MasukThe big reveal! If you were Alessi, what would you do~? PS: Apologies for the late update! I was out all day with suuuper bad signal. Hope you enjoyed this one tho. x And should there be other late updates, I promise I'm getting to it! Holidy rush and all haha appreciate each and every one of you so much <3
I start noticing it in the silences. Not the machines since those are constant. Their hum is the background noise of this place, like breath in a body that isn’t allowed to sleep. It’s the pauses between us that begin to feel wrong. Arissa, Patient Five… we no longer rush to fill them. At first, I thought it’s exhaustion. My body is perpetually sore now, like my veins are bruised from the inside out. Time blurs in a way that makes it impossible to tell whether I’ve slept for hours or minutes. The lights never change. The air never smells different. But then she tilts her head. And I realize she’s tilting it the same way I do when I’m thinking. The thought hits me so sharply I gasp. She looks up immediately. “Are you in pain?” “No,” I say too fast. “Just… dizzy.” Her eyes narrow slightly, studying me. Not with fear. Not with confusion. With recognition. “That happens when you lie,” she says. My stomach drops. “I don’t lie,” I answer automatically. She considers tha
ALPHA LUCA The gates recognize me before the guards do. Steel unfolds with mechanical grace, ancient stone walls rising like a memory I never asked to revisit. The Moretti estate looks exactly as it always has. It was immaculate, imposing, perfect in the way only something carefully curated can be. That’s what unsettles me. Nothing here ever looks wrong. My driver doesn’t ask questions. He never does. By the time the car comes to a stop beneath the sweeping archway, my chest is already tight, my blood humming faintly beneath my skin like it knows I’ve stepped into a cage disguised as a home. The door opens. And of course, almost like clockwork… “Alpha Luca.” Frederik stands at the base of the steps, black tablet already in hand, expression strained somewhere between relief and tightly leashed alarm. He looks exactly the same as always: tailored suit, immaculate posture, eyes that miss nothing. But I caught it. The subtle flicker of surprise he doesn’t quite man
ALPHA LUCA I’ve learned there are two kinds of silence. The first is empty. It’s absence, ignorance, the kind you can excuse. The second is deliberate. It’s calculated. It’s deadly. I recognize the second the moment Gavin’s face appears on the secure video channel, shadows cutting sharp lines across his features, his golden eyes dulled with exhaustion and something worse… knowledge. After Gavin left, we tried our best to follow through with the data my uncle gave us, but our bodies wouldn’t let us. We had to go back to the house and rest even for just a little. Harley appeared on the screen, hunched forward, forearms braced on the table like he’s physically holding himself together. The faint tremor in his hands doesn’t go unnoticed. Neither does the tightness in my own chest, the familiar burn that crawls up my spine like my blood is trying to claw its way out. We’re all deteriorating. Together. Gavin doesn’t waste time. “My father is alive.” The words land like a cont
ALPHA GAVIN I don’t want to leave. That’s the first thought that claws through me as I step away from the SUV, the cold night air slicing into my lungs like punishment. Every instinct in my body screams that I should stay right where I am, shouldn’t take my eyes off the road, the laptop, the last fragile thread tying us to Alessi. But my phone is buzzing again. My mother. Of course it had to be her. I let it ring once more, jaw clenched, chest tight enough it hurts to breathe. Harley’s words echo in my skull… ‘We don’t have hope yet. Just a direction.’ And Luca… Luca barely managed to stay upright when I climbed out of the car. I look back at them. Harley is hunched over the hood, hands braced like the metal is the only thing keeping him standing. His scent is sharp, erratic, like fear and fury tangled with something darker. Luca is pale, lips tinged blue, one hand pressed to his ribs like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will. They’re getting worse.
ALPHA HARLEY My fingers drum the steering wheel so hard the leather is starting to peel. Gavin is pacing behind the hood of the SUV like a predator seconds from snapping steel in half, phone crushed in his hand. And Luca? He’s staring at the single, blinking red point on the tablet in his lap, Alessi’s last known location. It burned itself into the hollow pit already forming in my chest. The abandoned service road. The place where her signal vanished. Where she vanished. My wolf claws at my skin, frantic, sick. I swallow the metallic taste rising in my throat. “Run it again.” Luca’s breathing hitches. It was shallow, uneven. He doesn’t look at me when he taps the keys, a thin sheen of sweat covers his brow. The illness is hitting him again. Harder than before. “Harley,” he murmurs, “I’ve run it six times. It’s the same.” His voice cracks into a rasp. “She was taken and it stopped there.” My vision closes to a pinprick. My hands are shaking again, I believe another sym
The world comes back in pieces. First there was sound, then there was pain. A low mechanical hum fills my skull, steady and cruel, like a heartbeat that isn’t mine. My mouth is dry. My tongue tastes like metal. When I breathe, I smell antiseptic, bleach, and blood. My blood. Something pricks the crook of my arm. I try to move, but leather straps bite into my wrists. Panic blooms in me immediately. Where the hell am I? My chest rises too quickly, and the heart monitor beside me explodes in frantic beeps. The sound shreds the silence. The lab. The white walls. The light that was too bright to be real. And then, as if a ghost cutting through fog, someone whispers. “You’re real.” The voice is hoarse, trembling, small enough to shatter if I breathe too loudly. My body stills. My vision swims, focusing on a glass divider across the room. Behind it… No. That’s… She’s… Me?! The girl staring back has my face but clearly not my life. Her skin is pale and bruised, her lips crack
ALPHA GAVIN The tension between Luca Moretti and I was increasing by the second. I couldn’t understand why this was happening, why I had found my mate, and at the same time he did, too, and she was one person. How was that even possible? I’ve never heard of such a phenomenon, and it seems fro
ALPHA GAVIN “Going somewhere?” “Shit,” I mumbled under my breath. I was so close, merely just a few steps away from the door, but of course my stepfather just had to see me first. I cleared my throat and let out a sigh. “Yes, do you have a problem with that?” “No, of course not. You are fr
Everything was happening so fast as my head started spinning. Suddenly, it felt like I had been transported onto a carousel, a very fast moving one. One second, Eva and her minions were harassing me and I was trying to figure out a way to get out of such a horrible situation, and then the next, s
These people are insane. Like, I thought I had issues, but this was on a whole other level. I can’t believe that in all my years living in a town that wasn’t as prestigious as Lakewood, it would be here that I would experience something so crazy like being restrained with a zip tie and having a b







