Semua Bab The Alpha’s Moonbreather : Bab 71 - Bab 80

The council convened again at dawn, though no one dared call it order. Fear clung to the chamber like damp smoke. Whispers filled every shadow, names traded like curses. Elise entered last, her bandaged arm hidden beneath her sleeve, Kai and Mira at her sides.She did not bow. She met their stares as if daring them to blink first.Councilor Daren’s voice cracked through the silence. “This city bleeds, Lady Elise. And every wound seems to open where you stand.”“Because I stand where the blade strikes,” Elise replied. Her voice was steady, iron against glass. “Do you want me to step aside? Then tell me who pulls the knives.”No one answered. Not at first.Then Becky rose. Graceful. Controlled. Poison wrapped in silk.“Perhaps the knives are drawn because you provoke them,” she said softly. “Chaos follows you, Elise, as shadow follows flame.”Elise turned to her. “Chaos doesn’t follow me. It follows you. And yesterday, all of us saw it.”A ripple passed through the chamber. Some council

The square was an inferno. Fire licked across stalls, devouring canvas and wood, the heat warping the air into a furnace. Screams clawed through the night as the mob became a storm of panic and bloodlust—people trampling each other, torches crashing, shadows writhing in the smoke.Elise barely had breath left, every inhale a searing knife. Her arm was slick with blood, her side on fire where Becky’s blade had bitten. Yet her grip on the spear was iron. Her eyes never left Becky.Becky—cloaked in flame, face twisted into something almost inhuman. The smile that had always been too perfect was gone, burned away. What remained was raw, wild, a predator in the light of her own destruction.“You can’t stop it,” Becky’s voice shredded the air, half-laughter, half-scream. “They’re mine, Elise! Every soul here! Every stone of this city! Burn with me!”She lunged again, dagger a streak of fire in her hand. Elise caught it on her spearshaft, the crack of steel on wood splitting the night. The f

The square was dying.Flames clawed at the night sky, painting it blood-red as roofs collapsed in bursts of sparks. The mob had scattered—some fleeing into the alleys, others crushed beneath the stampede, their bodies trampled and broken. Smoke hung low, choking, thick with ash and blood.Elise stumbled forward, half-dragging Kai, half-dragged herself. Her spear was still clenched in her hand, though her fingers had gone numb. Her wounds burned like fire, every step a scream.“Keep moving,” Kai rasped, his weight heavy on her shoulder. Blood soaked through his tunic, hot and wet, but his grip on his sword had not loosened. His jaw was set, eyes fixed on the dark street beyond the inferno.Behind them, Mira staggered, one hand pressed tight against her ribs. She coughed, the sound raw, tearing, but her voice held. “Alley—there, before it closes.”Elise forced her legs to obey. They veered into a narrow passage, shadows swallowing them whole. Behind them, the square collapsed into chaos

The Everglade House wasn’t the only ruin that carried ghosts.By the third night in the half-burned shop, Elise could no longer tell whether the silence pressed harder inside the walls or inside her chest. The argument with Kai hung like smoke that refused to lift—every glance too sharp, every word too careful, as though either of them might split open if touched wrong.So she worked.She kept her hands moving, repairing the worn straps of her armor with scavenged thread, grinding herbs she had managed to salvage into a paste that smelled sharp and bitter. She set Kai’s sword across her lap and polished it until the steel caught the candlelight like ice. Anything to keep from staring at him too long, from thinking too long.Kai, for his part, lingered near the door like a restless sentinel, though his wounds still pulled at him when he moved. He checked the street through the cracked wood every few minutes, his jaw set, as if he expected the world itself to storm through and demand

The room swayed. Not with the measured rhythm of music, but with a sickly pulse, as though the tavern itself had learned to breathe and its lungs were filling too fast. Elise pressed her palms against the table, grounding herself against the wood’s sticky grain. The ale in her throat had turned to honey, too sweet, too thick, sticking to her chest as though it wanted to climb back up again.She should have stopped after the first cup. She knew her limits. But limits had never been enough to save her.Across from her, Luka watched. He leaned back, casual in posture, but his eyes betrayed him—dark, deliberate, studying every small falter in her breath. And Elise, blinking hard against the smears of lanternlight, saw someone else in his place.Her heart stuttered.“Kai,” she whispered.Luka’s gaze sharpened. Then, slowly, he leaned forward, as if the name belonged to him. “Elise.”Her breath caught. For weeks, Kai had spoken less and less, letting silence sit between them like a stranger