Four Alphas Chose Her Over Me, Until I Disappeared and They Searched the World for Me Chapter 08

Four Alphas Chose Her Over Me, Until I Disappeared and They Searched the World for Me Chapter 08

Raw footage. No cuts, no edits.

The Maren in that video was someone none of them had ever met.

Even the pendant I’d supposedly stolen-Maren had slipped it into my jacket pocket with her own hands.

Every move caught on camera.

The next day, the announcement went up on our old high school’s website.

Rhea Wren, ranked first in all of Crown Territory, officially admitted into the Special Research Program under

the Alpha King’s direct command.

That agreement-

It wasn’t a college acceptance.

It was a national-level talent selection.

In all of Crown City.

I had been the only one chosen.

Kellan went to Maren to take back the hunting tournament medal.

And suddenly he was twelve again.

He’d just won the first tournament of his life, and he’d come sprinting over to me, bursting with it.

“Rhea, keep this for me.”

I’d asked, “Why me?”

And he’d said, “Because you’re the most important person in my life.”

Now Kellan was training for a new tournament.

And I couldn’t even see his posts anymore.

Lucian tried to recover the hard drive I’d wiped clean.

He hired three different data recovery teams.

In the end, they salvaged a dozen corrupted clips.

One of them-

was the time capsule we buried when we were ten.

On screen, I was smeared with dirt, saying, dead serious, “When we’re eighteen-”

“I hope the five of us are still together.”

Soren’s laugh came from behind the camera.

“Obviously.”

“We’ll still be together at eighty.”

Right there-

the file corrupted to black.

Lucian stared at the dead screen.

And for the first time, it landed.

Some things, once deleted,

truly could not be recovered.

Ronan tracked down the cloud drive I’d used to back up my photos.

It needed a password.

He tried the four of their birthdays.

Tried the date we’d all first met.

All wrong.

One attempt left.

He typed in my birthday.

Unlocked.

There wasn’t a single photo of the five of us in there.

Because the drive held my life. Only mine.

And apparently, my life had never included them.

There was just one folder.

[Rhea Wren]

My awards.

My research notes.

Videos my parents had sent me.

It was only then that it dawned on them-

all those years, I hadn’t only orbited around them.

I’d had dreams of my own.

It was just that every time I talked about the desert,

about energy,

about frontier research bases-

they’d all found it boring.

And Maren would murmur, right on cue, “A girl, running off that far-”

“how exhausting.”

So the four of them had talked me out of leaving, time after time.

Not once had they asked.

Whether I actually wanted to stay.

After I left, Maren started to unravel too.

She finally had all of their attention, exactly as she’d wanted.

And it was nothing like she’d imagined.

Kellan stopped assembling furniture for her.

Lucian took back the camera.

Ronan scrapped the documentary.

And Soren never once reached out to her on his own.

She finally cornered him.

“Are you all blaming me?”

Soren looked at her.

“The plan was yours.”

“Scheming her out of town-that was you.”

Maren’s tears fell.

“But you all agreed to it.”

Soren said nothing.

He had.

So none of them had the right-

to pin it all on Maren alone.

Then Soren played his final, killing card-the very last gift I’d left them.

Maren watched herself on that screen.

Like she couldn’t believe any of it had really been her.

Her own face, twisted. Her eyes, vicious.

She started to cry.

“I was just jealous of her… I never realized… that this is how ugly I could be.”

Soren watched her with flat, cold eyes. “It’s over. Don’t come near any of us again.”