Chapter 3: The price of power

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• Betrayed by the Mafia Alpha   Chapter 45 - The Sentence That Never Existed

  Lila Kehra didn’t sleep anymore. At least not in the way we understood sleep. She rested under the mirror tree with her hands folded across her chest and her gaze turned inward, like her soul had wandered somewhere we couldn’t follow. I felt it when I passed her in the morning. Something shifting inside her. It was like watching the stars move in different directions with one's eyes closed. She was no longer making spirals. That alone was enough to make me uneasy. Instead, she used chalk to etch veins into the stone ruthless, branching, curving in no known pattern. Not symmetrical, not ceremonial. The lines ran like roots that had given up trying to return to order. They stretched. The spiral was undergoing change. And she was chasing its transformation. For the past two days, Casten had been inside the inner sanctum. He entered quietly, unnoticed, barefoot, sunburned, and with his lips cracked from the wind and silence. His eyes showed an odd yearning, not for blood or fo

• Betrayed by the Mafia Alpha   Chapter 44 - The Traveler Who Knew Her Name

  LilaIt started before I even awoke. Even though the dream hadn't ended, my body shook as though someone else had already gotten up inside of it. Undeservedly, I tasted fennel root and smoke from a hearth I hadn't lit. When I opened my eyes, three words stuck in my head. Yesterday, The Gate performed. I slowly got up. The wall of mirrors did not shine. The sigil tree stayed asleep. But my chest ached, like the spiral had hummed in my sleep and left behind soundless bruises. The child stirred on her cot, glyphs dim beneath pale skin. As if to apologise, the weave blanket twisted around her ankles. Outside, the courtyard waited without intention. But something was coming. Under the stone, I felt it. Since the previous drawing, Kehra had not spoken. She no longer drew the Gate from the front she began adding depth. Layers. Spirals that rose behind it like second shadows. One bled. One bloomed. One split into spirals on either side of a central eye. She didn't say what it mean

• Betrayed by the Mafia Alpha   Chapter 43 - The Girl Who Asked the Sky to Wait

  Lila The mirror should have fractured. Its surface curled once, pulled taut across its frame like stretched skin trying to hold a breath too large. The shimmer followed. Not light, not magic just silver suspended in memory. It gave three pulses. Slowly. Each throb whispered something unfinished. Then the glass cleared. She remained there. Not the child. Saela. Behind her, the girl with spiral-marked palms and unflinching eyes. Saela’s hand rested lightly on the child’s shoulder, like she wasn’t guiding her, only anchoring her. They didn't look happy. They did not grieve. They just watched me. Not with warning. Not even with love. With something rarer invitation. I pressed my palm to the mirror. Flesh met cold surface. I didn’t flinch. One sentence I whispered felt too brief at the time. I’m still listening. The child came to me before dawn. She didn’t knock. Didn't wait. She walked in barefoot, curls tangled, clothes loose like she had dressed for sleep, not cer

• Betrayed by the Mafia Alpha   Chapter 42 - The Child at the Edge of Memory

  POV: Lila (primary), Maximus (interlude), Elora (reflection) Six days had passed since the Gate silenced. Without pausing. Vanished. The hum that was once pressed against Lila's skin was no longer a low anchor in the temple's bones. Where she had once felt arcane threads tug her thoughts toward ritual, now there was only breath. Still. Undisturbed. She woke each morning with her limbs quiet. No signals. No warnings. Her veins no longer lit up in the manner of glyph paths. There was no longer a rush beneath the ribs, no thrum when her foot touched the old stone. Spiral had stopped asking her name. She ought to have felt at ease. But she wasn’t convinced peace wasn’t a rehearsal for abandonment. She looked at the sky-mirroring cracks in the hallways as she wandered aimlessly. The mirrorwall had dulled, no longer responding to presence. Her footsteps didn’t echo anymore. She walked slower, let her fingers touch the moss creeping across the Tribunal pillars, let silence coil

• Betrayed by the Mafia Alpha    Chapter 41 - The Letter That Was Lately Delivered

  Lila's primary point of view, Maximus' (interludes)The moon room was colder than usual. The empty space left behind was not the stone or the morning's thinness. The Gate had stopped humming. The spiral was gone. Fate had broken like a tangled thread, leaving only stillness behind. Lila's spine was no longer braced for prophecy as she stood barefoot on the polished floor with her arms at her sides. Her body was entirely hers for the first time in weeks. No sigils twitching under the skin. No warnings stitched into her ribs. Just breath. Elora entered without knocking. The smoke from her brass bowl of incense curled like soft ghosts as she carried it. They didn’t speak, not at first. There were no words. There are no new directions. There are no omens to thread around. There's no need to get ready for good or bad. Only quiet. And quiet, Lila was learning, could be sharp. Later that morning, the Council sent offerings. In the west alcove, she discovered them stacked: fruits a

• Betrayed by the Mafia Alpha   Chapter 40 - The Secret That No One Can Tell Primary point of view

  Lila, with Maximus and Saela's reflections interwoven. When the final glyph flared overhead, it didn’t burn. It crooned. Three notes. No rhythm. No melody. Just certainty. Elora dropped the scrying bowl. Saela stilled on the balcony. Maximus reached for my hand as if something might take me before the sound ended. > “It’s not a warning,” I whispered. > “It’s a summons.” The Gate had waited long enough. Lila They gave us until moonrise. Not because they were concerned about what would happen if we refused. Because they knew resisting was over. We’d crossed the spiral. We were the spiral. Now the Gate wanted one of us to anchor it fully. One spirit. One keeper. No echoes. I found Saela in the mirror chamber, seated before the glass, pressing her fingertips to the reflection like it might teach her something about being real. > “You feel whole now,” I said. "I feel... visible," > > “And yet only one of us gets to remain.” > “I didn’t ask to be born.” > “I