Alpha of her Heart

CHAPTER 7

ALPHA CASSIAN went to the border of his Rogue Territory. Finnley informed him through the pack link that the Beta of the Moonlight Crown Pack—the Alpha King’s pack—was requesting his presence.

The wind howled and the trees rustled.

Cassian stood, with his arms folded, and his eyes were sharp as blades. Beta Ronan, the Alpha King’s Beta, stood across, dressed in an immaculate black suit, carrying the weight of the royal crest and the arrogance that came with it.

“This was what you needed,” Beta Ronan said as he handed the folder to the Rogue Alpha.

Cassian opened the folder.

Ronan cleared his throat. “The Alpha King was expecting—”

Cassian didn’t let the Beta finish his words. “I don’t give a damn what the Alpha King expects,” he said as his voice held like a blade. “Tell your king not to expect a fast report. You don’t find a missing royal child after almost thirty years with a sniff and a whisper.”

Ronan opened his mouth again, but Cassian was already turning away, dismissing the royal envoy like an ordinary courier.

Then Cassian looked over his shoulder. “I’ll report when I have something worth saying,” he said, and walked away from the Beta.

Ronan stood frozen. He should have been insulted by the Rogue Alpha’s attitude. He should have been furious and ready to report the disrespect, but something else had settled in his gut.

The voice. The stance and the eyes.

Something in the Rogue Alpha reminded him of it—but that was impossible to happen. And yet, he saw the resemblance. It was there.

The Alpha King’s presence was the same as the Rogue Alpha’s quiet force.

The fire behind the restraint.

Ronan narrowed his eyes. He stared after the Rogue Alpha’s retreating form.

“He even walks like him…”

He shook his head and shrugged off the thought that came into his mind because there were a lot of coincidences that could happen. With that, he left and went back to the Moonlight Crown Pack to report to the Alpha King.

When Beta Ronan arrived at the palace, he immediately went to the Alpha King’s study room. He bowed his head when he met the Luna Queen at the door.

“You can go inside,” the Luna Queen said in her gentle voice.

“Thank you, Luna Queen.”

The Luna Queen smiled and left.

Ronan bowed his head and entered the study room. The study room was quiet. The thick curtains on the window muffled the wind outside, and the scent of burning cedar lingered in the air like a memory that refused to fade.

Alpha King Varek stood by the table, gazing at an old map spread across its surface. He didn’t turn around when Beta Ronan entered, but he spoke.

“How was it?”

Beta Ronan bowed his head slightly. “I’ve delivered your request, Your Majesty. The Rogue Alpha knows the details.”

“Did he accept?”

“He did, Your Majesty,” Ronan answered, “but in his own way. He was blunt, cold, and unapologetic. Totally a rogue attitude.”

That brought the faintest ghost of a smile to the Alpha King’s lips. “He gave justice to the rumors about him.”

Ronan didn’t speak.

Silence fell into the room.

Then Alpha King Varek spoke again, his voice was rougher this time. “I hope he can find my son.”

Ronan opened his mouth, but he suddenly hesitated. The words he was about to say were caught in his throat. He wanted to speak and tell the Alpha King about the Rogue Alpha had something about him—the way he held his ground, the edge in his voice, the commanding presence, the aura he exuded, and the fire in his eyes.

There were too many similarities to ignore.

But what if he was wrong?

What if it was just a coincidence?

Moreover, the Rogue Alpha was the son of the late Rogue Alpha, and everyone knows how the late Rogue Alpha loved his son.

He couldn’t look the Alpha King in the eyes and raised false hope, not after nearly thirty years of loss. So, he swallowed the words and opted not to say any of them.

“He’ll do what he can, Your Majesty. He doesn’t take his missions lightly,” Ronan said instead.

Varek nodded slowly. “Good,” he said softly. “That’s all I ask.”

Ronan bowed again and left the tent.

But as he walked into the hallways, he looked at the big window at the end of the hall. “This will take too long,” he said. “Finding a missing royal child is not as easy as sniffing the air.”

Suddenly…

“The princess was gone!”

Ronan sighed and mindlinked his son. ‘Reeve, the Princess, ran away again. Go and look for her.’

CASSIAN sat in his private study. A leather-bound folder spread across his table. The seal had already been broken, and the pages smelled faintly of dust and time. A kind of record that was already long buried, unearthed only because a king was desperate.

His ash-gray eyes scanned the top of the first page.

