The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 56: Ruined Memorial

🔹️THORNE

Nyx settled hard against my shoulder as I broke into a run, her talons biting through leather as she shared her sight with mine. The corridors stretched and warped ahead of me, torchlight smearing into gold and shadow as my stride lengthened, my lungs burning with the cold certainty tightening around my ribs.

No.

The word reverberated in my head, pouncing off the planes of my skull.

"She would not," Umbra snarled inside me, his voice raw, scraping. "She would not do this."

The memorial hall lay ahead.

The doors were already open.

A crowd had gathered—too quiet, too tightly packed. Wolves pressed shoulder to shoulder, their scents sharp with alarm and disbelief, their murmurs low and as fragmented as my spiraling thoughts. No one turned quickly enough as I reached them. No one moved aside until my Alpha command snapped them all back with a horrible jolt.

"Part."

The word tore through them. Bodies shifted, stumbling back, heads bowing as the space opened before me. I walked through the path they left behind, my steps slowing as the smell hit me.

Ash.

Stone dust.

Spilled tinctures, sharp and metallic in the air.

The memorial had been reduced to wreckage.

The tables where my mother’s instruments once lay were overturned, glass shattered across the floor in glinting fragments. Shelves had been torn from the walls, jars smashed, their contents bleeding together in dark, viscous streaks. The greenhouse windows above stood fractured, moonlight spilling through jagged panes onto uprooted soil and broken planters.

At the center of it all lay the cauldron.

Cracked.

Not toppled—split, as if struck with deliberate force.

And beside it—

My mother’s cloak.

The witch’s mantle I had retrieved from the execution grounds myself while her scream still rang in my ears, preserved as the last thing that touched her skin that had not been burned. Now it lay trampled, its embroidered sigils staring me down like I had betrayed them.

My breath caught, sharp enough to fucking hurt.

The urn was no longer whole.

Fragments of obsidian ceramic were scattered across the floor. The warding runes etched into its surface had been shattered along with it, broken lines glowing faintly as the magic bled out and dissipated into nothing.

And then I saw her.

Althea stood amid the ruin, her bare feet smeared with ash and potion residue, her posture wrong in a way I could not immediately name. One hand was clenched at her throat, fingers curled tight around a shard of the urn, its edge pressed just below her jaw, biting into skin.

Her other hand was stained with ash—my mother’s ashes.

She faced the shifted gammas at the other end of the room, the ones growling at her. They were afraid to attack, unable to risk her going through with slitting her own throat.

She turned when she sensed me, slow and deliberate, as if she had known exactly when I would arrive. Her eyes lifted to mine—and something in them twisted.

They were focused in a way that made my spine lock.

"I had to," she said.

Her voice carried clearly through the chamber, steady enough to chill me. It did not shake. It did not rise. It held the careful cadence of someone who had rehearsed the moment, weighed each word before letting it fall.

"I had to do it," she repeated, pressing the shard more firmly to her skin. A thin line of red welled beneath it, vivid against the honeyed curve of her throat.

My heart slammed hard enough to make my vision blur.

"What did you do?" I demanded, though I already knew.

She smiled, tight, as if the expression hurt to hold. "She was watching you," Althea said. "Every time you looked at me."

The words landed wrong, sliding under my guard before I could deflect them.

"She was the reason you wouldn’t claim what was already yours," she continued, her gaze never leaving mine. "The reason you hesitated. The reason you kept pretending this—" she gestured weakly to the space between us, to the bond humming and furious beneath my skin, "—was anything other than destiny."

My vision flicked to the broken urn, to the ashes ground into the stone floor beneath her feet.

"You desecrated my mother’s memorial," I said, my voice low, controlled only by force. "You destroyed the last thing I had left of her."

"I removed her," Althea replied simply.

The hall went utterly still.

"So you wouldn’t have an excuse anymore."

The shard trembled in her grip, just slightly, betraying the strain beneath her composure. "If you want me," she said, her voice dropping, threading itself through the wreckage she had made, "then you will take me without her standing between us."

My chest constricted, fury and disbelief crashing together in my veins.

"And if you don’t," she went on, her eyes dark and intent, "then I know exactly where I stand."

The bond surged violently, pain and pull colliding in a way that made my teeth grind.

And standing in the ashes of my mother’s memory, with her hands wrapped around the proof of it, Althea waited for my answer.

It writhed under my skin, that ruinous cocktail of fury, shock, disbelief—each one battling for dominance, each one threatening to tear loose what little restraint I had left.

I barely knew her, this wary, scared woman who tempted me the way no other had ever been able to manage. Yet something was wrong now—she was not like this.

But this time, there was no denying it. She stood in the ruins, taking responsibility for the damage done with pride.

My pulse roared in my ears, drowning out the murmurs behind me.

Umbra howled, shattered that his fated mate had hurt him but still refusing to see what was in front of us. "She is not like this. She would never..." My wolf’s voice was drowned out as I spoke.

"You think desecrating my mother’s remains earns you a place at my side?" My voice dropped low, calm, edged with venom.