Chapter 434: The Girl They Came For

Igma;

The door opens before I’m ready for it.

Some part of me has spent every hour since I last saw her, building a version of her in my head. I wondered if and hoped she’d be... whole, untouched, scolding me for taking so long to come. But those versions don’t prepare me for the girl standing in the doorway right now.

Alana. My Alana...

Her brown hair hangs limp, thin, and tangled at the ends. Like no one had the decency to help her come in...in months.

Her rabbit ears— usually pricked, alert, twitching at every sound in a room the way they always have since I’ve known her—sit pressed flat against her skull. Fear does that to her. Fear that I’ve only seen a handful of times.

Her skin has gone pale in a way that makes the shadows under her eyes look bruised into her. Her usually glowing... healthy skin...is almost ghostly pale now.

She’s thinner too.

I notice that before I notice anything else, and it’s the thing that breaks something in my chest. The Alana I know was never thin. She was...sturdy, as she called herself. Built for carrying trays up four flights of stairs without complaint.

Now... her collarbones show through the neck of a dress two sizes too big for her frame. She’s weak...She’s drained. But she’s alive... She’s actually alive.

This isn’t a mirage or an imposter. This isn’t like Bram. This is her. My Alana. I can feel it.

I say her name, and it doesn’t sound like my own voice.

"Alana..."

Her head lifts, and for one unbearable second her eyes are unfocused—glassy...searching the room like she isn’t certain what she’s looking for. Then they land on me.

The moment they do, something in her face simply comes undone.

"Igma," she breathes. Barely audible, and I feel my emotions erupt inside me.

I don’t remember crossing the room. One moment I’m standing by the door, the next my arms are around her, and she’s so much lighter than she should be, light enough that I have to lock my knees so I don’t fold both of us to the floor.

"You’re here," she says into my shoulder. "You’re really here."

"I felt you," I reply, and my voice cracks hopelessly as tears fill my eyes.

"The whole time. Every hour. I felt you, and I didn’t know if—" I can’t finish it. I can’t bring myself to.

She pulls back just enough to look at me, both hands rising to cup my face, checking I’m real the same way I need to check she is.

"You look terrible," she whispers, and it startles a laugh out of me that comes out closer to a sob.

Then I feel her hands shaking against my jaw, and the small warmth of that moment curdles into something colder.

"Alana." My voice drops as I gently cradle her face and look her over.

"Did they hurt you?" I whisper, and she hesitates.

"They—" She begins but stops as her eyes dart briefly past me, toward the corner of the room, then back.

"I don’t—I can’t remember." She replies, and my heart sinks.

"Then what happened to you?" I ask I honest worry amd she smiles bitterly.

"I don’t fully know," she admits, and something about the honesty of that frightens me more than a clear answer would have.

"I remember being taken after leaving Nagari. I remember a room... After that it’s— pieces. Like I was asleep for most of it, except I wasn’t asleep. I was just... not entirely here." She tries to explain as her gaze drops to our joined hands.

"I woke up properly last night," she adds quietly, and I listen in silence.

"Stronger than I’d been in what felt like weeks. I don’t know why. I just know that whatever was happening to me...it stopped." She concluded, and tears blurred my vision.

I know what was happening. All this time...all this while...for weeks, that bastard Bram has been draining her life force to maintain her identity... I’ll kill him myself when we get back.

But for now...She doesn’t need to know any of that.

Behind me, I hear Rhydian shift his weight. Alana’s ears twitch toward the sound before her eyes follow.

The moment she sees him, she straightens instantly — as much as her weakened body allows — some old, deep-set instinct pulling her spine upright even now.

"Alpha Rhydian." She greets...Her voice, though thin, carries genuine warmth. Reverence, even.

"Forgive me. I didn’t mean to keep my back to you." She apologises, and Rhyidan sighs.

"Alana." He says as he steps forward, and I watch something in his face soften despite everything else sitting unresolved in him tonight.

"You don’t owe me formality. Not tonight." He says, and Alana shakes her head gently in negation/

"I owe the Ashfangs a great deal more than formality," She says simply, like it isn’t even a question worth debating.

