radicalducati Chapter 77
Chapter 77
Cassandra’s POV
He hesitated.
A flicker in his expression, a flinch, a tightening of the mouth, gave him away before he even spoke. His eyes darted, not meeting mine.
“I… I don’t know.”
My eyes narrowed, jaw tightening. “Don’t lie to me.”
He looked up at me sharply, resentment flashing in his tired eyes. “I swear, Cassandra. I don’t know!” His voice cracked, worn thin by time, by chains, by shame. “All I know is you were given to me. As a replacement.”
My pulse faltered.
He kept going, voice raw and bitter, like the words were acid on his tongue. “My real daughter… she died. At birth. That’s what I was told. I was told that you were to take her place. That it had to be done quickly, quietly. The Pack Doctor… she arranged everything.”
My thoughts reeled.
The Pack Doctor.
Her face flickered in my mind’s eye. The woman who had treated me since I was a child. Who had stitched my wounds, soothed my fevers, and yet, never once looked me directly in the eye. She always hesitated before speaking my name. Her voice always carried that strange softness like pity.
I exhaled sharply, pushing back the rising tide of nausea. My heart thudded, hollow and disjointed. I lifted a hand, signaling to the nearby guard who stood quietly with a steaming cup of coffee. He passed it forward with a glance I didn’t acknowledge.
I stared at the cup for a long moment. Then down at the man I had once called father.
The man who had shaped me into what I was, who had taught me strength by withholding affection, who had fed me loyalty only when I bled for it. I watched as emotion rippled across his worn face: shame, bitterness, resentment and finally, something like defeat.
He looked so small now. So utterly human.
“Do you still want me to be Alpha?” I asked, voice low. Fragile.
The words hung in the stale air like fog.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The silence was enough. The silence was everything.
A twisted smile tugged at the corner of my mouth, and I stretched the coffee toward him. He hesitated. His hands trembled as he reached out, silver chain links rattling softly as his fingers curled around the warm ceramic. He didn’t thank me. I didn’t expect him to.
Without another word, I turned away. My boots clicked against the stone as I walked out of the cell, out of the lies, and into the suffocating silence of the corridor.
My chest ached. Each breath felt tighter than the last.
Everything I had believed, about my bloodline, my legacy, my place, was unraveling around me.
I wasn’t even his daughter.
And worse, Katrina was.
I didn’t remember leaving the cell block. I barely felt the ground beneath my feet as I moved through the fortress in a daze. I only stopped when two guards stepped into my path outside my chamber doors.
They weren’t my usual sentries.
Their armor was different, sleek, darker, marked with a crimson insignia I didn’t recognize at first. Then it hit me.
The Rogue Alpha’s crest.
My blood turned to ice.
“What is this?” I asked, voice flat, guarded.
The taller of the two men, pale, lean, and sharp-eyed,spoke first. “Katrina has escaped.”
My heart stuttered. “That’s impossible.”
“She killed the Rogue Alpha,” the second added grimly.
For a moment, the world stopped spinning.
I stared at them, blinking, trying to force the words to make sense. “She killed him?”
The taller one nodded. “His body was found near the ruins. Torn apart. No one survived but her. We believe she’s on the move.”
My knees wobbled. I stumbled back, one hand flying out to grip the doorframe behind me for balance. My breath came shallow, my chest rising too fast. I could feel the ground beneath me shift, as if reality itself had splintered.
Katrina.
She had done the unthinkable. She hadn’t just survived, she had destroyed him.
The Rogue Alpha. The man who had terrified warriors twice her size. Who had moved through shadow and fear like a god among beasts.
And she’d killed him.
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. My mind raced, a thousand thoughts crashing into one another. If Katrina had truly unlocked the depths of her power, if she had truly become what the prophecies whispered, then everything I feared had come true.
She was no longer a girl stumbling into fate.
She was fate. She was stronger than me, faster and more powerful.
For the first time in my life, truly, bone-deep, I felt it. The fear, real and unforgiving.