CHAPTER 5: I Was Never Meant for an Alpha

SERAPHINE

I should have said no.

The thought circled through my mind like a bird trapped in a room, beating its wings against the walls of every rational argument I could construct. I should have said no when he offered the commission. Should have said no when he agreed to twenty per cent without real resistance, a concession that came too easily from a man who negotiated territorial borders for a living. Should have said no when he'd held my hand and something electrical had raced up my arm and settled behind my ribs like a second heartbeat.

I should have said no, because powerful men don't offer orphans anything without expecting repayment, and the currency they demand is never the kind you can afford.

But I'd said yes.

And now I was standing in the common room of the orphanage, my back pressed against the wall, trying to explain to Ally why this was a rational decision and not the first step toward my own destruction.

"Twenty per cent increase in provisions," I said. "That's enough to fix the roof in the east wing. To buy proper blankets before winter. To..."

"To get you killed." Ally sat cross-legged on the floor, braiding a strip of fabric with the focused intensity she brought to everything. "Or worse."

"What's worse than killed?"

"Owned." She looked up at me, her dark eyes sharp. "He's the most powerful Alpha in twelve territories, Sera. He doesn't commission paintings from orphans. He doesn't negotiate with people who have nothing. Something is going on, and you're walking into it with your eyes closed."

"My eyes are wide open."

"Then why are you blushing?"

I pressed my hands to my face. They were warm. Treacherous.

"I'm not blushing. It's the walk. The exercise."

"You've been back for two hours."

I dropped my hands. "Ally."

"Sera."

We stared at each other. The silence between us was familiar, the comfortable, well-worn silence of two people who'd shared a room for six years and knew each other's tells better than their own.

"He heard me," I said quietly.

Ally's hands stilled on the braid. "What do you mean?"

"When I spoke. In his study. He heard me. His whole body..." I gestured, trying to describe the way his hand had gripped the desk, the way his eyes had gone wide with something that looked like pain or shock or joy or all three at once. "He reacted. Like my voice was the first sound he'd heard in years."

Ally's expression shifted. The protectiveness was still there, but beneath it, something else moved. Curiosity, maybe. Or recognition.

"The curse," she said slowly. "Everyone says he can only hear his mate's voice."

"That's a rumour."

"That's a curse. From the Moon Goddess. Which means..." She stopped. Stared at me. "Sera. Are you telling me that you think you're Alpha Thorne's mate?"

"No." The denial came fast, reflexive, like pulling your hand from a flame. "No. I'm saying something happened. Something I don't understand. It could be anything, a coincidence, a glitch in the curse, I don't know."

"A glitch in a divine curse."

"It happens."

"It absolutely does not happen."

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor across from her, my left leg extended to ease the pressure on my knee. The ache was constant today, worse after the long walk, worse after standing in his study while he stared at me with those grey eyes that seemed to process everything and reveal nothing.

"Even if it were true," I said, selecting each word like stepping stones across a fast-moving river, "it wouldn't matter. You know what happens to wolves like me in Alpha courts. I'd be a liability. An embarrassment. His enemies would use me against him, and his allies would resent me for existing."

"And yet he asked you to come back."

"For paintings."

"For you."

"For paintings, Ally."

She set the braid aside and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. "Let me tell you what I know about Alpha Kael Thorne. He's ruled twelve territories for a decade. He's survived wars, challenges, and a divine curse that would have broken most wolves. He's the kind of Alpha who doesn't waste time on anything that doesn't serve his objectives." She paused. "He is not commissioning paintings."

I knew she was right. Some part of me (the part that painted, the part that observed, the part that had spent months watching him through the orphanage window and knew the angle of his shoulders better than her own) had known something was wrong the moment he'd said 'speak' with that rough, broken urgency.

But knowing and accepting were different countries, and the border between them was defended by every lesson life had taught me about hope.

Hope was a luxury. Hope got you hurt.

