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CHAPTER 12 — Scent of a Lie

Auteur: Maia Ward
last update Dernière mise à jour: 2026-02-05 03:06:25

I woke up with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Not poison. Not anymore. Something sharper than pain, softer than fear. The kind of taste that lives in memory long after the body has healed.

I didn’t open my eyes at first. I needed a moment to remember where I was and who I was supposed to be.

Queen. Wife. Problem.

My throat felt tight. My head ached like I’d been holding my breath for too long.

When I finally opened my eyes, Derek was standing by the window. Not sitting by my bed. Not touching me.
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  • The Alpha’s Double Game    CHAPTER 55 The Hollow Man Moves

    Drail’s cell was empty.No broken stone.No blood.No scent.The iron restraints lay undisturbed on the floor as if carefully removed. The door remained locked from the outside. The guards stationed beyond it were alive, confused, shaken, but unharmed.“I checked the hinges myself,” Marcello said, voice tight. “There is no sign of tampering.”Derek stood in the center of the confinement chamber, shoulders rigid. Jax moved along the walls slowly, inhaling deeply, searching for anything.There was nothing.No trace of wolf.No trace of man.Raya stepped into the threshold last.The space felt wrong.Not violent.Vacant.As if something hollow had simply stepped sideways and vanished.“He couldn’t shift,” Jax said quietly. “We stripped him.”“Yes,” Derek agreed.Stripped of wolf. Stripped of rank. Stripped of destiny.And yet Raya’s skin prickled faintly.Not from proximity.From memory.The broken mate-thread that had once connected them had never fully severed. It had thinned. Fractur

  • The Alpha’s Double Game    CHAPTER 54 The Shared Dream

    The dream did not feel like sleep.It felt like stepping sideways.I knew I was dreaming because the air shimmered silver, because the ground beneath my feet was neither earth nor stone but something luminous and endless. Yet I was fully aware. Whole. Breathing.And I was not alone.Derek stood to my right, dressed not in armor or dark linen but in simple black, wind lifting his hair though no sky existed above us. Jax stood to my left, shoulders bare, eyes sharper than I had ever seen them.Neither looked confused.They looked alert.“We’re together,” Jax said quietly.“Yes,” Derek replied.The word echoed slightly, as if the space around us were listening.Ahead, light gathered.At first it was mist. Then shape. Then movement.She stepped forward from the brightness as if crossing a threshold only she could see.Ria.She wore white.Not ceremonial white. Not bridal or innocent. White like untouched snow beneath the night sky. Her dark hair fell loose down her back, unbound by braids

  • The Alpha’s Double Game    CHAPTER 53 The Blind Oracle Returns

    Jale arrived before dawn.No escort announced her. No sentry stopped her. The gates had been guarded, the perimeter sealed, yet somehow she was already walking the central path when the first patrol rotated out.Raya felt her before she saw her.A thin vibration in the air. Like a string drawn too tight.Derek and Jax were with her in the lower hall when the doors opened. Jale stepped inside without hesitation, pale robes brushing the stone, silver-threaded braids resting over one shoulder. Her blind eyes turned unerringly toward Raya.“You have grown louder,” Jale said.There was no greeting.Raya didn’t move. “You felt it.”“The North felt it,” Jale replied calmly. “The old places. The bone-fields. The rivers that remember first blood.”Jax’s posture sharpened instantly. “Speak plainly.”Jale’s lips curved faintly. “I always do.”She stepped closer, stopping three paces from Raya. Close enough to sense the layered scent that had rippled through the pack the night before. Close enoug

  • The Alpha’s Double Game    CHAPTER 52 — Scent of Two

    Jax noticed it before anyone else.He always did.Raya was standing at the long windows of the eastern hall when he stepped behind her, close enough for his breath to stir the loose strands of her hair. The estate was quiet; patrol rotations had shifted an hour earlier, and the tension from the incursion still lingered like smoke in the beams.He inhaled.Then stilled.Her scent had changed again.Not sharply. Not wrong. But layered.Alpha—undeniable, commanding, clean as cold iron. That part had always been there since the Trial. Since she survived what should have broken her.But beneath it now was something darker. Older. Not decay. Not corruption.Depth.Jax’s hand came to her waist slowly, possessively, as if testing whether she was still entirely solid beneath his palm. “Derek,” he said quietly.Derek entered without urgency, but his eyes sharpened the moment he crossed the threshold. He felt it too—though perhaps not as quickly as Jax had scented it.Raya turned toward them, br

  • The Alpha’s Double Game    CHAPTER 51 — The Second Heartbeat

    I did not sleep.I drifted.There is a difference.Sleep is surrender. Drift is vigilance disguised as rest.When I opened my eyes, it was still dark. The heavy velvet curtains muted the first suggestion of dawn, but I felt the hour in my bones. The estate was quiet in that charged way it becomes before movement begins—patrol shifts rotating, guards trading watch posts, warriors sharpening steel in silence.Derek’s arm was wrapped around my waist, solid and immovable even in sleep. Jax lay at my back, one forearm draped over my hip, his fingers curled loosely into the fabric of my shirt as if instinct refused to let me stray too far.Their body heat surrounded me.Grounded me.For a moment, everything felt steady.Then I heard it.A heartbeat.Not Derek’s. His was deep and measured beneath my palm.Not Jax’s. His rhythm was lighter, quicker, grazing the back of my spine.This one was inside me.A faint pulse, not aligned with mine.Not pregnancy. I knew the difference. This was not ne

  • The Alpha’s Double Game    CHAPTER 50 — The First Incursion

    They did not cross by accident.The eastern patrol reported movement just before dawn—three signatures cutting through river fog, disciplined spacing, no attempt to mask scent once they breached the shallows. That alone told me this was no test.It was a statement.By the time Derek, Jax, and I reached the ridge above the riverbank, the intruders had already moved ten kilometers inland. Fast. Purposeful. Not hunting.Mapping.The forest was quiet in that unnatural way it becomes when predators enter without panic. Birds stilled. Smaller animals withdrew. Even the wind seemed to hesitate between trees.“They want us to engage,” Jax said, crouching to examine disturbed soil. His fingers pressed into the earth, measuring stride depth. “They’re not hiding.”“No,” Derek agreed. “They’re pacing us.”I let my senses stretch outward, past bark and moss and damp stone. The rogue energy I had absorbed months ago responded faintly, like metal humming near a magnet. Recognition without allegiance

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