The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 24: Black Brand

🔹 THORNE

It could be a tactic.

Probably was a tactic.

It was the same display of vulnerability that had gotten Silverfang infiltrated years ago, the same performance that had led to our pack being desecrated and our people enslaved. My mother had pitied an outsider once—a wounded omega who’d stumbled into our territory with a story about escaping abuse, about needing sanctuary, about having nowhere else to go.

That omega had been Morgana’s spy.

And within a month, Silverfang fell. The Luna Witch was murdered. Half our pack was slaughtered, the other half enslaved. All because my mother had let compassion override caution, had seen suffering and responded with mercy instead of suspicion.

We had learned the hard way. The Allied Packs didn’t send warriors to destroy us—they sent victims. People we would feel obligated to help, to protect, to trust. And by the time we realized the truth, it was too late.

I would not make the same mistake my mother made.

I would not pity an outsider, no matter how haunted her eyes looked, no matter how genuine her pain seemed. Because Morgana’s daughter had every reason to be good at this—at seeming vulnerable, at triggering protective instincts, at making people want to believe her.

"What happened to your teeth?" I asked, my voice flat and cold, refusing to let sympathy creep in.

"It has no bearing on my identity as the Silvermoth," she said blankly, her grey eyes steady and empty of emotion.

The Zetas exchanged looks, and I could see they were gearing up to counter her, to press the wound until it broke open and spilled truth or lies or whatever she was hiding beneath that careful blankness. But I shut it down with a single raised hand. I would learn all I needed in due time. She wasn’t leaving my domain, which meant I had all the time in the world to extract every secret she kept buried.

"So you have proven to have a connection to animals," I said, shifting the interrogation forward. "How do you do it? How did you become the Silvermoth?"

She was quiet for a moment, her gaze dropping from Nyx to some point in the middle distance, like she was looking at something none of us could see. When she spoke, her voice had that same distant quality it had taken on before—conversational, removed, like she was narrating a story that had happened to someone else rather than recounting her own actions.

"The first night was a rescue," she said quietly. "A Vargan named Arin. They said he’d committed a crime—theft, I think, or maybe it was striking a gamma who’d gotten too rough with his daughter. It didn’t matter what the actual accusation was. The sentence was the same. He and his entire family would be sent to the Silver Mines."

Her hands folded in her lap, fingers interlacing with a precision that suggested she was keeping them occupied so they wouldn’t shake. "I went to the river banks where they were being held before transport. I didn’t plan it. Didn’t think it through. I just... went. I was basically wolfless, had no real strength, no way to fight trained warriors. So I tried to sneak them out. Waited until the guards rotated shifts, slipped in through a gap in the fencing, thought maybe I could lead them to the water and somehow get them across before anyone noticed."

She paused, and something that might have been bitter amusement flickered across her face. "It went exactly how you’d expect. I was caught within minutes. They beat me—"

The room was silent. Even the Zetas had stopped their restless movements, listening despite themselves.

"That’s when the wolves came," Althea continued, her voice still that strange, distant thing, like she was reading from a chronicle rather than describing her own near-death. "Three of them. I’d raised them when they were pups after their mother died in a hunting accident near the pack borders. I’d bottle-fed them, kept them hidden in the old storage cellar, and released them into the woods when they were strong enough to survive on their own. I hadn’t seen them in months. Didn’t think they’d remember me."

Her fingers tightened slightly in her lap. "But they came. And they weren’t alone. Birds came too—crows, ravens, even some owls. They attacked the guards."

I felt Nyx shift on my shoulder, her attention sharpening on Althea with an intensity that suggested the raven was reassessing everything she’d assumed about the woman in front of us.

"It was nearly daybreak by then," Althea said. "The alarm would be raised soon. So we ran—Arin, his family, me. The wolves let us ride them to the river bank, and the fish came. Massive things, sturgeon. They surfaced, and Arin understood somehow, grabbed onto their fins. His family did the same. The fish carried them across, kept them afloat, pulled them faster than any boat could have managed."

She lifted her gaze slightly, still not quite looking at me but no longer staring at nothing. "The birds followed them. Watched from above. I couldn’t track them myself—couldn’t shift, couldn’t run fast enough to keep up. But the birds stayed with them until they were too far for even their eyes to see. Until they were safe."

Silence fell again, heavier this time.

"And the silver moths?" I asked, my voice carefully neutral. "When did those appear?"

Althea’s expression shifted slightly, something uncertain crossing her face. "I use them to finish off guards or gammas who try to escape during rescues. The moths cling to them, dissolve, and absorb into their bodies. It kills them quickly." Her voice remained distant, factual. "No guards are left alive."

Deafening silence descended on the room like a physical weight. The Zetas stared at her, and I could see them recalculating everything they’d assumed about the woman sitting before us. This wasn’t a naive girl playing hero. This was someone who’d killed methodically, repeatedly, without hesitation.

"You kill your own kind?" Zeta Kael asked finally, his voice low and dangerous.

Althea didn’t answer. But strangely, she didn’t bow her head either. Didn’t look away. Just held that distant, blank expression like she was somewhere else entirely, watching this interrogation happen to someone who wasn’t her.

The silence stretched.

Then she screamed.

The sound tore out of her throat—raw, agonized, animal—and her body convulsed violently. She pitched forward out of the chair, hitting the stone floor hard, her hands clawing desperately at her back like she was trying to reach something beneath her skin.

"Althea—" I started, but she was already writhing, her spine arching at an unnatural angle, her fingers scrabbling uselessly at fabric and flesh.

The Zetas surged to their feet, hands on weapons, but I was already moving. My wolf was snarling, pushing forward with an urgency that had nothing to do with strategy or suspicion and everything to do with the mate bond screaming that something was wrong, that she was hurt, that I needed to—

I dropped to my knees beside her, my hands reaching for her shoulders. "What’s happening? What did you—"

"My back," she gasped, her voice broken and desperate, tears streaming down her face. "Please—it’s burning—please—"

I didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate. I flipped her onto her stomach, and my hands found the back of her dress. The fabric was simple, held together by laces and buttons, and I tore through them without finesse, yanking the material aside to expose her back.

And stopped dead.

The brand was there—between her shoulder blades, over her spine, positioned so she could never forget what she was. Property that was marked and claimed.

The flesh around the brand was black. Not burned black, not scarred black, but corrupted black, like rot spreading outward from the mark in creeping tendrils. And the brand itself was bubbling, the skin blistering and splitting, silver-black liquid oozing from the wounds like infected blood.

I knew this mark. Knew the magic behind it. I had seen it once before, years ago, when the High Alpha had demonstrated his power to the gathered Allied Pack Alphas in a show of dominance that had made even my mother go pale.

It was a control brand. A leash. And it was designed to do exactly this—to punish, to torture, to kill if the branded wolf stepped too far out of line.

"Get Ivanna," I snapped at the nearest Zeta. "Now."

Althea was sobbing beneath me, her entire body shaking, her hands still clawing uselessly at the floor. "Please," she choked out. "Please make it stop—it hurts—please—"

The mate bond was screaming. Umbra was howling, furious and helpless, because I couldn’t fix this, couldn’t stop this, couldn’t do anything except watch her suffer while the brand ate through her flesh like acid.

"I can’t," I said, and the words felt like admitting defeat.

"Kill me," she begged, her voice breaking on the words. "Please—just kill me—I can’t—"

"No." The word came out harsh, absolute. My hands pressed against her shoulders, holding her down, keeping her from thrashing herself apart against the stone floor. "You’re not dying here. You’re not dying like this."

For the first time, I pushed back thoughts of any ploy or scheme.

I let the mate bond win this round.