All Chapters of MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Two days. That’s how long we argued, voices raw, about what the first Seer’s question really meant. No one wanted to face the boundary again until we were sure."Three options," Corvin said, laying them out on the war table with the same careful precision he brought to every piece of research that actually mattered to him. "Destroy the Hollow outright, the way the original three attempted and failed to accomplish. Open the boundary completely, the way it's asked each of you to consider, in your own particular moment of exhaustion or grief. Or reinforce the separation, the way every generation since has simply chosen by default, without ever once questioning whether default was actually wisdom.""None of them are good," Serrin said flatly. "Destroying it means attempting something that already failed catastrophically once, with considerably higher stakes given how much stronger it's become since. Opening it completely means gambling our entire world's continued existence on a conscious

"We can't keep this quiet," I said. Corvin's words still echoed in my head, heavy and sharp. "Secrecy already cost us too much. If we're really going to try what the Hollow offered, everyone fighting over those council seats needs to know what's at stake. They deserve the truth before it all explodes, not after."Bianca showed up before the sun set, summoned by a rider. The moment we finished explaining, I saw her face tighten, all calculation and cold politics. I knew that look. She was already planning her next move."You want to tell the entire kingdom," she said slowly, "that the prophecy everyone's spent three hundred years fearing was never actually a warning against reunification at all. That the throne murdered generations of innocent people based on a fundamental misreading.""Yes," I said."That's going to be a lot harder than you think," Bianca said. But I could see her mind racing, already mapping out the fallout. "The Traditionalists spent months defending the old order.

I never saw the offer coming. Not this soon. And definitely not from them. Three days after the coup fell apart, the capital still smelled like smoke. Bianca was still dragging secrets out of traitors, and nobody really knew how deep the betrayal went. That’s when the delegation showed up at the palace. Not the Traditionalists, desperate to drag us back to the old ways. Reformers. The same people who’d spent months fighting for the council Kaelan refused to give up, even when it nearly cost him everything. "We've reconsidered," Lord Halstead said, the same man whose private household crisis had once taught me the cost of careless truth-seeking, though he looked considerably older now, exhaustion and fear having aged him overnight. "The coup nearly succeeded, Prince Kaelan. If it hadn't been for your direct intervention, and Alpha Sterling's forces, and whatever intelligence Lady Bianca managed to extract from wavering guards we would have lost everything we've spent months building

"The rule," Wren said, her voice strained with the effort of holding her portion of the work steady while also reaching toward whatever her gift had glimpsed, "the one insisting we can't break contact without losing everything we've built I don't think it's actually true. I think it's inherited." "Explain," Serrin said, sharp with urgency, her own concentration visibly straining under the combined pressure of holding the structure and listening at once. "The original Seers built this working out of fear," Wren said. "Desperate, untested fear, the same fear that made them believe destruction was the only answer available to them. I think some of that fear became embedded in the structure itself, the same way three hundred years of misreading became embedded in how everyone since has understood the prophecy. I think the rule that says we can't pause, can't step away, isn't a fundamental truth about how a controlled passage actually works. I think it's simply what frightened people as

We stood frozen in the hollow, none of us ready to leave. The new boundary felt alive, like it was holding us in place. After everything we’d fought for, how could we just walk away now? Wren was the first to notice it. The air changed around the new structure. Not danger, not exactly. More like something ancient and huge was finally paying attention to us, really seeing us, in a way it never had before. "It wants to say something," she said quietly. The Hollow’s presence pressed in, slow and steady. I felt its words settle over all three of us at once. This wasn’t a test. It wasn’t an offer. It was something heavier, like it was finally admitting what had already been decided. "I need to tell you what this was," it said. "All of it. Not simply the boundary, or the offer, or the three hundred years of patient waiting that led us here." "We're listening," I said. "I told you, weeks ago, that I did not know what would happen if the boundary opened completely," the Hollow said. "T