Exchanging Vows: The Swapped Wife Is a Top Shaman

Chapter 119: Chapter 121

Alpha Alaric’s Point of View

"Father, the perimeter is entirely secure," Dominic spoke out, as he stepped over the threshold of my private room.

I did not offer him a seat. Instead, I stood by the high arched window, my eyes staring blindly out at the compound.

"Dominic," I rumbled, my voice dropping to a low tone.

“Yes father.” He responded. Now looking at me with a confuse look, when he saw the reaction on my face.

"Come with me to the interrogation room. I have called you away because the long lines we cast into the dark have finally dragged a piece of the past into the light."

Dominic in stepped fully. “What do you mean?

“I found those women.” I let him know.

"Did our scouts track down the personal housemaids who fled after the funeral?"

"Two of them, yes," I answered flatly, my chest heaving with a suffocating pressure. "My elite shadow guards raided a minor border village at dawn. They found the two old maids who had served my mother during her final moments. Their tongues cut out years ago to ensure their eternal silence."

"Mutes?" Dominic hissed. "Did they verify the inference?"

Both of us went into the interrogation room together to interrogate the suspects face-to-face, wanting to uncover the decades-old truth.

"Speak," I commanded. "Who brought the tea into the Luna’s chambers?"

Truly, they were completely mute, their lower jaws scarred and their tongues cut out. They could not utter a single syllable, their terrified whimpers echoing uselessly inside the room.

Because they could not speak, Dominic laid a series of parchment illustrations flat onto the table. They were shown a detailed drawing of Mrs. Margot’s face. The moment their eyes locked onto the drawing, the two old women gasped in terror, and they frantically nodded their heads over and over again to confirm her identity.

"And what about the medicine kitchen?" Dominic pressed as he pulled out a rendering of the white ginseng roots.

They nodded without a single second of hesitation, and pointed their trembling fingers directly at Margot’s pictures.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I left the room. Dominic followed me. I went to my room, and he followed me there too.

"Leave me, Dominic. I need to be entirely alone tonight." I said.

"Father, you are unstable right now," Dominic countered firmly, wheeling forward to try and calm my raging spirit, his large hand reaching out to steady me. "You cannot let the old venom rot your judgment before we present the ledgers to the clan elders. Let me stay and help you carry this weight."

"I said leave." I roared.

Dominic froze, reading the agony written across my face. Recognizing that my inner beast was currently tearing at the very edges of my control, he lowered his head in a submissive nod and slowly evacuated the room, locking the doors behind him.

I was left alone. But, after pacing the space of the study for an hour, my head suffocating from the secrets, I couldn’t bear the confinement of the walls anymore. I threw open the high gallery hatch and climbed up onto the roof of the main courtyard.

The midnight wind was freezing, biting fiercely against my bare chest as I sat alone on the cold stone tiles,

“Guards,” I called. “Bring me my finest wine.”

“Yes, Alpha,” they answered with a bow before hurrying out.

A few minutes later, they returned carrying the wine. “Your wine, Alpha.”

I nodded as they placed it by my side. After another respectful bow, the guards quietly withdrew.

I took a slow sip, my eyes fixed on the empty horizon while my personal royal guards stood silently guarding behind me. Butthey kept a respectful distance from me.

The bitter taste of the wine swirled across my tongue, but it couldn’t wash away the sudden, terrifying void expanding inside my soul.

I leaned my head back against the stone masonry, desperately trying to force my mind across many years. I remembered my mother’s appearance, staring into the dark sky to find the lines of her face, but a sudden, crushing wave of hurt hit my chest as I realized I couldn’t remember it clearly anymore.

The passage of time had thoroughly erased her features from my memory, leaving nothing but an empty, taunting silhouette in his mind.

"Mother..." I whispered into the howling wind.

I only remembered that when I was young, my mother was exceptionally gentle, warm hands that held me securely against the terrors of the dark, and a beautifully fragrant, sweet embrace that coaxed me to sleep whenever I became restless.

Then, in a single, catastrophic cold night, those hands were gone forever. That fragrant embrace was violently ripped away from my life, leaving me entirely exposed to the world. Before the funeral shroud could even gather dust, I was aggressively taken to the harsh, blood-soaked outer training by my father to begin my conditioning as the future heir.

From that exact day onward, the entire pack house went dead silent, and no one ever mentioned my mother’s name or her legacy again, burying her memory beneath a mountain of pack protocols.

I clutched the wine jug in my right hand, the internal pressure inside my veins rising so violently

"Many years of lies," I hissed, a low, agonizing groan escaping my throat as the weight of the generational betrayal settled into my bones.

Everyone in the kingdom had always said that the old Luna died of nothing more than standard postpartum weakness and a sudden, natural illness during the winter freeze. For many decades, I had never once doubted their words, treating her passing as a tragic whim of the Moon Goddess.

It wasn’t until when the two mute old women nodded their heads to confirm the horrific reality of her execution.

"It wasn’t a stroke, Father," Dominic’s earlier words echoed like a death knell in my ears.

My mother wasn’t saved by the premium white ginseng brought into her kitchen... instead, she was actively killed by those very roots, which had been pre-soaked in a highly concentrated, toxic solution of forbidden Sun-Dried Silvervine root juice. To an ordinary physician, the interaction looked exactly like a natural cardiovascular failure, but to a master healer, it was a flawless, unpunished assassination.

And the ultimate culprit who had personally brought those two pieces of poisonous ginseng into the royal kitchen turned out to be none other than Margot, the ambitious concubine of my father. She had erased my mother to clear the path for her own backyard alliance.

“My Lord, please, step away from the edge,” one guard urged cautiously. His voice filled with panic. “It’s dangerous,” he added,

I slowly turned my head. “Did I give either of you permission to speak?”

The murderous fury in my voice froze them where they stood.

“No, Your Majesty.”

Neither guards dared utter another word. They stood as still as statues.

I raised the clay pot one final time, tilting it until the last drops of the bitter wine spilled onto the frozen stone tiles like a libation for the dead.

The veil had been completely shattered tonight, and the secrets had finally run out of places to hide.

Margot... surely won’t escape my wrath.

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