Chapter 82: The First Bloodline

Chapter 82: Chapter 82: The First Bloodline

Iris knit her brows together, pulling back slightly against the cushions. "No? Alexander, but I saw you," she insisted, her voice rising in urgency as the memory flashed vividly behind her eyes. "I was standing right there in the hallway outside Whitmore’s office. I watched what you did to Jason. You barely even moved your arm, Alexander! You struck him, and he flew fifteen feet down the corridor and cracked the structural plaster when he hit the wall!"

She shook her head, running a hand through her hair. "And then you turned around and looked at Finn and Shawn. Your eyes changed. They didn’t just back down—they collapsed to their knees. They were terrified of you. Absolutely paralyzed."

Zoey chimed in immediately, pointing a finger at him. "And you literally just called Iris’s mark the mark of an Ultimate Alpha. Alpha is canine hierarchy. I’ve spent the last three nights reading every piece of folklore and webnovels I could read online, and ’Alpha’ is universally a werewolf term. If you’re standing there claiming you aren’t one of them, then what are you?"

Alexander said nothing. The silence dragged on, stretched thin and taut like a wire until Oliver shifted his weight, his boots heavy against the floor. His broad shoulders were rigid, his hand resting near his coat lining.

Alexander finally looked between the two women, his expression grave. "There are fundamental, biological differences between the creatures you encountered at the university and what I am." Alexander said softly, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees.

Iris leaned forward, refusing to drop his gaze. "What kind of differences?"

"The werewolves you saw today," Alexander explained smoothly, his voice deep and measured, "are the mutated descendants of a far older, far more lethal bloodline."

Zoey blinked, processing the word. "Mutated?"

"Diluted," Alexander corrected softly. "Altered by centuries of breeding and human interference."

Iris’s brows drew together as she tried to bridge the gap. "And you belong to that original bloodline?"

For the briefest fraction of a second, Alexander’s eyes flared with that terrifying crimson light. "No," he said, the word vibrating through the air like a struck bell. "I am what came before the bloodline was ever divided."

Zoey’s lips parted in astonishment. Iris stared at him, trying to comprehend the sheer impossibility of what he was implying.

"What does that mean?" Iris whispered.

Alexander looked at her for a long moment, his eyes searching her face as if checking to see how much truth she could bear. Slowly, he looked down at his own hands, resting his forearms against his thighs with his long fingers loosely clasped.

"The history written in your textbooks is an intentional distortion," he said softly. "Humanity has spent the last six centuries reducing creatures like us to folklore, horror films, bedtime stories and trivial romance novels. Every generation changed the details to make the night seem less threatening, until the original truth was erased entirely."

He looked back up, catching Iris’s eyes. "Werewolves are an offshoot. They came much later."

Zoey’s eyes narrowed as she leaned back against the couch cushions. "And your kind... came first?"

"Yes." Alexander’s gaze hardened, absolute conviction behind his words. "There is a vast difference between being a distant descendant of a predator, and being the apex predator itself."

He let the heavy realization sink into the room before continuing, his voice dropping an octave. "We are Lycans."

Zoey repeated the word under her breath, her mind racing. "Lycans..." Then her head snapped up, her eyes widening. "Lycanthropy. The medical term."

Alexander offered a single, stiff nod. "The word was taken from us, diluted by early Greek scholars who could not comprehend what they were recording," Alexander explained. He inclined his head toward Zoey. "Your modern medical terminology is just a ghost of our actual name."

"Oh my God," Zoey breathed, turning her head sharply to look at Iris. "Iris... the sketches."

Iris looked at her, her mind still struggling to keep up. "What sketches?"

"The creature from your first dream!" Zoey gestured frantically with her hands, the fear momentary pushed aside by the sheer scale of the revelation.

"When you described it to me—the height, the elongated structure, the lack of a tail, the double-jointed stance! We searched through every mythological database because we couldn’t match it to standard cinematic werewolves. The only historical woodcuts that matched were labeled Lycanthrope."

Zoey shifted her gaze back to Alexander, her breath catching. "We thought the mark on her neck was a stylized wolf."

Alexander’s eyes moved to the base of Iris’s throat. "The mark on your neck is not a wolf, Iris."

Iris’s hand rose instinctively, her fingers hovering over the warm, raised skin.

His eyes tracked her movement, focusing on the dark ink-like line under her skin. "It is the crest of the Lycan Royal Lineage....the first bloodline."

Her fingers froze completely against her skin.

"Human literature has conflated the two species for centuries," Alexander said, his tone grim. "Your scholars used the terms interchangeably because they couldn’t tell the difference between the master and the servant. Even your oldest theological texts fail to distinguish between us."

He paused, resting his hands flat on his knees. "But a werewolf and a Lycan are entirely different species, governed by entirely different biology."

Zoey leaned back, resting her chin in her hand as she tried to rationalize it. "So Jason... he isn’t like you at all."

"He is a beast driven by moon cycles and rage," Alexander said bluntly. "He has no control over his shift, no mastery over his blood, and no authority."

"Even though you both transform?" Iris asked quietly.

"I do not lose my mind when I change," Alexander replied, his eyes fixed on hers. "I do not bow to the moon. The moon bows to me."

"I’m still lost," Zoey admitted, shaking her head. "If you’re two completely different species, how are you connected? Why were those guys at the university terrified of you if you aren’t their Alpha?"