Chapter 9: An Alpha’s Secret

“The name. Do you have it?”

The words echoed in my ears as I struggled to find an appropriate response.

Alpha Dimitri stood framed in the connecting doorway, green eyes fixed on me. My heart slammed against my ribs, each beat loud enough that I was certain he could hear it. I had nothing, no name, no diagnosis, only the echo of his earlier threats still ringing in my ears.

I swallowed hard, forcing my mind to move faster than my fear. 

“When did the sickness start?” I asked, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. “What does it feel like, exactly? And how have you been treating it until now?”

I didn’t dare look away from my own fingers, twisting together in front of me. Although I was stalling, I still needed the answers. I couldn’t start any concrete research without knowing these things yet, right?  

My gift had shown me fragments on the floor of his chambers. I knew of the corruption in his blood and about his organs fighting a slow war, but without context, those fragments were still useless; the pivot felt audacious.

Through the corner of my eye, I could see Alpha Dimitri arch an eyebrow, surprise flickering across his features before it settled into something sharper. “I am the one demanding answers, Scarlett Bane, and yet you dare throw questions back at me?”

His tone was sharp, almost making me jump. Almost.

The air in the room thickened, and I could feel the power rolling off him more than ever.

He stepped forward once. “Do you think I am joking about the execution threats?”

I shook my head quickly, the motion jerky. “No, Alpha. I don’t think that for a second.” My throat worked, dry and tight. “But my questions… they aren’t defiance. They’re part of the research itself. I need to know when it started. What it feels like in your body. How you’ve been treating it. Without that, I have no real way to move forward. I can’t name what I don’t understand.”

Silence stretched between us, and I still kept my gaze lowered with my shoulders tight, and every muscle in my body braced for the blow that always came when I spoke too much.

Alpha Dimitri crossed his arms over his chest. “Why didn’t you ask this when I first told you to name the disease?”

My chest tightened painfully. “I… forgot,” I whispered, eyes fixed on my fingers. The lie tasted bitter, but the truth, that terror had swallowed every coherent thought, was worse. I still hadn’t looked at him fully. The habit from Lucan ran bone-deep: keep your eyes down, stay small, and survive.

“Look at me.”

The command was quiet, but it landed like thunder. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that I nearly missed the sound of my own shallow breathing. Slowly, painfully, I lifted my gaze.

His green eyes held mine. Everything about him—his height, and the way he commanded space—screamed Alpha, and if there was one thing that I had learned in my life, it was that Alpha was synonymous with danger. 

My body reacted before my mind could stop it: shoulders curving inward, breath catching high in my throat. Even as the old fear surged, another part of me whispered that this was unfair. Alpha Dimitri was not Lucan. He hadn’t raised his hand to me yet. The comparison felt like a betrayal of my own healing, and still I couldn’t stop making it.

He studied me for a long moment, as if peeling back layers I desperately wanted to keep hidden.

Then his hand moved to the handle of the connecting door. He rested his fingers there, almost casually.

“I commanded you to never lock that door,” he told me, each word uttered as though he were speaking to a small child. “But not once did I command you to always leave it open. You are free to close it whenever you wish. You are simply never to lock it.”

Heat flooded my cheeks. 

Embarrassment burned through my chest, and my hands suddenly felt too sweaty. I was quick to rub my palms against my pants. All this time, I had assumed the worst possible interpretation. I could have closed it. I could have had that small mercy. Instead, my fear had built walls where none had been ordered.

At the same time, a quieter voice reminded me: this was the same man who had threatened to execute me three times in one conversation. My caution hadn’t been irrational. 

I said nothing. The silence felt heavier than any command.

Alpha Dimitri removed his hand from the door. “Follow me.”

He turned and walked back into his chambers. I obeyed, my legs unsteady beneath me. Once inside, he lowered himself into the heavy wooden chair while I remained standing across from him, my spine painfully straight, but my head still bowed slightly.

He was quiet for a long moment, as if deciding where to begin. Then he exhaled through his nose.

“It started not long after I took the seat of the Alpha. The first signs were small and easy to ignore.”

The hair at the back of my neck stood when I felt his green eyes on me, but I could not bring myself to meet his gaze even though he had ordered me to do so earlier. What I could do, however, was listen. So I listened. “It feels like a shadow that has refused to leave. It sits in my blood. In my bones. Some days it is quiet. Others… it reminds me it is still there.”

He gestured toward the small table where the nightly tonic usually waited. "I have been treating it with the tonic. The same tonic my father swore by and his father before him and every Alpha before me." He paused, his jaw tightening slightly. "Every Alpha carries this, in time. It is not spoken of outside the bloodline. The tonic does not cure it; it has never cured it, but it slows what cannot be stopped. Apparently, even that is no longer enough for me."

Silence settled between us, heavier than before. I kept my eyes fixed on my own hands, but I could feel those sharp green eyes of his on me. My heart pounded even louder against my chest, and I had to bite my inner cheek just to feign composure.

"You understand what I have just given you," he continued. It was not a question. "This is not my secret alone. Every Alpha who has ever sat where I sit, back to the founding of this pack, has carried this to their grave. If a single word of what I have told you tonight reaches another ear — Beta Petru's, Ms. Darkmoon's, that warrior girl you are fond of, or a servant passing in the hall, anyone, I will not simply execute you." His voice did not rise, and it did not need to. "I will make certain there is nothing left of you to bury. Do you understand me, Scarlett Bane?"