Page 15 of Her Fated Alpha Prince
When she opened the door, no one was there.
Just a folded square of parchment on the floor.
She picked it up, fingers trembling slightly as she broke the seal.
The handwriting was sharp and deliberate.
“If you feel something changing, say nothing. For now. We are being watched.”
Her heart dropped.
She read it again. And again.
Something changing.
They knew. Or at least, someone did.
And not just about her being human.
She folded the parchment and tucked it under the mattress. Her mind spun in loops—half-formed questions chasing shadows of answers.
She didn’t know who “V” was, but she had a sinking feeling it was the silver-haired man who’d introduced her as a noble’s daughter.
Elder Varos.
If he was warning her, that meant someone else was looking. Seryna, maybe. Or worse.
Ariana returned to the bed, but sleep stayed far away.
She lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, her body humming with restless heat.
Not just from fear. Not just from the dream.
It was him too.
Kael.
Even when he was gone, he lingered. In the air. In her thoughts. In the phantom place on her skin where his hand had rested.
She hated it.
And maybe, a little… she didn’t.
Ariana lay still, eyes tracing the shadows that pooled in the corners of her room. The silence was thick, but her mind was loud—fractured pieces of dreams, warnings, and that haunting presence of Kael weaving through every thought.
She stared at the ceiling, the plaster cracked like the fissures spreading inside her. What was happening to her wasn’tjust a change—it was a fracture in everything she thought she knew about herself. The garden outside, the silver flame in the dream, the voice that wasn’t hers, the vines catching her fall—all threads pulling her toward something vast and unknowable.
Her fingers curled into the sheets, nails digging in, desperate for something solid to hold onto.
A soft, almost imperceptible rustle came from the garden again. She stiffened, heart jumping.
The flowers moved.
It wasn’t the wind. There was no breeze. The blooms turned toward the moon, their colors deepening, glowing softly in the night like tiny beacons.
Ariana’s breath hitched. She forced herself to look away, to close her eyes and will the magic, or whatever it was, away. But the pulse inside her wouldn’t stop. It thrummed with the rhythm of something ancient—something that felt both terrifying and familiar.
She knew—deep in her bones—that whatever was awakening inside her had roots that ran far beyond this moment, beyond the walls of the house, beyond the very world she thought she lived in.
