All Chapters of MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

News about the hollow didn’t hit the kingdom all at once. It leaked out in fragments, the way ugly truths always do. First came the official statements, polished, careful, missing all the real details. Then the rumors took over, wild and raw, spreading through taverns and markets no matter how hard the council tried to keep a lid on it.Nobody really understood what happened. Not even those of us who stood at the edge and saw it with our own eyes. There was no easy way to explain it, nothing you could wrap up in a neat story to tell your family at dinner. Just a boundary between worlds. An ancient presence, something that wasn’t a monster, but not a savior either. Three bloodlines, once hunted, now suddenly expected to be the kingdom’s protectors. Not prisoners. Not threats. Chosen."They're calling you heroes," Bianca told me, arriving at Sterling with the particular exhaustion of someone who'd spent every waking hour these past two weeks managing exactly the kind of public reaction

It took three days to find him. The village was so tiny, it was like it had been erased from every map except the oldest ones. Like it wanted to stay hidden.His name was Bram. He was only nine when the ledger went silent. Now he looked like the sea itself had carved him out of salt and storms. Corvin spent nearly an hour just trying to convince him they weren’t there to collect some ancient debt."I don't talk about that winter," Bram said, for the third time, his hands busy with a net he didn't need to be mending. "Nobody who was there talks about it. Ask anyone else in this village, they'll tell you the same. Not because we agreed to. Because there's nothing to say.""That's the part I don't understand," Serrin said, gentler than Corvin had ever heard her be with a stranger. "A season goes missing from every record I can find, and everyone who lived through it describes it the same way as nothing. Not painful. Not frightening. Simply absent."Bram froze, his hands tangled in the n

I didn't tell Rhys everything. Not because I wanted to keep secrets. I stopped believing secrets could protect anyone a long time ago. I just didn't have the words yet for what I felt. And I've learned the hard way that fear you can't name only scares the people you give it to.So I told him the true part. It's watching me. And I let the rest wait until I understood it better myself.Corvin and Serrin rode in at dusk, both of them looking like they'd been dragged through the night. Two of Rhys's warriors trailed behind, but Corvin didn't even glance at them. He crossed the courtyard straight to me, grabbed my hand before I could react, and turned my palm up to the fading light. He looked at it like a man checking a wound he was sure had gotten worse."Has it changed," he asked."Not that I can see." I studied his face. Three days of hard travel had left him hollow, but there was something worse than exhaustion in his eyes. "Corvin. Tell me what you found."He told me right there in th

None of us slept. No one even tried to fake it. Corvin scattered every scrap he owned across the war table, lamplight flickering over his hands as he hunted for the smaller mark under the name. Serrin sat so close to the page I caught her, twice, reaching for her sleeve. She was checking for a mark that wasn't there. I saw it. She wanted to be sure."It isn't Hart, Farrow, or Draveth," Corvin said, for the third time, more to himself than to any of us. "It isn't the fourth symbol from Wren's dream. It isn't anything I've catalogued in sixty years of trying to catalogue everything that could conceivably matter.""Then catalogue it now," Rhys said. He hadn't sat down once since we came in. He stood by the door, all sharp edges and watchfulness, guarding the room instead of joining it. But I knew better. He was never far, not really.I was the one who finally said what none of us wanted to admit."It's not a symbol," I said. "I think it's a signature."Corvin looked up. "Explain.""The n

Wren showed up at dawn, barely off her horse before she was in front of me. Rhys had sent for her before I could even finish explaining what I saw in the stillness. She didn't warn her mother. She didn't pack. She just came, leaving behind the quiet life she'd been fighting to build since the boundary. The guilt hit me hard when I saw her face pale, exhausted, like she hadn't slept at all."You said seven," she said, not bothering with greetings, dropping into the chair across from me as her legs had simply stopped agreeing to hold her up. "I need you to tell me exactly what it looked like when it said that. Not the words. The feeling underneath them.""Cautious," I said, trying to grab hold of the feeling before it slipped away like a dream. "Not cold. Almost apologetic, right at the end. Like it wanted me to know it wasn't the one making the choice. It was just warning me."Wren froze. "That matches what I saw two nights ago. I didn't tell anyone. I thought it was just another versi