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Chapter Nine: Proximity
publish date:
2026-06-05 03:24:33
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RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter 139:Epilogue
EMILYChristmas morning, a year later, my kitchen is so loud that I can barely hear the coffee machine.Derek is arguing with Marcus about whether cinnamon belongs in pancake batter. Sage is on the floor with Mia, building something out of wrapping paper and tape that she swears is a castle. Cole sits at the table reading the paper and pretending he isn’t watching her. Celeste has taken over the good armchair and is knitting a scarf so long that it trails across the rug.There’s a vase of purple flowers on the windowsill. Somebody brought roses once, back in the spring, and Mia told them very politely that roses are lazy.Mason stands on his chair beside the stove, directing.“Two blueberries,” he says. “Two, Dad. That one only has one.”“It’s winking,” Nick says.“Pancakes don’t wink.”“This one does.”Mason sighs as if he’s been working with amateurs his whole life.He isn’t wearing his jacket. It’s hanging on the back of his chair, unbuttoned. He took it off an hour ago to open his
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter 138: The Proposal
EMILY“Emily Hale,” Nick says from my kitchen floor, “I’ve loved you since you were eighteen and covered in snow. I lost you because I was stupid, and I found you because our daughter looked at me across a ballroom. You forgot me, and you chose me anyway. I don’t deserve that. I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to.”My hands are over my mouth.“Will you marry me?”I lower my hands. I look at the pancake on the floor beside his knee.“You ruined a perfectly good pancake,” I say.Mason makes a strangled sound.“I’ll make another,” Nick says.“It had a smile. Mason worked very hard on that smile.”“It was crooked,” Mason says.“Emily,” Nick says.“Yes,” I say. “Obviously. Yes. Get up off my floor.”He gets up so fast that he nearly slips on the pancake, and then he has me, arms around my waist and my feet off the ground, and I’m laughing into his neck and my side hurts and I don’t care at all. Derek is whooping. Sage is crying. Marcus has blueberries in his mouth and is clappi
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter 137: What’s Left
EMILYMason counts everyone twice.He stands in the middle of my living room with his jacket buttoned to his chin and his finger held out, and he points at each of us in turn, lips moving. Me. Nick. Derek on the couch with his cane. Marcus beside him with a bowl of chips. Sage in a yellow cardigan, cross-legged on the rug. Cole by the window with his arm in a fresh sling. Mia, hanging off my leg.“Eight,” he says.Then he starts over from the beginning.“Eight,” he says again, and his shoulders drop, and he walks straight into Nick’s stomach and stays there.Nick puts a hand on the back of his head. With his other hand, Mason reaches up, finds Nick’s wrist, and presses two fingers against it.“Seventy-two?” Nick asks.Mason counts. It takes a while.“Ninety,” he says. “That’s too fast. You need to sit down.”“I’ll sit down,” Nick says, and his voice is thick.Mia hasn’t let go of me since we walked through the door. She has one arm around my leg and the stopwatch in her other hand, an
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter 136: The Full Return
EMILYThe first thing that comes back is the snow.I’m eighteen, and it’s Christmas Eve, and the snow is falling so thickly on the road to the cabin that I can barely see the trees. Nick is holding my hand inside his coat pocket. His fingers are warm and mine are frozen, and he keeps rubbing his thumb over my knuckles to warm them.“You’re going to lose a finger,” he says.“Then you’ll have to love me with nine.”“I’d love you with none.”I laugh, and my breath comes out white, and he looks at me as if I’m the only thing in the whole forest.It doesn’t hit me all at once. That’s the strange part. At the park, when I touched the pendant, everything came crashing in at the same time and it was only the worst of it, the floor and the voice and the crawling, and it nearly drowned me. This is different. This comes slowly, one piece after another, in order, as if someone is handing me photographs and waiting for me to look at each one before passing me the next.The cabin door sticks in the
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter 135: Escape
NICK“Eighty seconds.”I run.Emily is in my arms with her head against my chest, and every step I take jolts her side. She bites down on her lip so she won’t cry out, and I can feel her trying not to shake. Theo runs ahead of us with the radio, shouting into it.“Sage, talk to me! Where are you?”“The first junction!” Her voice comes through in pieces. “The big door, the one that came down! There’s smoke on our side, Theo, there’s so much smoke!”“Seventy seconds.”The corridor is full of running wolves. Edward’s men are pouring out of the hidden doors and racing for the exits, and none of them look at us. Somewhere below us, something goes boom, and the floor jumps under my feet.We turn the corner and the blast door is right there, a solid wall of steel from floor to ceiling.I set Emily down against the wall. She sways and grabs my arm. Her skin is hot under my fingers, much hotter than it should be, and her eyes are still gold, flickering in the red light.“You’re burning up,” I
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter 134: The End of Edward
EMILYMy mother’s car went into the river.I remember the phone ringing and my father dropping it, and the sound it made against the kitchen tiles. I remember a closed coffin and white lilies, and a woman from church who kept squeezing my hand. I remember everyone telling me it was an accident, a patch of oil on the road and a stroke of bad luck.I remember my father, after, standing at the kitchen window for hours and hours, not saying anything to anyone. I remember the house going quiet, and staying quiet, and never getting loud again.This man sat and watched.He sat in his car across the road and watched my mother die, and then he went home and poured himself a drink, and six years ago he stood in a hall full of people and watched me crawl.The wolf inside me doesn’t understand words. But she understands me. She feels what that sentence does to my chest, and she lets go.The shift back is worse than the shift out.It tears through me all at once, with no warning. My bones pull in
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter Five: The Choice
Nick and I stare at each other across the hallway. “We’ll use Alexander’s bond,” I say before Nick can speak. Dr. Harrison’s expression shifts to concern. “Ms. Winters, I need to be very clear about the risks—” “I understand the risks. Alexander will bond with her.” “Emily—” Nick starts.
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter Four: The Collision
My whole body tenses. “Stay away from her.” “How old is she?” I don’t answer. “How old, Emily?” “Six.” I watch him do the math. Six years. Six years since that Christmas morning. Six years since he destroyed me, and I left with his child growing inside me. His face goes pale. His hand
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter Three: Six years Later
The doctor's offices smells like antiseptic and false hope. I'm sitting in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs, holding Mia's hand while Dr. Chen reviews her test results. Again. Like looking at them one more time will change what they say. Mia is six years old. She has my dark curls an
RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR Chapter Two- His Rejection
I wake up to sunlight burning through my eyelids. My head is pounding like someone’s taking a hammer to the inside of my skull, and my mouth tastes like something crawled inside and died. My body feels heavy and wrong, like it doesn’t belong to me anymore. When I force my eyes open, everythin
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