rain. She does not carry the scent of my fated mate. Yet she wears Clara's face. Strip the illusion, priest. Now."

Malakar approached the bed, his eyes hollow. He sliced his own palm open with the obsidian blade, let the blood drip into the chalice, and began chanting in a low tongue I didn't recognize. Heat spread through the room until the air felt almost unbearable.

"No," I whimpered through the force of the command still locking my throat. I thrashed against the chains, the silver biting into my wrists, drawing thin lines of blood down to my palms. Don't do this. Please.

Malakar threw the contents of the chalice into the air above me. The blood didn't fall. It hung there, then spread into a red mist that settled slowly over my face.

Agony ripped through every nerve in my body.

I shrieked, the sound trapped and distorted by the Alpha command still locking my throat. The scent-masking potion and every spell I'd spent months perfecting to mimic Clara's unmarked skin burned away all at once.

The mist cleared.

The room fell silent.

Tristan stepped closer, his gaze moving over my face. The differences were impossible to miss now. Clara's skin had been porcelain, untouched. Mine carried a thin scar below my left jaw, a gift from my father's whip when I was twelve. My eyes, forced for months to mimic Clara's bright blue, had returned to their natural hazel.

Tristan stared at me.

For several seconds, he said nothing at all. The silence stretched between us, and my pulse pounded relentlessly in my ears as I waited for him to speak.

The hurt reached him first.

I saw it in his eyes before anything else. For a moment, he didn't look angry or cruel. He looked like someone trying to understand how everything he believed could be wrong.

Then came the disbelief.

His gaze moved over my face, searching for the person he thought he knew, the woman he had believed was Clara, the woman fate had promised him.

He shook his head slightly, as if his mind was refusing to accept what was standing in front of him.

For months, Tristan had been certain he knew exactly who I was.

Now, that certainty was falling apart.

His lips parted slightly, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than I expected.

"You."

The word came softly, almost gently, and somehow that made it hurt more.

"You're the Sterling daughter they hid away."

His gaze moved over me again, but this time there was something different in it. The confusion was fading, replaced by a cold realization.

"Seraphina."

Then my father spoke

"She murdered Clara and took her place!" Lord Sterling dropped to his knees, forehead against the floorboards. "We knew nothing of it, Alpha King! She deceived us all!"

Liar.

Three months ago, he hadn’t tried to stop me.

He had stood there and watched while I packed Clara’s dresses into a trunk with my own hands. He watched me leave the only home I had ever known, and he never asked where I was going or told me to stay.

I had thought that meant something.

For once, I believed he had decided not to make things harder for me. Maybe he had finally understood that I was tired of being hurt, tired of being controlled, and tired of living in that house.

I was wrong.

Looking at him now, kneeling at Tristan’s feet and claiming he knew nothing, I finally saw the truth. He hadn’t cared where I went. He had only cared about what my absence would mean for him.

The moment the truth threatened the Sterling name, he abandoned me without hesitation. He let everyone believe I was the only one responsible, the only one who had lied, as if he hadn't watched me leave and chosen not to stop me.

He wasn't trying to save me.

He was saving himself.

"Is this true?" Tristan's voice had gone dangerously calm. He stepped to the edge of the bed and looked down at me with a coldness that made me feel smaller than I had ever felt before. "Did you kill your sister, Seraphina? Did you kill my fated mate so you could crawl into her throne? Into her bed? "

"No." Tears spilled hot down my face. "Clara died in the carriage accident. I swear it. I only took her place because if I'd stayed, they would have killed me too and buried me where no one would ever find me."

"I don't care about your survival." Tristan leaned down until his face was inches from mine, and the disgust in his eyes hurt worse than the chains. "You let me touch you. You let me love you. You let me hold you at night. You whispered my name while wearing her face like a costume. You're nothing but a fucking parasite."

His hand closed around my chin, squeezing until I heard my jaw creak under the pressure.

"You wanted a crown, Seraphina?" A smile spread across his mouth, thin and cruel. "I'll give you something better. A mark that ensures no wolf, no pack, and no living soul ever looks at you again without wanting to be sick."

He turned to the guards at the door.

"Heat the iron," he said, and his voice carried through the room like a verdict already signed. "Bring the Mark of the Deceiver. Let the whole council watch what happens to rats who dare steal a queen's place."