"I'll go," I said. "I'll paint. I'll take his money and use it to make life better for the children here. And if something else is going on..."

"When."

"If something else is going on, I'll deal with it then."

Ally studied me for a long, quiet moment. Then she reached over and squeezed my hand.

"Just don't forget to come home," she said.

Calista intercepted me in the corridor that evening.

She didn't speak at first. Just fell into step beside me as I walked toward the dormitory stairs, her heels matching my uneven pace with a precision that felt deliberate. Mocking. A rhythmic reminder that she could match my stride because hers was perfect and mine was not.

"I heard about your arrangement with the Alpha," she said, her voice honeyed and sharp-edged, a razor dipped in syrup.

"The orphanage will benefit from the increased provisions."

"How generous of you. Playing martyr for the cause." She stepped ahead of me and turned, blocking the stairwell. "Tell me, Seraphine. What does the Alpha actually want from you?"

"Paintings."

"Paintings." She tasted the word. Found it wanting. "A man who could commission any artist in twelve territories chooses the orphanage cripple. Forgive me if I find that difficult to believe."

The word landed where she intended it, in the soft, unarmoured place between my ribs where I kept every insult I'd ever been too proud to acknowledge. Cripple. She said it so casually, the way you'd mention a stain on someone's dress.

"You'd have to ask him," I said, keeping my voice level. "I just paint."

Calista leaned closer. Close enough that I could smell her perfume. Roses and something underneath. Something bitter that reminded me of crushed stems.

"Let me be very clear," she said, and the honey was gone now. Replaced by something cold and precise. "If you do anything, anything, to embarrass this institution in front of Alpha Thorne, I will make your life here unbearable. Do you understand?"

"You've already done that."

The words escaped before I could stop them. They hung in the air between us, vibrating, dangerous.

Calista's eyes widened. For one suspended heartbeat, I saw surprise on her face, genuine surprise. The kind that comes from having a piece of furniture suddenly talk back. Then the surprise hardened into fury.

"What did you say?"

My heart was hammering. My palms were slick. Every survival instinct I possessed was screaming at me to take it back, to apologise, to fold.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm tired."

Calista studied me for a long, terrible moment. Then she stepped aside, clearing the stairwell with exaggerated courtesy.

"Get some rest," she said. "You have a big day tomorrow. And Seraphine?" She waited until I was three steps up, until I was committed to the climb and my back was to her. "I'll be visiting the manor soon to check on your work. To make sure you're representing Riverside properly."

The threat was clear. She would be watching. She would find fault. And when she did, she would make me pay for the crime of being noticed by a man she'd spent years trying to attract.

I climbed the stairs without answering. My leg screamed with every step. My hands shook on the railing.

In our room, Ally was already asleep, her breathing slow and even in the darkness. I changed into my nightclothes, eased myself onto my narrow bed, and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling.

Tomorrow, I will return to Blackthorn Manor. I would stand in that man's study and speak, and my voice would do something to him that I didn't understand and couldn't control. And he would look at me with those grey eyes, those dissecting, cataloguing, dangerously intelligent eyes, and I would have to pretend that the electric current that had run up my arm when he'd taken my hand was nothing.

Just a handshake.

Just a business arrangement.

Just an orphan painting pictures for an Alpha who couldn't hear the world and could, for reasons neither of us understood, hear her.

I turned onto my side. Pressed my face into the pillow.

And thought about the way his hand had trembled when I spoke. The way his eyes had closed when I asked what he'd like me to say, as if my voice were a hymn and he were a man who'd forgotten how to pray.

He was hiding something.

And so, I realised with a sinking, terrifying certainty that I was.

Because when he'd held my hand and the world had gone sharp and electric and impossibly alive, I hadn't just felt a current.

I'd felt a pull.

Toward him. Toward his silence. Toward the loneliness I'd painted on canvas without ever knowing I was painting my own.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.

Tomorrow, the lie would begin.

And I had no idea which one of us would break first.