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CHAPTER 22
publish date:
2026-05-19 20:53:31
Latest chapter
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA CHAPTER 29
DANIELLA POVHe had been quiet all evening.Not his usual quiet, not the comfortable kind that I had learned to just exist inside of without needing to fill it. This was different. This was the kind of quiet that had weight to it, that sat between us at dinner and drove home with us afterward and didn’t leave when we pulled off the main road into this spot he knew, overlooking the city, where he’d parked without explaining why and turned the engine off.I had waited. The city glittered below us and the car was warm and I sat with my hands in my lap and waited because I had learned that with Rider you didn’t push. You just made enough space and eventually he came to you.He was staring straight ahead through the windshield.“I need to tell you something,” he said.My heart rate did something immediate.“Okay,” I said. Quietly. Like if I spoke too loudly the moment would startle and run.He turned to look at me and the look on his face was something I hadn’t seen before, not exactly, it
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA CHAPTER 28
DANIELLA POVI had been asking Rider for three weeks now about me visiting his house. Not in a pushy way, not like I was keeping score, just whenever it came up naturally I would mention it and he would find some smooth way to redirect the conversation and I would let him because I wasn’t going to make it a thing. But I had been asking for three weeks and after everything that had happened, after Thursday and then Saturday and the car and his forehead and the thing I had watched happen that I still hadn’t fully let myself sit with properly, I needed something. I needed to see where he lived. I needed to see one real, concrete, normal thing about him that would give me somewhere solid to stand.So on Sunday morning when he called to ask what I wanted to do that day I said “I want to see your place” and I didn’t soften it or make it a question and there was a pause on the other end of the line, just a breath, and then he said “okay.”Just okay, like he’d been waiting for me to stop le
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA CHAPTER 27
DANIELLA POVIt was a Thursday evening and we just left work. We were on our way to my house as usual for him to drop me off. While in the car, we were planning a little dinner night later during the week. We argued for some time, before we finally agreed to go to this little Italian place that Lilian had been talking about,and he had also gone there so we settled on that. I was in the passenger seat with my shoes off because my feet weren’t comfortable in the heels I'd chosen. Rider was driving with one hand on the wheel the way he always did and we were talking about something stupid, I don't even remember what, something that had made me laugh, and everything was completely fine, till his phone rang through the car speakers.He glanced at the screen on the dashboard and something shifted in his face immediately, like the good evening just packed itself up and left, and he said "I need to take this" and then he disconnected his phone from the car speaker and answered it.I wasn't
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA CHAPTER 26
DANIELLA POVIt was a Tuesday and I wasn’t even thinking about anything when it happened.I was just walking down the corridor with a stack of papers pressed against my chest and my mind was somewhere between the Henderson report and what I was going to eat for dinner when I heard this shifting, scraping sound and by the time I turned around, the cart was already moving and it was coming fast and there was a cabinet right behind me and I just froze. I literally just stood there like an idiot because my brain understood what was happening but my legs had completely checked out of the conversation.But then it stopped. Like it literally stopped right before it hit me. The files I was carrying were everywhere on the floor and the metal edge of the cart was right there, like an inch from me, and Rider had his hand on the side of it and he was looking at me with that calm expression he always had and he said “you okay?” like he hadn’t just appeared out of nowhere.“I__” I looked at his
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA CHAPTER 25
DANIELLA POVThe weekend passed the way good weekends did when you were trying not to think about something. It was full, warm, and carefree. Saturday was for Rider as usual. He showed up at noon with no announcement and no explanation, the way he had started doing, and we spent the afternoon doing nothing in particular. His hand in mine on the couch, while watching a movie neither of us paid real attention to, a late lunch that turned into an early dinner because neither of us moved to end it. He was present in the way he had been before Friday night. Warm and unhurried he was fully there.I looked at him, and the words rearranged themselves into something softer, something easier, and came out as nothing at all. I wanted to talk to him about yesterday, but I just didn’t know how. He was there, like literally right beside me , shoulder against mine, thumb tracing slow absent patterns on the back of my hand, and I didn’t want to put something between us that didn’t have to be there
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA CHAPTER 24
DANIELLA POVLilian woke up this morning, and decided that she wanted people to come over.“Tell them to come over,” she said Friday morning, already moving around the kitchen like the decision had been made. “We haven’t had a proper night in weeks.”She wasn’t wrong. Between work and Rider and everything that had been quietly shifting in my life recently, the last few weeks had been full in a way that left little room for our weekend friend night in. Everyone in one place, just cracking jokes and being free with each other. “I’ll ask,” I said.“Tell, don’t ask.” She pointed at me with a spatula. “You always ask like they might say no. They never say no.”She was right about that too.By seven, the apartment already felt alive. Taylor had shown up first with snacks he claimed were from him but were very obviously from the expensive place two blocks from the office that he thought none of us knew about. Lilian had taken them from him at the door without saying thank you, which was
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