The Alpha King's Fate

Layla sat on the top step at the front of the packhouse, enjoying the silence. The last of the packs were just leaving; her head was already blissfully quiet.She hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to get through the memorial. She sighed and looked up at the top floor of the packhouse. Jax saw Chase off and then claimed he had something to do in their bedroom. He’d been alone there for at least an hour. She could sense why. He was still raw. He’d been wide open since the memorial and the run last night. She couldn’t comfort him; she’d never felt so useless in her life.“That was a hard one,” Dylan said behind her. That was putting it mildly. She hadn’t known how much it hurt to lose a pack member until Jackson marked her. She felt like she lost parts of herself with each of them, even though she hadn’t known them well. No wonder they all wanted her dead after the first attack. “Are you heading out?” she asked. “Yes. I need to keep busy,” Dylan mumbled. Like the rest of the p

Layla stood in the shadows of the trees and watched one of the younger trainees stop and listen to his surroundings. He wouldn’t find her. She had this part of her gifts down; she could do it without effort. The boy lowered to his haunches and tilted his head. He was listening to the vibrations in the air, the sound of breathing, a heartbeat. Anything at all so he could pass through this stage of his training. At least he would get a chance to advance. She was just stuck there.It was also supposed to be a test for her to make sure she kept practising her skills. She wanted something more challenging than playing around with the kids in the woods. They must have forgotten that she’d killed enemy wolves with her bare teeth in her human form. And she was the one who’d got that witch who’d plagued them all. Or it was precisely the reason they kept giving her these stupid exercises because she was beginning to suspect that no one wanted to spar with her. Brit would probably get further a

Layla was fuming when Jax led her through the doors to the hotel's security centre. Gerald Carlisle said and did many things that would forever be engraved in her heart and mind, but their last argument kept ringing through her head. It was funny. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her father since the night Costas took them, but she remembered it like it was yesterday. ‘You’re going to have to think of your sister. I’m going to give him what he wants.’‘I’m going to give him you.’‘You’re a high school dropout. Scrubbing rich people’s toilets is all you’ll ever do.’‘You look just like your mother; I’m sure you’ll make more money on your back.’He’d cut her up with his words. How could a father ever think that about his child? How could he think that was in any way okay?She clenched and unclenched her fists to control her anger as a man met them at the door and bowed his head in greeting. She’d forgotten about the hotel rules. When she’d worked there, she thought her employer thought hi

Layla couldn’t relax as she watched the videos playing simultaneously on the screen. The last time she had been at this house, Jax had told her it was entirely off the grid. He hadn’t once mentioned that he had a room hidden behind the pantry where he could communicate with people without any problems with the network. It was probably how Gavin had warned them about Amber when they had caught her scent before Hope had been born. She couldn’t stop her foot from bouncing as she sat next to Jax at a desk full of computer screens and software. The scene with her father had been hard to watch. She had assumed he had got into that filthy state when he’d been locked up in the security room, but he had gone into the hotel like that. Filthy. Spouting bullshit. And repeatedly asking for her by name. Everyone in the lobby had been trying to stay away from him as if he was diseased. He showed everyone that he was from the other side of the tracks, the side that all the clientele would turn

Layla felt a sense of relief when the main gates of their compound finally came into view. She didn’t know when the city became so scary, but she felt safer within those walls and Diedre’s protection wards. “We’ll take her for a walk to our lookout point,” Jax said. “It will be okay; you’ll see.” Jax seemed to have pulled himself out of his depression, so at least the time alone had been helpful to both of them. But there were hundreds of missed calls on her phone. When she put it on, it dinged and vibrated with message notifications for quite some time. Brit could be dramatic sometimes but she couldn’t blame her sister for this. She’d stuck her with some strangers when she was feeling scared and then abandoned her. The town wasn’t as busy as it usually was, and that brought back memories of when they all lived in fear and constantly camped on the packhouse grounds. The whole pack was more relaxed since the incident with the witch, and part of her believed it was because they a