The Fake Luna: Marked By The Alpha King

Aria’s POV

The rogue didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to. His silence was its own confession, thick and ugly, filling the little cell like smoke. His one good eye slid away from mine, down to the concrete, and that was all the answer I would ever get.

So it was true. My father hadn’t been killed in some random Rogue attack.He’d been murdered.

Vincent Smith, a man who had crawled his way into the highest circles of the wolf world as a human, who had outmaneuvered Alphas at their own game for thirty years, had been murdered. And the woman who’d shared his bed had signed the order.

I let that settle into me, cold and heavy, like a stone dropping to the bottom of a well.

Then I said the name.

"Byron Finch."

The rogue’s head jerked up. Whatever he’d expected me to ask, it wasn’t that. His split lips parted, and for a second nothing came out.

"There’s no Byron Finch in Grove," he said finally, voice scraping. "Never was. I know every name that’s ever answered our contracts, and that one’s not on any of them."

"Don’t waste my patience." I stepped closer. Somewhere behind me I felt Ronan shift his weight, silent, letting me run this. "I didn’t ask if he took your contracts. I asked if you knew the name."

The rogue swallowed hard. His eyes darted, calculating, and I watched him decide that the truth cost him less than the lie.

"I know the name," he admitted. "But not as one of us. Look—the man who ran Grove before, the old boss, he was tight with Sylvia. Thick as thieves, years back, before my time even. Every job that came down from her went through him first." He wet his cracked lips. "

He never used his real name in front of her people. Had a dozen he wore like coats. If somebody’s been passing you a Byron Finch, that’s not a man you’ll find. That’s a mask she keeps in a drawer."

An alias. A ghost the old boss wore when he did Sylvia’s dirty work. Which meant Byron Finch wasn’t a person at all. He was a channel, a name money moved through, a face stitched together out of nothing so that no thread ever led back to her.

Clever. She’d always been clever. I’d hated that about her from the first moment we’d sat across a table and she’d smiled at me while sliding papers under my hand that would have signed my whole inheritance away.

I turned before the rogue could see what my face was doing.

Then I glanced at Ronan. "Get someone in here to take his statement. I want everything he knows about my father’s murder—names, orders, everyone involved, and who gave the order."

Ronan nodded once.

---

I pulled out my phone the second I stepped back into the corridor, thumb already hovering over Rick’s name. The plan was simple.

Give him the thread—Byron Finch, an alias, the old Grove boss, Sylvia’s fingerprints on all of it—and let him pull until the whole rotten thing came apart in our hands.

I never got to make the call.

Because when I turned the corner toward Damian’s room, they were all there.

The entire Blackwood family had descended on that quiet private wing like a storm front rolling in off the sea. His grandmother, Grace, sat straight-backed in a chair by the door, her cane planted between her feet, her silver head unbowed even now. Queen Elena stood at the window with her arms crossed tight over her chest, her eyes rimmed red but her chin high, every inch a Luna Queen refusing to break in front of an audience. Rick hovered near the wall, phone in hand, jaw clenched, looking like he hadn’t slept in three days because he probably hadn’t.

They all turned to look at me at once.

For a moment nobody said anything.

Then Grace broke the silence. "Come here, child," she said, and her voice was not unkind. "You look worse than he does."

I went. I didn’t know what else to do.

Queen Elena reached for my hands and held them between her own. Hers were cold. "Aria," she said quietly.

"You’ve done everything anyone could ask. More. But you have to think now. About yourself. About the baby." Her thumb brushed over my knuckles.

"This city isn’t safe for you. Whoever did this is still out there. Let us take you somewhere they can’t reach. Damian would want—"

"No," I said.

The word came out soft, but it landed like a door closing.

"Aria—"

"I’m not leaving him." I looked at each of them in turn, Grace and Elena and Rick, and I made sure my voice didn’t shake, because I meant every syllable and I needed them to believe it.

"I know what you’re going to say. I know it’s dangerous. But if I run now, then she wins twice. Once when she tried to kill me, and again every day I spend hiding from her." I swallowed. "I’m staying. I’ll be careful. But I’m staying."

Elena searched my face for a long moment. Whatever she found there, she let go of my hands and stepped back, and that was the closest thing to permission I was going to get.

So I stayed.

The days blurred into a rhythm I built out of nothing. Every morning I found the doctor before I found coffee, and I made him tell me everything, every number, every scan, in plain words with no soft edges. I learned to read the monitors better than I read people. I learned which nurse’s face meant good news and which meant hold on.

And every day, Damian did not wake.

I sat by his bed for hours. I held his hand, the one that used to swallow mine whole, and I talked to him like he could hear me, because some stubborn animal part of me refused to believe he couldn’t.

"You’d hate this," I told him one night, my voice low in the dark. "You’d hate lying still. You never sat still a day in your life." I traced the line of his knuckles with my thumb.

"The doctor says you might not wake up. He says you might stay like this. For years, Damian. Maybe forever."

My throat closed. I made myself keep going. "And you know what? I don’t care. Do you hear me? I’ll take you exactly like this. I’ll sit in this chair until I’m old. I’ll talk to you every single day even if you never say one word back."

The machine breathed for him. In. Out. Steady.

I pressed his hand to my cheek and finally admitted the thing I’d been too much of a coward to say out loud even to myself.

"I lied to you, you know. All those times I said I wasn’t scared." A tear slid down and I didn’t wipe it away. "It was never Sylvia. It was never the Smiths, or the money, or any of it. Those things I can fight. I’ve been fighting them my whole life."

My voice cracked straight through. "The only thing that ever really scared me was this. Was you. Being somewhere I couldn’t follow."

I closed my eyes and held on.

"So don’t you dare leave me here, Damian Blackwood. Don’t you dare."