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Chapter 13: The Night Of Ash

last update 게시일: 2026-02-06 11:54:12
Five Years Ago

The champagne tasted like victory.

Xander stood in the center of the Pack House dining hall, the familiar long oak table where the inner circle always gathered. Pack members crowded around him, raising glasses and offering slaps on the back that rattled his bones. Handshakes lingered too long, fingers gripping like they wanted to hold onto some of his new power. Everyone wanted a piece of the new Alpha. He was twenty-three, the youngest in generations, and the Pack was alive with
Sloane Sterling

We’re going back to the night that changed everything. For five years, we've seen the rejection through Elena's eyes... but what was Xander thinking? Prepare for some heartbreak, everyone. Did he really have a choice, or was he just a coward? Let me know if this changes how you feel about him! — Sloane Sterling

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  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 139: The Open Shield

    Xander walked into the western staging area still coughing and a medic from Aris's team intercepted him at the gate with a look that said clinic, now, no arguing."Later," he said."Your lungs—""Later," he said again, and kept walking toward the armor racks Kincaid had set up, because six miles was shrinking and a sore throat wasn't going to be the thing that mattered in twenty minutes.He stripped off the ruined chest plate. The sulfur had eaten through two of the buckle seams and warped the surface enough that it wouldn't sit flush anymore. Kincaid's quartermaster had spare plates sized close enough, and Xander got into one while Kincaid briefed him on what Sarah's relay had already confirmed."Henderson's armor caught the convoys in the open ground," Kincaid said. "Standard tracked corvettes, thermal turrets. They're not trying to capture anyone. They're enforcing the embargo the way the Presidium meant it to be enforced." He handed Xander a fresh blade. "Examples. For anyone else

  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 138: The Melting Threshold

    Commander Vane didn't say anything theatrical.He looked at Xander across thirty feet of smoke-choked ravine, assessed him the way a man assessed a problem he'd solved before, and gave a single hand signal. His ten operatives moved at once — hardwired thermal blades drawn, the static-resistant gear that meant frequency masking wasn't going to save Xander twice."Mask's gone," Xander said, mostly to himself, and dropped the modulation entirely.He let the full-expression frequency run loud instead. Not hiding anymore — announcing. The roar of it hit the limestone walls and came back distorted, and he felt it land in his own inner ear too, which was the cost of using it this close and this raw.The floor was already failing. He used that.He didn't try to hold ground against ten armed operatives. Ground wasn't his to hold — it was actively dying underneath everyone's boots, venting pockets of superheated gas through hairline cracks that widened every few seconds. So instead of defense h

  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 137: The Smoldering Vault

    The incendiaries hit the middle valley pass at 2:15 AM with a sound that wasn't an explosion.Xander felt it through the ravine floor — not the sharp percussion of surface ordnance, something deeper and more sustained, the specific signature of a thermal charge punching through sedimentary layers to reach what was beneath them. The ground responded a few seconds later. Fissures in the limestone began venting smoke, yellow-tinged, the unmistakable smell of sulfur thickening on top of the dampening agent's chemical stink."Coal seam's lit," Silas said, through the comm. His voice had the flat urgency of someone delivering the worst possible confirmation as fast as he could. "Surface radar's pixelating from the heat already. I make it twenty minutes before the air in those lower paths isn't air anymore.""Twenty minutes," Xander repeated, mostly so Vance could hear it."Maybe less," Silas said.Vance was already dividing the scouts. "Three teams," he said. "I'll take the second junction.

  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 136: The Blind Extraction

    The dampening agent had a smell.Silas had described the frequency characteristics — the resonance-specific compound that bonded with valley moisture, the mechanism by which it cut the mountain's bedrock hum from the valley substrate. He'd given them the technical picture.What he hadn't described was the smell, because he was in the sanctuary when the drones deployed it and smell didn't travel through stone radar.Xander would find out later. For now the mechanics were enough."The caravans are stationary," Silas said. "All twelve groups in the secondary paths. They stopped when the baseline cut out." He looked at the radar data. "They've been navigating in the dark using the mountain's frequency as a compass. Without it, they don't know which direction the sanctuary is.""The secondary paths have no landmarks," Vance said. He'd come from the pass camp the moment the anomaly hit. "We routed them through exactly because the terrain is featureless to anyone who doesn't know it.""Which

  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 135: The Crucible Ledger

    The tactical camp on the eastern side of the blockade was minimal.Xander didn't need much — a defensible position with clear sightlines to the blockade and the secondary path junctions, reliable comm access to the sanctuary, and enough Iron-Ridge scouts rotated through the watch positions that Henderson's advance elements couldn't move through the pass debris without being seen first.Henderson had his perimeter.Xander had his blockade.The two positions sat fifty meters apart and neither one was going to change without significant effort, which meant the western route situation was a standoff rather than an ongoing engagement. Standoffs were uncomfortable and they were not the worst outcome available.He checked in with Silas at 6:45 PM."Secondary paths," Silas said. "Three viable routes. The caravans are on the middle one — it adds two hours to the journey but avoids Henderson's sensor range completely.""They're moving.""They're moving," Silas confirmed. "The Thornwood Basin pac

  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 134: The Fractured Incline

    "The canyon," Vance said. "Not the machine.""Explain fast," Xander said. The siege ram was forty meters away and closing and the pace of its closing was not comfortable."Dead-Weight Pass gets its name from the limestone overhang density. The saturation coefficient is extremely high — the ledges above us are holding significantly more weight per cubic meter than standard limestone because of the mineral water table that runs through the formation." Vance's voice was the voice of someone who had grown up on ridges and had consequently learned things about rock that most people didn't need to know. "The anchor charges we rigged were set for controlled localized drops. But if we put them directly into the lateral stress seams of the primary overhang—""The whole ledge comes down," Xander said."The whole ledge comes down. Thousands of tons, directly into the canyon floor." A pause. "The machine's hull will handle it. The hull is rated for that kind of impact.""But.""The rear drive trac

  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 36: The Royal Resonance

    Twelve hours.Elena found Xander in the Shadow Cellar at four in the morning, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, staring at the Anchor Stone.He didn't look up when she entered."Dr. Aris says she has maybe eight hours left," he said quietly. "After that, the drain becomes irrevers

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-29
  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 30: The Alpha's Fury

    Two in the morning.Elena had everything packed. Two bags—one with clothes and essentials, one with the journal and whatever food she could grab from their room. Maya was dressed in layers, her training cuff tucked in her pocket.They'd waited until the pack house went quiet. Until the last of the s

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-26
  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 22: The Shadow Cellar

    Getting Maya down three flights of stairs without anyone noticing was harder than it sounded.Xander went first to check the corridor. Then Garrett appeared from nowhere to block the view from the main hall. Elena carried Maya, who had been told they were going on a secret adventure and was treating

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-22
  • The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir   Chapter 44: The War Council

    The Alpha's office looked like a bar fight waiting to happen.Eight people crammed into a space meant for four. Elder Rowe on one side, Elder Fasc on the other, both looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. Three senior warriors—Marcus, who'd tried to stop the Shield collapse, was one of them. D

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-04-02
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