MARKED FOR PRETEND - Chapter 20: Chapter 20

Chelsea's pov
The east wing hadn’t heard her footsteps in days.
She no longer wandered like she used to. Even the old balcony,where the breeze kissed the treetops and the scent of pine rose like incense stood untouched. She passed windows but never paused, rooms blurred, days melted, nights stretched.
After the library… she didn’t know what she was anymore.
Not dismissed.
Not chosen.
Not a Luna.
Not a witch.
Not a wolf.
Just… here.
The only person who still knocked on her door was Mira — the maid with soft hands and a sharper tongue than most. Mira brought food, stories, and sometimes smuggled in books wrapped in napkins, and once whispered that she thought the East Garden had better sunlight for sulking.She was kind, almost too kind.
And Chelsea? She started to let her in
One smile.
One word.
One cup of rose tea at a time.
Just a little. Just enough to breathe. Chelsea didn’t speak much, but she listened.
Still, she hadn’t seen Alpha Kaden since that night. No summons. No hallway stares. Nothing. Like he’d vanished back into whatever shadow he’d been carved from.
The palace was shifting too.
She could feel it in the way the guards avoided her gaze, in the way the omegas whispered when she passed. Something was cracking beneath the polished floors of Duskveil and it had her name carved into it.
Downstairs, in the war room…
“Are you going to keep pretending you didn’t feel it?” Callen’s voice was calm, but the scroll he dropped onto the war table landed like a challenge. “The ink chose her. Her name. Your name. Not the council’s. Not mine. Yours.”
Kaden didn’t turn from the window.
For a long moment, he just watched the wind batter the treetops outside. Watched the distant hills that once gave him clarity now feel like cliffs closing in.
Then, flatly, “There is no bond.”
A lie.
And not a good one.
Callen didn’t call him out. But Kaden’s eyes shifted — just slightly, as if expecting to be caught.
There was a bond. He felt it. Every time she entered a room, his control thinned. Every time she looked at him like he wasn’t a monster, something inside him dared to believe it.
But that was the problem.
So he kept his distance.
Before what he felt turned into what he feared.
“No bond,” he repeated, this time quieter.
Six words, Ten lies.
“And yet…” Callen echoed, folding his arms, “you haven’t sent her away.”
Silence.
Then Kaden turned to the window.
“She’s dangerous.”
“To you?”
A pause.
“Or to what you’ve buried?”
Back in Chelsea’s chamber…Mira brushed past her with a tray of tea and bread. “You need sunlight, you're growing moss.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes, but managed a small smile.
“You’ll rot in here,” Mira added casually, setting the tray down. “Or worse. Start believing the things they say.”
“What do they say?” Chelsea asked.
Mira hesitated, brushing crumbs from her apron.
“That you’re cursed. That your kind always brings ruin. That Alpha Kaden is losing his grip.” Her voice dropped lower. “That something’s coming.”
Chelsea blinked, her stomach turned “Because of me?”
Chelsea exhaled slowly, then whispered almost to herself—
“I’m not trying to ruin him.”
Mira tilted her head. “Sorry?”
Chelsea blinked. “Nothing.”
But Mira didn’t press. She only murmured something about superstition under her breath and went back to pouring the tea.
Mira shrugged again, "Because of fate. People are scared of what they don’t understand.”
Chelsea looked down at her forearm. The crescent mark shimmered faintly beneath the skin again. It never fully faded.
“What else?” she asked softly.
Mira’s smile was tight. “Rogues don’t wait forever. Neither do prophecies.”
Chelsea looked down at the crescent mark on her arm. The skin there was glowing again — faintly. Soft enough to be missed. Strong enough to not be ignored.
That afternoon, they sat quietly by the edge of the garden, sipping warm tea.
“You know,” Chelsea said after a long pause, “I remember you. You were there when I first arrived. You used to bring me towels.”
Mira looked up, startled. “You remember that?”
Chelsea nodded slowly. “Then you stopped coming.”
Mira blinked. “You stopped opening the door.”
“Oh.” Chelsea looked down at her tea. “Maybe I thought I didn’t need anyone.”
“And now?”
She hesitated. “Maybe I… do.”
Mira smiled, small and honest. “That’s allowed, you know. Wanting someone to stay.”
Chelsea didn’t answer. But the moment lingered like a breath.
⸻
That night, long after the halls had quieted and Mira had left…
Chelsea lay curled on the window bench. Her tea had long gone cold, the moonlight stretching across the room like silver lace.
She didn’t hear the creak of the linen closet door.
She didn’t hear the soft step behind it.
But in the shadows, just beyond the torchlight, Mira stood still.
She reached carefully under the tray where Chelsea had set her comb.
She plucked a single strand of pale, golden-blonde hair from its teeth.
Folded it into a thin parchment.
And slipped it into her apron.
She moved quickly down the corridor.
Waiting.
Until a man stepped from the stone passage.
His eyes were dark. His leathers dust-stained.
He didn’t speak.
Mira handed him the parchment.
He nodded once, then melted into the dark.
That night, Chelsea found a folded slip of parchment under her pillow. No seal. No signature.
Only one sentence written in tight, slanted ink
“They’ll stop whispering when you start remembering.”
She stared at it until her mark pulsed.
And still… she had no memory.
Only questions.
And one certainty:
Something was coming.
“They’ll stop whispering when you start remembering.”