“Name, Cassius Rhys Castellano. Age, 28. Age at disappearance, 2 years and 4 months. Status, missing. Presumed taken or hidden. Bloodline, pure royal. Firstborn son of Alpha King Varek and Luna Queen Cassandra.”

Cassian stared at the name. “Cassius,” he whispered.

The name itself echoed strangely in his ears.

He flipped to the next page for the physical identifiers. “Eye color, ash-gray. Hair, black, thick, and naturally curly at the ends. Birthmark, a crescent-shaped mark behind the left ear. Tattoo, the Royal Heir’s sigil, a howling wolf encircled by a crescent moon, etched magically between the shoulder blades at birth. Only royal-born heirs possess it and cannot be removed or replicated.”

Cassian stared at the folder as his hand slowly moved toward his back, his fingertips brushing the fabric of his shirt where he had always borne a mark he never understood—the tattoo his father never told him was about.

He covered the tattoo since he was a child. Ignored it and even hid it.

But now, it is exactly as described.

He stood, pacing back and forth, the folder clenched in one hand.

“Cassius Rhys Castellano,” he whispered.

Cassian turned toward the glass wall, meeting his own reflection.

The ash-gray eyes. The black hair. The age. The birthmark and the tattoo.

All of it was describing him.

‘Man, we both know that we are not ordinary.’ Cassian’s inner wolf spoke.

The folder lay open on the desk, but Cassian no longer saw the words.

His vision blurred as a memory flashed in his mind.

He was no longer in the studies. He was seventeen again, standing outside the wooden log house. The air smelled of firewood and herbs. His adoptive father, Rafael Damaris, stood across from him.

Cassian remembered the deep lines and the stiffness in his father’s voice.

“Cassian, you’re old enough now,” Rafael said, handing Cassian a dagger that wasn’t meant to be used, only passed down. “To know who you really are.”

Cassian frowned. “What is it, father?”

Rafael looked at him. “I’m not your father. But I want you to know that you’ve always been mindful,” he said, not with rejection, but with the pain of someone who had chosen love, and now had to let go of a truth.

Cassian fisted. “Then who were my biological… parents?” he asked, carefully.

Rafael had taken a breath, slow and heavy, before speaking. “I found you just outside the borderlands. You were wrapped in wolfskin. And there was a woman.”

Cassian’s heart had pounded.

“I don’t know her name. But she was wounded. She begged me to take you—to protect you.” Rafael paused. “That woman was your mother,” he said afterward.

“Do you know who she was?”

Rafael shook his head. “No, but I remember her scent. And I smelled something too. It was faint but lingered on her.”

“Who?”

“The Alpha King,” Rafael sighed. “Just a day before I took you, the news spread out that the Moonlight Crown Pack was attacked by hunters and witches. They were trying to take down the Alpha King’s pack.”

“So, I am one of them?” Cassian asked.

Rafael nodded. “Maybe. Maybe not. But the blood on you said more than words ever could. You have Alpha blood in you, Cassian. You shifted without reaching your right age of shifting. Your senses were heightened than any of us in the pack. Moreover, your powers manifested at an early age.” He sighed as his eyes looked at the distant. “One day, they’ll come looking for you,” he warned. “And when they do, you’ll have to choose between the name they buried in your blood and the life you made here. I won’t stop you, son.”

Cassian gripped the edge of his desk.

The folder trembled in his hands.

His heart beat like war drums in his chest as the name—Cassius Rhys Castellano—a name meant for crowns and chains.

He stared down at the last page of the file again. Royal Heir Confirming Mark: Tattoo of the Moon-Wolf Sigil between blades. It was irremovable.

He didn’t need to look because he knew from the very beginning that it was there.

When he saw the Alpha King for the first time right in this study, he already knew what the Alpha King wanted. And he was right, but he didn’t want it. Not because he doesn’t want to see his real family, but because he wants to protect his mate. He doesn’t want to lose her.

Seris was a cursed mixed bloodline. Many want her dead as they believe that she will ruin the world. If he went back to his real family, his mate would get the attention of those people who want her dead.

“No, I won’t take the risk,” he said as he stood, holding the folder and a lighter with him.

He stood by the window and lit the edge of the paper. The fire caught up immediately. The paper curled, blackening the edges, and then he dropped it. As the folder dropped, the pages turned to ash, the ink melting away, line by line—his supposed origin, birthright, and the past erased in flame.

And when the folder dropped on the ground, it was already ashes and blown away by the wind.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am Cassian,” he muttered under his breath. “And no one is supposed to know that the missing royal heir was alive.”

And the only witness to the burning truth was the flame that devoured it.