Twiceloved

chapter 8

POV Kiara

Deep in the forest of pack territory, I needed solitude desperately.

Away from Thomen's concerned glances. Away from the pack members who looked to me for strength and answers I didn't have.

Here, surrounded by towering pines and the familiar scents of home, I could finally confront the strange changes consuming my body and mind.

My regular training equipment lay scattered around the clearing like broken toys.

The heavy punching bag I'd used for years now felt like tissue paper beneath my fists. The weighted training bars that used to challenge my strength now bent like pipe cleaners in my grip.

"This is impossible," I muttered, staring at the destroyed equipment. "Even for my powers, this level of strength shouldn't be possible…"

The memory of how Thomen's blood had finally satisfied my hunger haunted every thought. The way it had tasted on my tongue, the immediate relief it had brought to the gnawing emptiness…

It should have repulsed my werewolf nature, not fulfilled it!

"I was wondering when you'd seek solitude."

That velvet voice drifted through the forest like smoke, and every nerve in my body ignited with recognition so sharp it felt like dying.

The voice that had once whispered promises of forever.

The voice that had shattered my seventeen-year-old heart so completely I thought I'd never feel whole again.

Until Thomen. Until my true mate had pieced me back together with patient love and steady hands.

I turned toward the sound and saw Aleron materialized from the shadows between trees, moving with grace that had once made my heart race for entirely different reasons.

But instead of the predatory aggression I expected, his pale green eyes held something infinitely worse. The same tender intensity that had made me believe in fairy tales before he taught me that monsters wore beloved faces.

"You felt it, didn't you?" he asked, his voice teasing but carrying easily through the forest air. "The way your body is awakening to its true nature."

I circled him like the predator I was becoming, fighting against memories of when we used to lay together in this very clearing. When his arms had felt like safety instead of danger.

When I'd believed his lies about loving me enough to choose me over everything else.

Now my enhanced senses are picking up every detail of his presence.

The steady thrum of his pulse. The cold fire of his presence. The strange pull that drew me closer despite every survival instinct screaming to attack.

"What did you do to me?" I demanded, my voice cracking with desperation I couldn't hide. "What was in your blood?"

"Nothing that wasn't already inside you," Aleron replied, his eyes never leaving my face. "I merely awakened what was dormant."

"Stop with the cryptic bullshit!" I snarled, my frustration igniting into rage. "I can't eat enough food to satisfy this thing inside me. I'm destroying steel with my bare hands. I can hear heartbeats from miles away and they sound like dinner bells. So cut the mysterious vampire act and tell me what the hell you did!"

An unwelcome magnetic pull tugged at something deep in my chest, still drawing me toward him. Like an echo of what we'd once been, but now twisted into something that made me want to scream.

I fought against it even as curiosity warred with hatred in my mind.

This couldn't be happening.

Not when I'd finally found peace with Thomen. Not when I'd finally healed from the devastation this man had wrought on my soul.

"Our kiss in the warehouse…" Aleron said, his voice dropping to something too intimate and amused. "The way your body responded despite your anger, despite everything you believe about me… You felt the recognition, didn't you? Something inside you calling for me."

"I felt nothing," I lied, but my voice shook with the memory of that forced intimacy.

"The hunger destroying you isn't new, love." His patience was maddening, gentle in a way that made me want to tear his throat out. "It's been dormant inside you since birth, waiting for the right catalyst to awaken your true nature."

"What true nature? I'm a werewolf, born of werewolf blood. My father—"

"Your father was a werewolf, indeed," Aleron interrupted. "But your mother was not."

The words hit me like a physical blow, stealing breath from my lungs. Between us, the air shimmered with tension—old attraction warring with newer hatred, creating a storm I couldn't navigate.

"My mother died at war when I was young. She was the pack’s healer, she was—"

"She was a vampire, Kiara," he said, and his words carried the weight of long-held secrets. "Jacqueline Moreau, royalty of an ancient coven. She's also very much alive and has been waiting years for the right moment to reclaim her daughter."

The forest spun around me as everything I'd believed about myself crumbled.

"No…" The word tore from my throat like a wounded animal's cry. "That's impossible. I would know. Someone would have told me—"

"Your father loved her desperately enough to keep her secret even from his own pack," Aleron explained, his voice infinitely merciless. "When she had to leave, he created the story of her death to explain her absence."

I staggered backward, my mind reeling from revelations that shattered everything I thought I knew about my family.

"Liar."

"The strength you always attributed to being an exceptional she-wolf Alpha? The enhanced senses that made you such an effective leader? The way you've always been different, special, more than others expected?"

Aleron stepped closer, his movements careful and non-threatening. Yet.

"That was your vampire heritage, dormant but always present."

"I don't believe you," I whispered, though pieces of my life were clicking into place with terrifying clarity.

"The blood I gave you didn't change you, love," Aleron said, using that endearment that made something inside me shiver. "It simply awakened what was already there. You're a hybrid, Kiara—werewolf and vampire both."

"Stop…" I pleaded.

My hands pressed against my temples as his words crashed over me in waves, but Aleron continued relentlessly.

"And that sensation you felt when I offered my blood?" He paused, his pale green eyes holding mine with hypnotic intensity.

My heart stopped beating.

And I know he felt it from the way Aleron's smile turned predatory, and something dangerous flared to life in his pale eyes.

"That wasn't just your vampire nature awakening, love. That was recognition. Soul calling to soul across the species barrier."

"No, it can’t be…" I whispered fiercely as understanding already formed in my mind.

"You're not just Thomen's true mate, Kiara," he said, voice dropping to something intimate and devastating. "You're my vampire soulmate as well. The girl who was always meant to be mine in ways she wouldn’t understand. Until now."

The clearing tilted sickeningly as reality shattered completely, settled over my consciousness like a suffocating blanket. If he’s telling the truth, that means everything I'd believed about my identity, my family, my relationships…

Not only was everything I'd believed in built on lies, but the universe was now mocking my healing by tying me eternally to the person who'd broken me first.

If that’s so, then I am a hybrid. My mother is alive. She is a vampire royalty.

And I am now bound to the very enemy I'd sworn to destroy.

"No," I breathed. "You're lying…"

But even as I spoke the denial, I could feel the truth of it thrumming in my veins. In the enhanced senses that weren't werewolves at all. In the hunger that only blood could satisfy.

In the way my body had always responded to him. In the way his blood had tasted like coming home. In the magnetic pull that felt like gravity itself.

As Aleron watched me with those knowing eyes, I realized that the boy who'd once been my biggest love might be something far more complicated than either enemy or friend.

He might really be my soulmate.

And I had absolutely no idea what that could mean for any of us.