Chapter 81: Am Not A Werewolf.

Chapter 81: Chapter 81: Am Not A Werewolf.

She pressed her hands against her knees, using the pressure of her palms against the fabric of her skirt to keep herself anchored to the present.

The room suddenly felt too small.

The walls seemed closer than they had moments ago, and the air itself carried a strange tension that Iris could neither see nor explain. Every breath Alexander took seemed to disturb something around him, a faint, almost imperceptible hum beneath the silence.

She leaned forward, keeping her eyes fixed on his. "Alexander," she said softly. Her voice trembled just enough to betray the fear she was trying so hard to hide.

He leaned forward a fraction, his attention immediately narrowing on her. His eyes followed the subtle shift of her throat when she swallowed before returning to meet hers. "Yes, Iris?"

"No more dodging." Her fingers pressed harder against her knees, gathering the wool between her knuckles. "You’ve been answering our questions, but somehow I still feel like you’re leaving the most important part out. So I’m going to ask you one more time, and I want you to give me the truth. Was our theory right?"

The faint, mocking amusement that had previously flickered in his demeanor vanished entirely. Alexander’s expression changed almost imperceptibly, the lines of his jaw setting into something cold and granite-hard.

His shoulders straightened, and the relaxed posture he had maintained since entering the apartment vanished. Even the atmosphere seemed to shift with him, heavy and suffocating.

Oliver, sitting quietly in the corner, leaned back slightly, his face settling into an unreadable mask as his arms crossed over his broad chest.

"Yes, it was," Alexander said.

The single word seemed to reverberate through the small apartment, vibrating in the frame of the coffee table between them.

Iris stared at him. Her heartbeat quickened into a rapid, fluttering panic. "Then tell me the rest."

Alexander remained silent, his steady breathing the only sound in the suffocating room.

Iris lifted one trembling hand toward her neck, her skin pale against the dim lighting. "What are you? What does this mark on my neck mean?"

Her fingertips brushed the strange, dark pattern near her collarbone, and heat immediately spread beneath her skin, shooting down her shoulder. She winced, pulling her hand back an inch.

"This mark appeared after I spent the night with you," she continued, her breathing becoming shallow. "I’ve had visions since then. Violent ones. My body reacts whenever you step into the room, and I don’t understand why. Sometimes I feel like I’m being pulled toward you even when every rational part of me is telling me to run in the opposite direction."

Her fingers returned to press against the burning mark.

"So tell me what this is, Alexander. Why does my body react to you like this? How am I connected to you?"

Something flickered deep within Alexander’s eyes. The striking blue bled away, a thin thread of deep, incandescent red appearing within the iris like spilled ink.

He rose slowly from his seat. Iris’s breath caught in her throat. He wasn’t making any sudden movements, yet watching him stand made her acutely aware of his height and sheer physical presence. He seemed to consume the space in the small living room without even trying, his shadow falling over her.

His gaze remained fixed on hers. "That mark," he said, his voice dropping into a deep, resonant rumble that rattled the floorboards beneath her feet, "is the mark of an Ultimate Alpha."

Iris’s fingers froze against her neck.

Alexander took one measured step toward her, his dark leather shoes sinking into the thin rug. "You are not merely linked to me, Iris." His crimson gaze settled on hers with an unbearable weight. "You are my mate."

Absolute silence fell over the apartment. The ticking of the wall clock seemed to stop completely. Iris stared up at him, her lips parted, unable to draw in enough air to speak.

Beside the wall, Zoey’s mouth slowly fell open, her hand halting halfway to her face. For several agonizing seconds, neither woman was capable of producing a single word.

Of all the impossible, terrifying possibilities they had mapped out on their research boards, that had never been one of them.

Zoey was the first to break the stillness. "Oh my God." She pushed away from the wall, her sneakers squeaking against the hardwood as she hurried toward the couch, dropping heavily beside Iris. Her hands hovered near Iris’s shoulders, trembling.

"We were wrong, Iris. I completely forgot about that part when we were researching the mark on your neck."

Iris barely heard her over the rushing sound in her ears. "Your... mate?" The word felt foreign, ancient, and entirely wrong in her mouth.

