Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 112

[Magnus’s POV]

The reply from Ironridge arrives with the morning dispatch, sealed in dark green wax. Harlan’s careful handwriting on the exterior: the script of a man who understands these contents are not casual.

I lock the door. My hands are unsteady as I break the seal, and the tremor infuriates me because my hands have never been unsteady. Not at Shadowpine, not in Kira’s council chamber; steady hands are the one thing I’ve always been able to count on.

The tremor calls me a liar and keeps shaking. The letter is brief:

‘Alpha, the records exist: documents, preserved in the sealed vault beneath the archive. Your father showed me the vault when I assumed the keeper’s role and instructed me that the contents were history, not instruction.’

‘A record of what was, not a blueprint for what could be. I have copied the relevant texts and enclosed them. As you asked, I have told no one. — H.’

I unfold the enclosed pages. The documents are old: copies of copies, archaic language, but precise in a way folklore never achieves. These aren’t stories but protocols.

My father wasn’t telling campfire tales. He was passing down knowledge stretching through centuries of Ironridge Alphas who preserved what the councils tried to destroy.

The Transfer ritual is detailed, specific, and horrifying in its clinical precision. Transfer of supernatural power from one living being to another through convergence of ley lines — a geographical alignment amplifying the connection between source and recipient.

Physical proximity within the convergence point. A blood-link established through sustained touch. Hours of unbroken ritual — the text specifies a minimum of six.

The language is medical, dispassionate, describing pain thresholds with the detachment of scholars documenting procedure.

It is painful for the source. Systematic severance of every connection between power and host, experienced as sustained, escalating agony.

It is permanent. The source survives but is left hollow.

And it works best on children under three, whose power hasn’t fully bonded to their identity. Castiel and Lyra are eighteen months old.

I set the documents down and stare at the wall. I read them a third time, and only then my hands have stopped shaking because the tremor has been replaced by something worse: a stillness that feels like a decision.

The man I was two months ago would have burned these pages without reading past the first paragraph. Sealed them in Harlan’s envelope, walked to the fireplace, watched centuries of preserved knowledge turn to ash.

The man I am now reads them again and begins taking notes.

I’m crossing a line I cannot uncross. I held Castiel’s hand in the garden and the boy grabbed my finger and laughed. His sister reached for my face with sticky fingers and I let her touch my cheek because refusing felt like cruelty.

But I still hear that voice inside me, the one that grows more confident and mighty now.

“The twins’ power is dangerous. Not today, but in ten years? Twenty? When their abilities mature into something that destabilizes every territory? That power will attract predators for the rest of their lives.”

Kira and Malik protect them. They would die before letting harm reach those children, and their vigilance has kept the twins safe through every threat so far.

“Both are mortal. They age, tire, and they die. When they’re gone, the twins stand alone — two targets in a world that has never stopped hunting extraordinary things. Someone will come for them eventually.”

So I’ll be that someone. That’s the justification? I’ll steal from children to save them from the thieves who come later?

“Take the power and use it. One authority strong enough to end the cycle of pack against pack, Alpha against Alpha. Every war you’ve watched — they exist because power is fragmented, scattered across bloodlines that compete rather than cooperate. Concentrate it: one ruler, one peace.”

“They promise peace and deliver control. This is different. This is calculating. The Transfer would make you strong enough that conflict becomes irrational. Not suppressed through fear, but eliminated through the impossibility of challenging what you’d become.”

“This is different: inherent and absolute power. Mathematics, not megalomania.”

“The procedure is controlled, clinical—”

“He never felt power with no ceiling, no precedent. He preserved the knowledge because he believed in keeping records. You’re reading those records because the world handed you a circumstance he never imagined.”

“You’ll protect it. They just won’t see it that way.”

But the voice has said its worst, and the other voice is still standing. That’s the horror — the thought doesn’t feel monstrous. It feels inevitable.

The notes cover two pages: ley line convergence points, lunar timing, and blood-link protocols.

I cross to the window. The palace gardens stretch below: moonlit, empty, and peaceful. The same garden where I crouched months ago and let a toddler grab my finger and felt the world tilt.

I press my palm flat against the glass. My reflection stares back — amber eyes, composed expression, the face of a man Kira trusts, Damon admires, the court respects. A man who has been welcomed into a family and is planning to betray every single one of them.

I don’t recognize it.

The man behind my features has been assembled in increments over weeks of sleepless nights, each step justified by the one before, each justification thinner, each night widening the distance between who I was and who I’m becoming.

I turn from the window. I fold the documents carefully and lock them in the false bottom of my traveling case: the compartment my father built for sensitive correspondence, designed to survive inspection by anyone who doesn’t know it exists.

Tomorrow I’ll smile at breakfast and ask Damon about the card game rematch. Every moment will be genuine, and that’s the horror of what I’m becoming.

The warmth hasn’t died. I still care about these people, I really do. I just want what their children carry more than I want to remain the man who deserves their trust.