All Chapters of MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

Yselle arrived just before nightfall, riding hard the second Corvin's letter reached her camp. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked truly shaken. Not just grim. Shaken."Say it again," she demanded, before she'd even dismounted. "The word. Seventh. Exactly as you heard it used.""The seventh does not vote," I repeated. "The seventh has not voted on anything in longer than any of us can measure."All the color drained from Yselle’s face. She looked like she’d seen a ghost."What?" Corvin asked, already grabbing a fresh page. He didn’t need anyone to explain. He knew whatever came next would matter more than anything he’d ever written down."There’s a fragment," Yselle said. "I’ve had it for decades. Never showed you. I thought it was useless half the text gone, the rest written so shaky I figured the scribe was dying as they wrote." She swung off her horse, hands trembling as she dug through her satchel. "I kept it because destroying something that old felt wrong. Like a se

"She had a daughter."Yselle's voice was barely a whisper. For a second, I thought I'd imagined it. The lamp crackled, Rhys shifted by the door, and her words almost vanished in the noise."You said she left no family," Corvin said carefully. "Fifteen years, and you never mentioned a child.""Because I didn't know it mattered. Not until right now." Yselle pressed her hand to her temple, like she was dragging something out of the dark. "There was a girl. Twelve, maybe thirteen, when Aster left. She called Aster her mother. I never saw a real resemblance, but nobody ever doubted her. Not in my network." Yselle looked up, and I saw it the memory snapping into place, too late to change anything. "The girl stayed. Aster asked me to look after her. The same night she said she was going home.""What was her name," I asked, though I already dreaded the answer would be one I recognized."Mabel," Yselle said. "No, that's not it. Something close. Isobel." She shook her head, and for once, she lo

Emberly's hand was still pressed to her chest when the color left her eyes. It didn’t happen all at once. I watched the color drain from her eyes, slow and creeping, like frost crawling over a pond. The brown I knew vanished, replaced by a pale, shifting gray that didn’t look human at all. "Rhys." I didn't take my eyes off her. "Don't touch her yet." Rhys moved before I could stop him, half-crouched, ready to catch her. His hands hovered in the air, every muscle tense, fighting the urge to help her. Emberly’s breathing slowed, too steady, too calm. She looked like someone who wasn’t in control anymore. When she spoke, her voice sounded the same soft, with that hint of a western accent I’d noticed the first time we met, but something else was there, something bigger, echoing through her words. "I did not mean to frighten her," Emberly said, though I understood, immediately, that Emberly wasn't the one speaking anymore. "I have been trying to reach her gently. Gentleness has never

Silence crashed down on us. The question hung there, heavy and sharp, daring me to answer. It wanted the truth, not permission. That realization hit harder than anything the Hollow had said so far. It wanted an answer. Just an answer."No," I said.Something rippled through the crack. Surprise. It hadn’t expected me to answer so fast. I could feel it, sharp and real."I won't ask you to disappear for us," I said again, my voice stronger this time. "I don't care what the six decide. I don't care what it costs me. I'm not going to be the one who trades your existence for my own safety and pretends that's a win. I spent this whole year learning what that really means. I'm not about to forget it just because things got hard.""Ivy." Corvin's voice was careful behind me. "If the Hollow doesn't intervene""Then we find another way," I said, staring straight at the Hollow. I needed it to hear me, no filters, no softening. "I mean it. I already refused a ritual that tried to erase my will, in

By midafternoon, everyone in Sterling knew. The kind of news that was too big to shout, so it just crept through the pack, quiet and heavy. As the sun started to sink behind the trees, half the pack was already there, standing just back from the ward line. Warriors, healers, and people with no gifts or bloodlines people who had no reason to be here except that, after everything this year, they’d decided what happened at this boundary belonged to all of us.Bianca showed up from the capital with Yselle at her side, both of them windburned and barely making it in time. Emberly came too. She looked pale, but she was steady, shaking her head at anyone who tried to tell her to stay back and rest."She has a right to be here," Aster said, in the last moments before she let go of her granddaughter's voice entirely, exhausted past the point of holding the shape any longer. "Whatever is decided tonight, it will shape what she carries for the rest of her life. I will not have her learn of it se