The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 70: Dilemma

🦋ALTHEA

Measly thirty.

Thirty lives. Thirty people with names and families and dreams and fears and—

And he was calling them measly.

My heart seized, a scream building in my throat—raw and jagged and full of every ounce of horror flooding through me. This was the man holding me. This was my mate. The person the Moon Goddess had bound me to for eternity.

A man who could look at thirty innocent lives and dismiss them as acceptable losses.

As nothing.

The scream tore out of me, ragged and broken, more animal than human. It echoed across the clearing, bouncing off trees and stones and shocked faces.

But my hands—my traitorous, weak, compassionate hands—they were already moving.

I couldn’t help it.

I couldn’t let them die.

Even knowing Thorne was right—that hundreds more would die in the mines, that this was just a drop in an ocean of blood—I couldn’t be the one to kill these thirty. Couldn’t watch Thal’s throat open. Couldn’t see Yana fall.

Couldn’t bear the weight of their deaths on my already-stained soul.

My fingers trembled as I pulled them back.

The moths returned in a shimmering wave, beautiful and deadly and mine, dissolving into silver light that sank back into my skin. Each one that returned felt like a failure. A surrender. A betrayal of everything I’d fought for.

But they came anyway.

Because I was weak.

Because I cared.

Sobs wracked my body as the last of them disappeared, leaving the brigade alive and the Vargans still captive and everything exactly as broken as it had been before.

Thorne’s chest rumbled against my back—a sound of dark satisfaction that made me want to claw my way out of my own skin.

"You see, Poppy?" His voice carried across the clearing, almost gentle. Almost proud. "My lovely mate is as empathetic as she is beautiful."

The words should have been a compliment.

They felt like a weapon.

"She balances me out quite perfectly," he continued, and his hand splayed possessively over my stomach, holding me against him as I shook with grief and rage and helplessness so profound it felt like drowning.

He’d known.

He’d known exactly what I would do. Had counted on my compassion like it was just another piece on the game board. Had used my own heart against me as surely as Morgana was using the Vargans’ bodies as shields.

I was a tool.

To both of them.

"So there is no world," Thorne said, his voice dropping to something lethal, something that promised violence, "where you take her from me."

The North Clan wolves pressed closer, forming a wall of fur and fangs that surrounded us completely. The message was clear: try to take her and die.

"You have two choices, Aunty." The false affection in the title was more threatening than any growl. "Retreat. Leave the Vargans. Walk away while you still can."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

"Or die here. With them. Right now."

The air crackled with violence barely leashed, with the promise of carnage so close I could taste copper on my tongue.

Morgana’s face was a mask of fury, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscles jumping beneath her skin. But beneath the rage, beneath the wounded pride and thwarted plans—I saw her calculating. Weighing options. Counting costs.

She was going to retreat.

I knew it with sudden, crushing certainty. She was going to walk away because Thorne had called her bluff and she had nothing left to leverage. The Vargans were worthless if he didn’t care whether they lived or died.

Relief should have flooded through me.

It didn’t.

Because I’d learned something terrible in the last few minutes.

I’d learned that the man holding me could let thirty people die without blinking. I’d learned that my mother would use a bleeding child as a bargaining chip.

I’d learned that I was trapped between two monsters who saw people as currency.

And I had no idea which one was worse. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

The standoff stretched, taut as a wire about to snap, and I held my breath, waiting for—

Morgana moved.

She released Thal.

The boy crumpled to the ground like a puppet with cut strings, gasping and sobbing, and my heart leaped with desperate hope—

But her hand shot out and seized someone else.

Yana. No.

My breath caught, strangled and sharp, as Morgana’s claws found Yana’s throat, yanking her backward.

Not her. Anyone but her.

"If anyone knew what Althea had been up to," Morgana announced, her voice ringing with false righteousness that made me want to scream, "it was her handmaiden."

The words punched through me.

"Twenty years she’s served you." Morgana’s smile was vicious, triumphant. "Twenty years of dressing you, bathing you, attending your every need. Watching your every move."

No. No, this wasn’t—

"And you expect me to believe," she continued, relishing every word, "that she didn’t know?"

"She didn’t!" The scream tore from my throat as I thrashed against Thorne’s grip. "I never told her! She never—she had nothing to do with—"

"Spare me!" Morgana’s laugh was sharp enough to draw blood. "This woman could tell if you’d pissed in a day, Althea. She knew when you were bleeding. When you were sleeping. When you were breathing wrong."

My throat closed because she was right.

Yana had always known.

Even when I’d been so careful—scrubbing the blood from under my fingernails, burning the clothes stained with silver and death, returning before dawn with lies on my tongue—Yana had known.

She’d never said anything. Never asked. Never told.

But she’d known.

And now she was going to die for it.

"She will pay for her treachery," Morgana declared, each word a nail in a coffin. "Harboring a traitor. Aiding the Silvermoth. Conspiracy against the High Alpha’s regime."

Each charge fell like a stone into deep water, sending ripples through everything.

"The sentence is death."

"NO!" I lunged forward with everything I had, but Thorne’s arms were iron bands, immovable. "Take me instead! Let her go and I’ll come with you! I’ll do whatever you want just please—"

"Mistress."

Yana’s voice cut through my panic like a knife.

She stood straight despite the claws at her throat. Despite the blood trickling down her neck in thin red lines. Despite everything. Her eyes found mine across the distance, and they were calm.

Her expression was wrought with resolve and resignation that could have ripped my heart out of my chest.

"The others should go," she said quietly. Firmly, like this was what she was most sure of. "I knew what you were doing. I knew, and I said nothing."

"Yana, no—"

"I am willing," she continued, and her voice didn’t waver, "to take the punishment for my treason against the pack I serve."

The words fell like stones into deep water. Silence crashed over the clearing.

Then her lips quivered in a smile, it quivered just a little, like it was unsure if it was the best time. Sorrow lanced through me, startling and bitter sweet. Yana never smiled, she never showed emotion.

This was the first.

"Mistress," She called, her eyes wholly on me, like no one else existed. "Live." She shouted. Her lip quivered as she shed a tear. "Love."

Then raised her gaze, "Alpha," She spoke to Throne while I remained struggling in his arms. "Take care of my boy...and Althy."

Horror flashed through me when Thorne nodded.

My head whipped to him but his eyes did not stray from Yana. "Your sacrifice will never be forgotten." He said.