"You’ve all been good to me since before I ever knew what Alpha Igma was to me. I haven’t forgotten that." She adds, and I glance at Rhydian.

His jaw is tight, eyes wet in a way he’s clearly furious about, blinking hard against it like he can force it back through sheer will.

He hasn’t moved from where he was this whole time — giving us the room, giving me the room — nursing a guilt that scares me.

Because when he watches us like that...it feels like he’s already decided our fate.

"Sit," I tell Alana, guiding her toward the bed before her legs decide for her.

She goes without arguing, and how small and fragile she currently is breaks me.

The witch who brought her in steps out and shuts the door behind her, but I don’t care.

I kneel in front of Alana, refusing to let go of her hands.

"Tell me what you can," I say. "Whatever you remember. Whatever you overheard." I plead.

She’s quiet for a moment, gathering herself; I guess then she lets out a breath.

"They asked me questions, in the pieces I do remember," she says. "About the Ashfangs. About BeastHeaven’s numbers, its defences. I don’t think I answered anything useful. I don’t think I was even lucid enough to."

"That’s not your fault," I quickly assure her, and she blinks at me with a gentle smile.

Her thumb moves absently over my knuckles as her hired brown eyes hold my gaze.

"But there’s something else. Something I need to tell you both, and I don’t think you’re going to like it."

Rhydian steps closer at that, careful, like he’s approaching something that might startle, and I return my gaze to her.

"What is it?" I ask her gently, and her grip on my hands tightens.

"I wasn’t fully aware most of the time I was there," she says. "But near the end—last night, maybe the night before—there were guards outside the room. Talking. I don’t think they realised how much I could hear...or they didn’t care."

"What did they say?" Rhydian asks, and she swallows before looking his way.

"That Avaren isn’t the only danger BeastHeaven should be afraid of." She says, and my brows knot as my heart drops.

Her voice drops lower, urgent now. "Something else is coming. No it...It’s already here... They didn’t give it a name — or if they did, I didn’t catch it — but the way they spoke about it wasn’t the way you speak about an enemy you understand. It was...fear. The kind people have for something they can’t predict." She explains further, and my stomach drops.

Fear? Something witches and warlocks fear is...coming for BeastHeaven?

"They said Avaren knows about it..." she continues. "That’s part of why he wants things settled quickly. Cleanly. Whatever he proposed to you—" Her eyes move between us both, "—I think you need to accept it. He wants both sides to merge...so both sides can...stand as one against whatever is coming." She concludes, and with that, the room goes very still.

"Alana." My voice comes out unsteady.

"I know we can’t trust him, and I don’t know what he’s planning to offer," she says, honest and unknowing in the same breath.

"But I don’t need to know the details to understand what’s at stake. If witches and warlocks are still your enemy when whatever’s coming reaches BeastHeaven’s borders, we won’t survive it. Not divided. Not fighting two wars at once." She replies, and I feel Rhydian go rigid behind me.

"Please," Alana says, and her eyes hold mine with a weight I’ve never seen in them, not once in all the time I’ve loved her. "Whatever it costs. I think you have to consider it. For the first time in years, these...people can finally stop being our enemies. They...they can be allies." She pleads, and I look away.

She has no idea what that costs.

She doesn’t know his father’s name is the price sitting on the end of that offer. She’s saying it plainly, simply, because to her the shape of it is clean—take the alliance, save the people, survive what’s coming.

She has no idea what she’s just asked him to do.

I look back at Rhydian.

He isn’t looking at either of us anymore. He’s staring past me, toward the window, jaw locked so tight I can see the muscle working beneath his skin—and I understand, in that moment, that whatever fragile, uncertain ground the two of us found tonight has just been kicked out from under him even more.

Because now he seems to understand it isn’t only Alana’s life balanced against Wilhelm’s.

It’s everyone’s.

And Alana—sitting here, thin and trembling and utterly unaware of what she’s just done—has no idea she’s the one who just might have decided for him.