Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Alpha’s Pretty Mistake: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

AriaI hadn’t even made it halfway down the corridor when I saw it.A thick gold frame hung on the hallway wall, catching the light just enough to be proud of itself. I stopped the second I saw the photo inside—the one from earlier today. Already printed. Already framed. Already displayed like it had always belonged there. It hadn’t even been six hours.I stepped closer.Twelve women lined the back of the photo, smiling in practiced perfection. Kol sat in the centre like a king, and next to him was me. Or what looked like me.Hair styled to mirror Lira’s. Lips painted a red she used to swear by. My smile felt borrowed even in a frozen image. The others looked at the camera.Kol was looking at me. Except… he wasn’t. His eyes were soft, distant, mournful. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at her.My fingers curled into a fist. I wanted to smash it. Shatter the glass and tear the frame off the wall and demand someone explain to me why I was being made into a living relic of my dead

Kol I stared into thin air, recounting Aria’s words in my office.“You all want to control me so I don’t turn out to be like HER. And I’m sick of it!”I’d heard screams before. Cries. Accusations. But nothing ever cut like that. Not even when Lira walked away.Because Aria didn’t walk away. She stayed.She sat back down and ate beside women who wanted her gone. She swallowed her pride and forked that food into her mouth like nothing had happened.And that scared me more than her outburst. Because that meant she was getting used to surviving here.I paced my office slowly with one hand resting on the edge of my desk, the other swirling the amber liquid in my glass. I didn’t drink it. I was just watching it spin. The way my thoughts were spinning.Lira. Aria. One was a ghost. The other? A threat. Or a mirror. Or maybe both.“Shit,” I muttered, finishing the drink and slamming the glass down.Then a soft knock on the door broke the silence. I didn’t answer. It opened anyway.It was Kath

AriaI tried to sleep but I couldn’t sleep that night. Not because of pain, though there was plenty of it. No, I didn’t sleep because I was too busy replaying every single detail, over and over and over, until the truth burned through my mind like wildfire.The man by the car. The strange way he kept fidgeting under the hood. The driver’s hesitant reassurance. The crash and then Kathy.Kathy, who smiled a little too brightly during our last meal. Kathy, who always hovered too close to Kol’s seat like a forgotten wife desperate to be remembered. Kathy, who had so much to gain if I never came back.My fists clenched around the sheets.I wasn’t supposed to come back. That crash wasn’t an accident. It was a funeral with my name on it, and some innocent man died in my place.But I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I let the fury simmer. I’d already come here to kill a monster. Maybe now it was time I started taking down the shadows standing behind him, too.Starting with her.Kol came back lat

AriaThe first thing I saw when I tried to close my eyes was her on her knees.It wasn’t some distorted nightmare. The Luna wrapped around Kol like she was born to belong there and she was a pro at it.And the worst part? He didn’t stop her. He was enjoying it. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t think twice.I stared at the ceiling now, eyes dry from how long I’d been blinking without crying. The betrayal, if it even was, didn’t make sense. I wasn’t his only mate. I was his favourite Luna. But most of all, I wasn’t suppose to feel this way about him. But that didn’t stop the ache that kept digging into my ribs.“You’re not supposed to care," I whispered to myself.But I did. I did care. That was the problem.The tears finally came, soaking into my pillow.“Don’t fall in love with Kol.”Jarek’s voice was still crisp in my memory. But it was a shield I had already let fall.“Too late." I whispered to myselfI rolled over, burying my face in the blanket, hating the fact that this... THIS felt

AriaI thought I would feel something different when I kissed him just like that.After all the tension, after all the stolen glances, the angry silences, the brushing of hands, him choosing me over his Luna’s. I thought maybe intimacy would fix something. Or at least, confuse me into believing it had.But then he said it.“I love you,” Kol whispered in the dark as heat from the sex still clung to our skin. His breath was warm against my collarbone. He whispered it like it were a secret he was dying to keep.And just like that, whatever fire had kindled between us... died.It was as if someone doused me in cold water. Or worse—like Lira had risen from her pyre, dragging her way into the room just to slap me back into my senses.I’d betrayed her. I’d betrayed everything.Love? With him?The man who burned our family alive? Who watched Lira’s body turn to ash while the rest of us were left to stitch ourselves back together?No.The worst part was that for a split second, before he said