LOGINShare
Chapter 23: Meet the Family
publish date:
2026-10-21 20:18:08
Latest chapter
RIDE OR DIE: The Alpha's Reckless Queen Chapter 23: Meet the Family
Nothing says "meet the family" like a room full of armed werewolves debating whether to kill you or protect you.The pack council chamber was nothing like I'd expected — not some medieval throne room, but a long, plain hall with rough-hewn benches and a fire pit at its center, packed wall to wall with wolves who'd clearly dropped whatever they'd been doing the moment word of the Viper declaration reached them. Killian had walked me in himself, one hand steady at my back, though I noticed he stayed close to the door, like some part of him expected he might need to get me out fast.The air itself felt charged, thick with the particular tension of a room full of people who'd rather be doing anything except sitting through this conversation. I recognized a few faces from that first dinner weeks ago — the healer who'd offered me a second helping of stew, the young man who'd asked about rain — though none of them met my eyes now, too caught up in the gravity of whatever debate had been ragi
RIDE OR DIE: The Alpha's Reckless Queen Chapter 22: Breaking a Man
I've broken a lot of things. I've never broken a man just by saying no.We rode back to the compound in silence, my mind turning that single sentence over and over until it wore smooth and terrible in a way I couldn't make peace with. It can kill him. Not "it hurts." Not "it's difficult." Kill. As if the word I said or didn't say in the next few days held more weight than any decision I'd ever made in my life, more weight, somehow, than I felt equipped to carry.I found Nadia at my old apartment — the one I hadn't lived in for weeks, the one that still smelled faintly of my father's aftershave from the last time I'd cleaned out his things — because some old instinct told me I needed distance from the compound to think clearly, and Nadia was the only person in my life who existed entirely outside of it."You look like you've seen several ghosts," she said, taking one look at my face and pulling me inside without waiting for an explanation.The apartment felt strange and unfamiliar afte
RIDE OR DIE: The Alpha's Reckless Queen Chapter 21: Put Some Pants On
A man tells you you're his soulmate and somehow the first thing you say is "put some pants on."It came out before I'd fully processed what he'd said, some old, practical, deeply unromantic part of my brain apparently deciding that a naked man kneeling in gravel was the more pressing crisis of the two, easier by far to address than the enormity of what he'd just told me. My whole body was still humming with adrenaline from the chase, from the wolf, from every impossible thing that had happened in the past hour, and somehow it was the sight of him kneeling there, bare and vulnerable in the cold, that finally cracked something loose in me.Ronan blinked at me, and for one absurd second the wrecked, raw intensity of the moment cracked wide open into something almost funny."That's—" he started, and then, despite everything, despite the Vipers somewhere out in the dark and the mate bond he'd just detonated between us, something that might have been a laugh escaped him, rough and disbeliev
RIDE OR DIE: The Alpha's Reckless Queen Chapter 20: Recognition
Turns out I recognize his eyes even in a wolf's face.I sat frozen behind the wheel for a long moment after the howl cut off, every nerve straining toward the tree line, half expecting Viper bikes to come roaring around the bend at any second, half expecting something far worse and far less human to emerge from the dark instead. My mind ran through every option I had — none of them good, none of them offering more than a few seconds of delay against whatever was coming — and settled, finally, on staying exactly where I was, doors locked, engine dead, waiting to see which threat arrived first.It came out of the tree line at a dead run, and every instinct I had screamed at me to lock the doors, to make myself small, to do anything except sit frozen behind a windshield that wouldn't have stopped a creature that size for more than a few seconds if it decided my car was worth the effort. It was enormous — larger than any wolf had any right to be, dark-furred, powerful enough that I could
RIDE OR DIE: The Alpha's Reckless Queen Chapter 19: Backroads
I have never driven that fast in my life, and I've raced actual werewolves.My heart had gone from a dull, grieving ache to a hammering, adrenaline-soaked drumbeat in the space of a single glance in the mirror, every ounce of the night's earlier heartbreak shoved aside by pure animal instinct. Fight, flee, survive — the hierarchy of priorities rearranged itself instantly, and my hands found the wheel with a grip that ached, some old, practical part of me grateful, absurdly, that I'd at least chosen a car with a decent engine for whatever came next.My father used to say the backroads around Ashgrove were the only inheritance that actually mattered — not the garage, not the tools, just the maps he kept in his head of every shortcut, every washed-out turn, every stretch of gravel too rough for anyone without a decade of practice to take at speed. I'd learned those roads riding shotgun in his truck as a kid, half-listening while he narrated turns like scripture, more interested back then
RIDE OR DIE: The Alpha's Reckless Queen Chapter 18: Not About Him
I packed a bag with shaking hands and told myself it was about my father, not him.It wasn't entirely true, and some small, honest part of me knew it even as I folded shirts I didn't remember choosing into a duffel I'd found shoved under the cabin bed. My father's betrayal was old, unfixable, a wound I couldn't do anything about now except grieve it in whatever private way I eventually figured out how to. Ronan's silence was different. Ronan's silence was fresh, and mine, and something I'd trusted enough to let close, and it had cost me exactly the way every other trust in my life eventually seemed to.I moved through the small cabin methodically, the way I'd learned to move through any crisis — hands busy, mind quiet, grief packed away somewhere I could deal with it later when I had the luxury of falling apart. I left the good blankets folded on the bed. I left the groceries someone had thoughtfully stocked for me weeks ago untouched in the pantry. I took only what had been mine befo
You May Also Like
The Lycan King and his Dark Temptation
Luna Nova587.4K viewsThe Alpha's Unwanted Luna Series
Miss L2.7M viewsThe Beast And The Blessed
Ashley Breanne761.2K viewsAlpha Asher
Jane Doe10.1M viewsMy Second Life Belongs to the Lycan King’s Brother
The_ink_sorceress52 viewsTHE RUTHLESS ALPHA SUPERIOR’S VIRGIN SLAVE
Naughtypen422 viewsSweet Abomination
Bae-Wrights 1427 viewsPREGNANT AFTER SIGNING THE ALPHA'S CONTRACT
Precious Maxwell 36 views
