The Pack's Daughter (Aysel and Magnus) novel Chapter 264

Chapter 264

Aysel’s POV

I slid into the chair where Serena had just sat, feeling the solid weight of Fenrir’s gaze on me. He wiped at his face with a towel, eyes narrowing, and finally broke the silence.

“Are you satisfied now?” His voice was low, cold, carrying the sharpness of a wolf’s warning.

I smiled faintly, my claws resting lightly on the polished table. “Do you really think I orchestrated all this?” Even with Celestine’s true nature laid bare, even with the shards of her fury scattered across this yacht, my reputation as capricious, ruthless Aysel Vale wasn’t going anywhere.

I tilted my head, eyes locking on his, probing the pack beyond the mask. “It’s true. We haven’t really spent much time together over the years. We’ve been strangers, learning about each other only through whispers and second-hand tales.”

He avoided my gaze, and I could sense the tension coiling in him like a wolf crouched in the underbrush.

“I guess…. I’ve never truly known you either,” I admitted. My words were soft, but deliberate, and I could feel the weight of them in the charged air.

Fenrir pursed his lips and stayed silent for a moment, his inner wolf restless. Then he looked at me again, hesitant, careful. “Aysel… my mother… she’s ill. Could you… go see her? The… birthday gathering…” His voice faltered, and he swallowed hard. “She… she drew a blade against Celestine. You’ve heard, haven’t you?”

I nodded, firm and unwavering. “I have. But no.”

The finality in my voice was pure, unshakable. Fenrir’s amber eyes widened slightly, reflecting both disbelief and something darker-regret perhaps, or the stirrings of guilt.

I propped my jaw in my hand, staring out at the moonlit waves. My gaze returned to Fenrir, circling back to the truth I’d been holding in my claws all this time.

“Fenrir… I think I finally understand you,” I said, voice quieter now, tinged with a wolfish clarity. “You never… really liked me, did you?”

The realization I’d carried for so long finally settled into words. I remembered the childhood confusion: parents’ affections divided, younger pack members naïve and easily swayed, and yet the elder brother- Fenrir-should have known better. He was five years older than me. At six, I needed protection, guidance. He should have understood the intrusion I represented into his carefully guarded pack world.

Instead, he let Celestine claim the role of the ‘eldest sister’ in the family, positioning her as the favored wolf in the den while I remained the trespasser, the intruder. Perhaps part of it was the subtle desire to please the adults, but deeper… it was the calculated surrender to envy, to instinctual wolfish possessiveness.

I thought back to that night in the Moonvale pack chambers, watching him eye Lyko-the younger brother, our shared blood-understanding finally clicked. Fenrir did not love Lyko, and he did not love me. Not truly.

He was raised with expectation, groomed to be an exemplary Alpha, and before he turned five, all the parents’ attention, all the pack’s reverence, had been his alone. My arrival disrupted that.

1/2

The world demanded he restrain his natural wolf instincts-jealousy, rage, territoriality-and so he complied, becoming the model brother, the one others could praise. But the resentment simmered beneath, quiet and deadly. Celestine’s arrival? That unleashed his wolfish malice.

I had been turned from the cherished, protected sister into the pack’s scapegoat, the sinner. And Fenrir had even a convenient excuse: the unfolding chaos outside his den could always be blamed on me.

He might have shown fleeting kindness-checking on me at night, leaving herbs when I was fevered, persuading our parents to let me leave under the guise of concern-but it was never enough to reclaim his role as protector. The world had taught him reality: Lyko was a threat, I was not.

The unspoken pact between him and Celestine had allowed her to dominate the household, shaping Lyko to her liking, all while Fenrir’s silence endorsed the game.

I exhaled a long, low growl, memories clawing through me. I remembered that evening when Magnus’s hired wolves had sent those calls to my den, when Fenrir had come to the Moonvale apartment. I had tried to invoke his guilt, to claim a fragment of familial instinct, to carve a space of peace for myself. It had worked-for a moment-but when he left, I had wondered: was it guilt, or the desire to avoid facing the imperfect wolf beneath the Alpha mask?

He could not answer me now. His amber eyes flickered, caught between instinct and reason, and I knew I had seen everything I needed.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify