Chapter 42: Scared Like Us - Callista's POV

The drive to the Alpha King’s mansion felt like driving toward our own execution. I sat in the passenger seat of Riven’s car, watching the landscape blur past as we left the Nightshade territory behind. It felt surreal. We were mated, though not fully and everything had happened so fast.

I sighed, glancing behind us. My parents followed in their vehicle, along with Alpha and Luna Nightshade with Riven’s Beta, Korey. It was a long convoy of consequences, all because two sixteen-year-olds had decided they knew better than centuries of tradition.

“You said they would allow this much when we first met and I told you they wouldn’t,” I said, my voice low.

He laughed. “Sometimes you have to do it and ask for forgiveness afterward.”

My fingers drifted to the mark on my neck, Riven’s mark. It was permanent and visible despite my attempts to cover it with my collar. The skin was still tender and everyone who saw it would know exactly what we had done.

"Stop touching it," Riven said quietly, his eyes never leaving the road. "You'll make it worse."

“I can’t help it,” I said, dropping my hands to my lap. “It’s still so tender and my body keeps reminding me that it’s there and real.”

"It is real." His right hand left the steering wheel to find mine, lacing our fingers together. "And I don't regret it. No matter what happens when we get there."

“Even if the Alpha King—” I couldn’t finish the sentence or voice all the terrible possibilities that kept me awake for over twenty-four hours.

After we told his parents at dawn and they called my parents, the letter arrived. Then my parents came over. It was a long day of lectures and asking what we were thinking, though by the end of the day, they said it was probably inevitable.

An alpha’s urge to mark their mate is unbearable after meetings and both of our fathers admitted they would have struggled to wait as well.

When it was time for bed, we were told to go to our rooms and not allowed to be together. We might be marked, but there would be nothing else until the ceremony.

“Even then,” Riven said, his jaw tightening. “Callista, we did what we had to do to save everyone. The demon was going to break free and that vision was going to come true. You saw it and felt it. Marking each other was survival.”

He was right. I knew it, but that didn’t stop fear from twisting in my stomach as the GPS announced we were thirty minutes from our destination.

Thirty minutes until we were face to face with the Alpha King. Thirty minutes until he demanded answers about what was living in Riven.

My phone buzzed in my lap. It was a text from Sabine.

“Mom and Dad won’t tell me what is happening. They left me with Aunt Cathy. Are you okay? What’s going on?”

I stared at her message, unsure how to respond.

“What do I say to her?” I asked Riven. “My parents haven’t told her anything and I don’t want to overstep.”

I couldn’t tell her that I secretly marked my mate at sixteen and now the Alpha King had summoned us to his mansion because he somehow knew that Riven had a demon living inside of him.

Yeah, that would go over well.

“I’m fine,” I typed out and said it aloud. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

Her message was immediate and I read it out loud to Riven. “Oh, now she says i’m lying and she can tell.”

“Tell her that you can’t explain right now and that you’ll tell her when you can.”

My fingers glide across the screen, saying just that then my phone goes dark. When no message came through, I set the phone down and looked out the window. We’d left the familiar forests of our territory behind and entered a more urban landscape. The Alpha King’s mansion was considered our capital and was neutral territory where all major pack business was conducted.

"What do you think he'll do?" I asked quietly.

Riven’s hand tightened on mine. “I don’t know. It might be nothing or maybe he just wants to understand why we marked each other so quickly. Who knows? Considering how fast the letter arrived, I’m not sure it’s about our mate marking.”

"He said 'what lives inside it' in his letter." I turned to look at him. "He knows about the demon, Riven. How could he possibly know?"

"I've been asking myself the same question since we got that letter." His red-gold eyes flickered to me briefly before returning to the road. "The only people who know about the demon are you, me, and the Moon Goddess. Unless—"

"Unless he's been watching you," I finished. "Maybe he’s been monitoring you somehow."

The thought made my skin crawl. How long had the Alpha King known? Was it the ceremony when his eyes had gone black? Or was it before that? Maybe he had known about it since his birth, just like he knew about my seer abilities.

"We're here," Riven said, his voice tense.

I looked up, my breath catching. The Alpha King’s mansion sat on a hill overlooking the capital. It was a sprawling structure of stone and glass that somehow looked beautiful, but also was intimidating. Guards flanked the massive iron gates, and I could see more posted along the perimeter walls.

There definitely wasn’t a way out of here once we got inside. It wasn’t just a normal home. It was a fortress.

The gates swung open as we approached. We drove up the long driveway lined with old oak trees, their branches forming a canopy overhead that blocked out most of the morning light. Behind us, my parent’s car followed, and I wondered what they were thinking. How angry were they? Were they scared like us?

The mansion loomed larger as we approached, and I counted at least three stories visible from the front, with wings extending in both directions.

Riven parked in the circular drive, and for a moment, neither of us moved.

“Whatever happens in there,” he said, turning to fully face me, “we’ll face it together, just as we have faced everyone else.”