All Chapters of Stolen by the Alpha: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

It’s late afternoon by the time I make it back to the cabin, light slanting gold through the boughs, the air gone heavy and electric with the coming Blood Moon. Even before I reach the door, I know Lyla’s awake—her scent is spiked with adrenaline, and I can hear her pacing through the thin log walls.I open the door just as she’s on her third lap, and she startles, fist cocked before she recognizes me.“Miss me?” I say.She scowls, but there’s relief underneath. “You left before I woke up. Thought maybe you’d grown a conscience and decided to turn yourself into the council.”“I don’t do mornings,” I say, but I can’t keep the smile off my face.She looks past me, eyes going hard. “Who’s that?”I spin around just as Cassie steps in, arms crossed and satchel hanging on her shoulder, expression somewhere between wary and openly hostile. “I’m his parole officer,” she deadpans, then scans Lyla from head to toe.“Couldn’t wait?” I say dryly. “This is Cassie, our healer.”Cassie gives me a wi

“Kalen,” my father rasps in the memory of a voice. “Took you long enough.”I can’t breathe. I can’t even scream. Every nightmare I ever had was softer than this. Not this. Anything but this.“You left,” I manage. “You died.”He coughs, a wet, rattling sound. “Everything dies. Even Nightshade Alphas.” His fingers move, clutching something close to his chest. I see it glint in the candlelight: a ring, silver and old, with our pack’s crest.“I needed… time,” he says. “To figure out the end. Before it takes me.”He gestures at the wall behind him, and I see it’s covered in scratches—names, dates, cycles of the moon, all written in dried blood and desperation.“This is madness,” I whisp

LIAMThe Rogue thrashes, curled fingers raking Kalen’s back like claws, but Kalen just holds on tighter, rocking it like a terrified child. I realize, in that moment, that this isn’t violence. It’s mercy. It’s goodbye.The Rogue sags in his arms, jaws working air, claws spasming at nothing. The two of them rock, and for a moment, it’s almost peaceful. Then Kalen wrenches his arms, hard and sudden, and there’s an ugly wet sound that echoes off the cave walls, and the body goes limp.For a second, nobody breathes.I see the Rogue’s face, slack and almost gentle in death, and something about the line of its jaw, the set of the brow, punches a hole through memory. Nightshade features. Not warped, not lost, just… changed.I get it then, with a clarity that scorches. The thing at Kalen’s feet isn’t just some random freak from the shadows. It’s the missing Alpha.His father.I want to vomit. Or scream. Or just run until I forget every fucked-up thing I’ve seen tonight. The world’s gone tilt

A silence falls, thick as sap. The only movement is the slow collapse of the rogue wolf’s chest, a last trickle of blood threading through the fur and down to the earth. The steam of it curls into the frigid air and vanishes like it never existed. My breath fogs the same way, fading fast. I stare at my hands, at the dirt packed under my nails, and wonder if I’ll ever feel clean again.“We should bury him,” I say, because it’s the only thing that comes out. Words scrape my throat raw.Kalen nods, slow and heavy, like every motion costs him. “Yeah.”We drag the old Alpha’s corpse across the frozen ground. The body is heavier than it should be, weighed down not just by flesh but by history, by every fear and secret we’ve carried. Kalen drops to his knees and starts tearing at the earth with his bare hands. I join him, and together we scrape a shallow pit. The ground resists us, every rock sealed in ice, each one feeling like a coffin already waiting. The smell is worse out here than in t

LYLACassie’s cabin isn’t built for guests, let alone enemies, but Cassie makes it feel less like a prison and more like a halfway house for the emotionally maimed. It smells like her in here—clove and something honey-sweet, warm bread from the loaf she pulled out of the oven minutes after we stepped foot in here. Cassie’s fingers move with methodical grace as she sweeps aside the crumbs, her other hand steady on the ceramic mug she slides across the scarred tabletop toward me.“You look like you want to chew through the floorboards,” she says. Her voice is featherlight, but it lands with the weight of a challenge. “Maybe eat a couple nails while you’re at it.”“I’m fine,” I lie. The tea she’s brewed is dark enough to pass for swamp water and tastes about as lively, but I drink it anyway. My own cabin—my own pack—never gave me this much comfort, or this much patience.Cassie has the kind of face that should belong to a librarian, but there’s steel underneath every soft feature. She si