Marked by the forbidden Alpha

I always took the shortcut.Every single night for three years, ever since I moved to Coldveil and started working at Maren's Bookshop, I had walked home through Ashford Forest. It saved twenty minutes, it was quiet, and after a day of dealing with customers who treated paperbacks like weapons, quiet was all I ever wanted.My coworker Sasha called me reckless. My landlord called me foolish. I called it efficient.Tonight, I called it the worst decision of my life.It started the way all terrible things do completely normally.The October air was sharp and clean, carrying the smell of pine and damp earth. My bag was heavy on my shoulder, stuffed with two books I was reading and a leftover sandwich I never got around to eating. The trees rose tall on either side of the path, their canopies blocking out most of the moon, leaving only thin silver ribbons of light across the ground.I had my headphones in. I was thinking about nothing. I was perfectly, utterly fine.Then the screaming star

Evander's POVI should not have stopped.I knew it the moment my feet slowed. That half second of clarity you get before your hand reaches for something shouldn't be that small, useless window where you can still choose differently. I had walked a different route to the war room every night for three days. Three days of deliberate detours and carefully mapped corridors specifically designed to keep me away from the lower cells.Tonight something had overridden all of it.And now I was standing at my war room window staring at a forest I wasn't seeing with a pair of brown eyes burned into the back of my mind like I'd looked directly at the sun.My wolf was insufferably smug about it. He'd been pacing for three days restless and snarling, throwing himself against the walls of my control with increasing desperation. I had given him every reasonable explanation. The Duskfang border raids. The war council. The pressure building on three sides of our territory simultaneously. Reasonable, ra

Isadora's POVSomething was wrong.I felt it before I heard that particular shift in the air when a building full of people suddenly has a purpose. Boots hitting stone fast and hard. Voices cutting short. Doors slamming somewhere above my head.I was on my feet before I decided to stand.I gripped the bars of my window and pressed close. The corridor was empty but the sounds were getting closer and urgent and clipped, the energy of people trained to stay calm who were currently working very hard at it.Then Cole appeared.Moving fast, face flushed. He slowed just enough when he saw me."Stay quiet today," he said under his breath. "Don't draw attention to yourself. Not today.""What's happening?""Border patrol caught people crossing into pack territory." He glanced over his shoulder. "They're being brought in."Something in his voice made my stomach drop. "And then what?"He didn't answer."Cole." Flat. Direct. "What happens to trespassers here?"He swallowed. I looked at the wall. "

I was thinking about Marcus when the door opened.Not deliberately. My mind had wandered the way it does when you have been staring at stone walls long enough, drifting back to the bookshop and the smell of old paper and the way Marcus Hale always laughed too loud at his own jokes but somehow made everyone around him laugh too. He was tall in that careless way, dark curly hair always slightly too long, warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. He was the manager's son. He came in every Thursday to drop off stock and stayed two hours longer than he needed to and always ended up leaning on my counter talking about nothing while I pretended to be annoyed.I had never told him I liked him.I had been planning to tell him how I felt everytime he comes but I end up avoiding it because I was shy and scared if being Rejected and some times I put a little effort by applying makeup when ever I know he his coming that is mostly on Thursday hoping he would notice me Now I was

I walked back to my study and I was still thinking about it.That was the problem. I could not stop thinking about it and I am not a man who gets stuck on things, I deal with problems and I move forward and I do not stand in corridors replaying conversations in my head like some boy who has never spoken to a woman before, and yet here I was, walking through my own keep, past guards who straightened as I passed and staircases I took without thinking, and the only thing in my head was her voice.What happened to you.I pushed my study door open and stood in the middle of the room.People ask questions like weapons all the time, to find cracks and angles they can use later, I know that game well because I invented half of it, but she had not been doing any of that. She had looked at me with those direct unafraid eyes and she had just asked, I sat down and stared at the ceiling and tried to be logical because logic was something I was good at and feelings were something I had given up fo