Page 9 of Red Hood, Bad Wolf (Cursed Kingdoms)

R owan's magic flickered like a candle flame as she cleaned the last of Mae's claw marks on Alder's shoulder. Her own wounds had been easier to heal—physical injuries always were. But the raw anguish pouring through their mate bond made her hands tremble.

"I should have known," Alder whispered. He sat on the edge of his bed, shoulders bowed under the weight of truth. "All these years, she was right there. Killing. Lying. Using me—" His voice broke.

"She fooled everyone." Rowan knelt before him, letting her magic wrap around them both in a soothing cocoon. "Even trained Red Hoods never suspected."

"My mother." His hands clenched into fists. "My father. She—" He couldn't finish.

Rowan felt his pain crash through the mate bond like a tidal wave. Without thinking, she pulled him into her arms. He came willingly, burying his face in her neck as decades of carefully constructed walls crumbled.

"She took everything," he managed between ragged breaths. "And made me believe it was the Red Hoods' fault. Made me hate your kind for years."

"Shh." Rowan stroked his hair, her own eyes burning with tears she wouldn't let fall. He needed her strength right now, not her grief. "You survived her. You protected your pack despite everything she did. You became a good Alpha, a good man, in spite of her manipulation."

The mate bond carried comfort and understanding between them, deeper than words could reach. Rowan felt Alder's barriers dissolving, felt him finally letting himself grieve for the parents he'd lost, for the childhood that had been built on lies.

Minutes passed, or maybe hours. Time seemed meaningless as they held each other, the mate bond weaving their pain and healing together until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Finally, Alder lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed but clearer. "I need to go back to the cabin," he said quietly. "There's something I have to find."

Rowan understood. Some truths needed physical proof to be fully accepted. She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. "Do you want me to come with you?"

He shook his head. "I need to do this part alone." His hand cupped her cheek. "But don't go far?"

"Never again," she promised.

The cabin's interior seemed smaller now, stripped of Mae's carefully constructed illusion of harmless domesticity. Alder moved through the rooms like a ghost, past the herbs that had poisoned his mother, past the knives that had killed his father, toward his grandmother's bedroom.

The jewelry box still sat on her dresser where he'd found it earlier. His hands shook as he opened it again, pushing aside the necklace from her latest victim. There, at the bottom, gleaming dully in the afternoon light, lay his father's Alpha ring.

He lifted it carefully. The heavy silver band was inscribed with the pack's symbol—a wolf beneath a crescent moon. How many times had he watched this ring flash on his father's hand during pack meetings?

Alder slid the ring onto his finger. It fit perfectly, as if it had been waiting all these years for this moment. The silver was warm against his skin—spelled, he realized, to protect the Alpha who wore it. His father must have been taken completely by surprise for Mae to overcome that protection.

"I'm sorry, Dad," he whispered to the empty room. "I should have known. Should have seen—" But he'd been just a boy, carefully blinded by Mae's manipulations.

The mate bond pulsed gently, carrying Rowan's wordless support. She was keeping her promise, staying close enough to comfort but far enough to give him privacy. The bond felt different now—stronger, clearer, as if Mae's death had removed some invisible barrier between them.

He looked around the room one last time. Here was the truth he'd searched for all these years. Not Red Hood persecution, not pack politics, but his grandmother's ruthless grip on power. The ring on his finger was proof enough for any wolf who might doubt.

Moving with sudden purpose, Alder gathered the evidence they'd need—the journal documenting her kills, the trophies from her victims, the herbs she'd used to poison his mother. The pack would need to see it all, would need to understand how thoroughly they'd been deceived.

But first...

First, he had a mate waiting for him. A future to build. A chance to heal not just himself, but the rift between Red Hoods and werewolves that Mae had worked so hard to maintain.

The ring caught the light as he closed the cabin door. On his finger, it felt like both an ending and a beginning.

When Alder called the emergency pack meeting that evening, his father's ring drew every eye. Elder Thomas was the first to recognize it, his sharp intake of breath cutting through the murmured conversations. The aged wolf's face went pale, then dark with denial.

Rowan stood at Alder's side, feeling the weight of decades of prejudice and suspicion pressing against them. Through their bond, she sensed his grim determination. There would be no gentle way to unravel Mae's web of lies. The truth would hurt, but the pack needed to understand exactly what had happened.

"She was protecting us from humans encroaching on our territory," Elder Thomas growled, his weathered face fierce in the pack house's lamplight. "You can't expect us to believe—"

"Like she protected my father?" Alder's voice cut through the pack meeting. He held up his hand, his father's Alpha ring gleaming. "This was in her trophy collection, along with items from every missing hiker. Along with the wolfsbane she used to poison my mother."

Thomas flinched as if struck. He'd been one of Mae's strongest supporters, had even opposed Rowan's presence in pack territory. Now he stared at the ring, color draining from his face. "Richard's ring. But she said the Red Hoods..."

"She lied." Alder's words carried the weight of Alpha authority. "About everything."

Through the mate bond, Rowan felt his pain as he laid out the evidence—Mae's detailed journals, the hidden cache of victims' belongings, the carefully preserved herbs that had driven his mother to apparent madness. With each revelation, she felt the pack's resistance crumbling.

"I served her tea," Serenity whispered. The pack's youngest elder pressed trembling hands to her mouth. "All those times she asked me to serve special tea to Alder's mother, I never questioned it."

"She fooled us all," Rowan said gently. She felt Alder's gratitude through their bond as she stepped forward. "That's what predators do. They hide in plain sight."

"A Red Hood witch." Thomas spat the words, but his voice shook. "How do we know you're not lying to turn us against our own?"

"Because I checked everything myself." Monica, the pack's healer, stepped forward. Her hands shook as she held up a small glass vial. "This was in Mae's herb collection. It's wolfsbane processed to be undetectable in food. I found traces of it in the old tea sets she kept as 'memories' of Alder's mother."

The evidence mounted through the night. Pack members came forward with their own stories—odd comments Mae had made, strange behaviors they'd dismissed, moments of cruelty disguised as protection. By midnight, even Thomas's shoulders had slumped in defeat.

"I was wrong about you," he told Rowan three days later, catching her alone in the pack house kitchen. His voice was gruff but sincere. "Both of you." He nodded to Alder as he entered. "The pack needs this alliance with the Red Hoods. Needs you both."

Through their bond, Rowan felt Alder's surprise and relief. Thomas had been the hardest to convince, his distrust of Red Hoods bone-deep after decades of Mae's influence.

"The pack's healing," Alder said quietly, echoing their private conversation from days before. But this time it wasn't just words—they could see it in Thomas's acceptance, in Serenity's determination to learn proper herb lore from the Red Hoods, in Monica's dedication to building new bridges between their communities.

His father's ring caught the morning light as he pulled Rowan close, its spelled silver warm against her skin. Through their bond flowed shared hope, shared purpose, shared certainty that together they could build something new from the ashes of Mae's destruction.