Alexander didn’t answer immediately. He stood towering over them, his gaze tracing the rapid pulse beating at the base of her throat.

Zoey glanced nervously between the two of them, adjusting her jacket. "Honestly, I didn’t even consider that. I thought... well, I thought it was something much worse."

Alexander turned his attention toward her, his crimson eyes fading back into a icy, brilliant blue, though the intensity remained. "What did you think the mark meant?"

Zoey hesitated, drawing her knees toward her chest and rubbing her palms nervously against her denim thighs.

"I didn’t want to tell Iris because she was already terrified about waking up with a black mark burned into her skin," Zoey said, glancing sideways at her friend before looking up at Alexander. "I thought... I thought she might have been bitten by something. A wolf. And that eventually she’d start changing. I figured maybe she had temporary amnesia from the shock... like some delayed psychological response."

Iris slowly turned her head toward her best friend, her eyes wide with disbelief. "You thought I was going to turn into a werewolf?"

"I wasn’t exactly going to hand you a mirror and tell you that while you were screaming in the bathroom, Iris," Zoey muttered defensively, lowering her voice. "But my instincts kept telling me the mark had something to do with him. It appeared the morning after you stayed at his penthouse. That wasn’t a coincidence I could just ignore."

Alexander’s expression softened marginally, an inclination of his head acknowledging her logic. "So that is why you began digging into my history."

"Well, yes," Zoey said, leaning her elbows on her knees and gesturing vaguely. "I’ve watched enough investigative documentaries and read enough strange history to know that when something impossible happens, there is usually a very old, very deliberate explanation behind it. And then Iris started seeing things—having all these animal visions, I couldn’t just sit here and pretend you were just some wealthy tech investor."

Alexander’s eyes narrowed slightly at the mention of the visions, a subtle shift that was mirrored across the room by Oliver, who uncrossed his arms and shifted his balance.

Zoey, riding the momentum of her own explanation, didn’t notice the sudden tension.

"I started cross-referencing public archives," Zoey continued, her tone sharpening with academic frustration. "Birth records, land deeds, tax registries. But the standard databases yielded nothing useful about your lineage prior to thirty years ago. So I bypassed standard domains and searched dark web historical archives. That’s where I found things that made absolutely no logical sense."

"What kind of things?" Alexander’s voice was lower now, remarkably quiet.

Zoey caught the shift in his tone, pausing for a fraction of a second, but forced herself to go on.

"A digitized sepia coloured photograph from an unregistered gallery in Vienna," she said, watching his face carefully. "Dated October 1891."

Across the room, Oliver’s gaze snapped directly to Alexander. The change in the room was immediate; it was subtle, but Iris felt the air temperature seem to plunge. Alexander’s jaw tightened until a muscle ticked beneath his skin.

Zoey, unaware of the landmine she had just stepped on, pressed forward. "There was a man standing on the grand steps in that photograph who looked exactly like you. Not a familial resemblance, Alexander. Exactly like you. The same facial structure, the same eyes, the same build. He was standing with two men in heavy coats in front of the Blackthorne Estate."

She leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. "That archival photograph was how I found out the estate even existed under that name. It’s still listed on modern city maps. I went there because I needed to know if that man was your great-great grandfather... or if I was losing my mind."

Alexander slowly exhaled, a long, heavy breath that seemed to carry decades of exhaustion. He lowered himself back into the armchair, resting his hands heavily on his knees.

For the first time since he had walked through the apartment door, the carefully crafted, impenetrable wall he kept around himself cracked.

Iris didn’t miss it. She glanced over at Oliver, but the man wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at his leader with a fierce, protective vigilance.

That photograph wasn’t just evidence. It was a secret that was never meant to leave the dark.

Iris took a deep breath, trying to anchor herself back to the primary threat. "So if I am your mate..." Her voice pulled both men’s attention back to her. "Does that mean you’re also a werewolf like Jason?"

Her fingers dug into the thick fabric of her skirt, twisting it into tight knots. "Are you a werewolf?"

Alexander’s gaze dropped to her clenched hands, watching the white knuckles against the fabric. A fleeting softness passed over his harsh features before his dark brows drawn together. "No."

Iris frowned, her confusion mounting. "No?"

"No," he repeated firmly. "I am not a werewolf."