All Chapters of MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Corvin froze. The color drained from his face, leaving him looking older, haunted. Ivy saw it instantly this wasn't some distant threat. He knew exactly what the scout meant."You know that banner," she said."I know who used to carry it," Corvin said, his voice barely above a whisper. Grief flickered in his eyes, tangled with something else. "Sixty years ago, when the purge started, I wasn't the only historian who saw what was coming. There was another. A colleague. A friend. She was braver than I ever was. I hid in the shadows, writing down what I could, hoping not to be noticed. She fought back.""Fight how?" Kaelan asked."She built something," Corvin said. "A network. Survivors. Sympathizers. Anyone who refused to just sit and watch the throne's purge. She wanted to fight back, not just survive. We argued about it, right before we lost contact. She said patience was just another way of letting them win. I thought she was being reckless, that she'd get everyone killed even faster.

Eleven days passed before the council answered. Not just a letter or a lone messenger. Lady Wexford herself rode in, surrounded by pack leaders from every corner of the kingdom. When they stepped into Sterling territory, you could feel the weight in the air. This wasn’t just business. This was history."The council has voted," Lady Wexford announced, standing before the assembled crowd that had gathered in Sterling's courtyard pack members, Yselle's network, the strange, improbable coalition that had formed over the preceding days. "Prince Kaelan Ashford is granted regency, for a term of three years, tasked specifically with establishing the representative council structure proposed in these negotiations. At the term's conclusion, full authority transfers permanently to that body, not to any single throne."The crowd barely breathed. Relief flickered, sharp and uncertain, like everyone was afraid to believe it was real."It wasn't unanimous," Wexford added, more quietly, meeting Ivy's

Sterling's east hall council chamber was smaller than the capital's. Plainer. Built for business, not show. I still hated walking into it.Every session dragged old instincts to the surface. The ceremony hall. Two hundred wolves laughing. Kaelan's voice, flat and cruel. Rooms full of people deciding things about me never ended well. I kept hoping this one would break the pattern by accident, like poking a bruise to see if it still hurts.It hadn't. Not really. But I went anyway. Kaelan had asked. And Wren couldn't face these things alone yet too raw, too untested to sit across from career politicians without someone beside her who understood what she was.Lord Halstead was halfway through his report when it happened. A minor noble, just folded into the new council. The kind of man who changed his opinions with the wind. He droned on about supply routes for the rebuilt grain stores. Dry. Technical. Nothing that should have mattered."The eastern route remains secure," he said. "We've h

Yselle showed up before dark, just two escorts at her side. She looked grim, like she already knew what was coming. Corvin must have warned her, because she didn't waste time with questions. She marched straight into the war room, tossed a battered satchel onto the table, and said, "Show me."Wren slid the drawing across to her without a word.Yselle froze, just like Corvin had. But his stillness was fear. Hers was colder. She looked like someone who'd just seen proof of a nightmare she'd always suspected but never wanted to believe."Sixty years," she said quietly, "I assumed the purge was simply about power. Convenient timing, a paranoid king protecting a fragile throne." She looked up, meeting Corvin's eyes across the table. "You're telling me it's older than that.""I'm telling you I saw this symbol once, decades before the purge began, in a text that no longer exists in any form I've been able to locate since," Corvin said. "Someone was hiding it long before the Ashfords had any

The old site looked exactly the same as the night Serrin vanished. Burned stones. Shadows clinging to the ground. Like the place was holding its breath, waiting for us to come back.Corvin wouldn't let it go. Three days after Serrin confessed what she saw in the dark, he dragged us back here. He needed to see the ground for himself, not just trust old stories and faded maps. Yselle came. Wren came too, even though every part of me screamed not to let her near this place. She said her dreams wouldn't leave her alone until she saw it for herself.In daylight, the hollow felt smaller. The trees weren't as threatening under a washed-out sky. But the ground still remembered. Blackened earth marked the old ritual circle, and grass was just starting to fight its way back in."No residual violet light," Corvin observed, crouching at the circle's centre, running his fingers carefully over the blackened stone. "No hum beneath the ground, the way there was in the weeks just after. Whatever tore