Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Alpha’s Pretty Mistake: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

KolThe room reeked of antiseptic and whiskey. And the sharp sting of both lived rent free on my tongue. One burned down my throat while the other filled my lungs.I was sitting in the infirmary. The bandages around my ribs were uncomfortably tight, as if they wanted to hold my body together at places surgery couldn’t assist.I stared at the half-empty glass in my hand for some time. It trembled slightly, but not from weakness. And not from the pain either, though it throbbed like a constantly in my side.No.The tremble came from what Aria had tried to do. She tried to kill me. Even after everything. After I gave her my name, my power, my trust. After I let myself hope, for the first damn time in years, that someone like her could see the man behind the monster.She stabbed me.I downed the rest of the whiskey in one go, letting it sear away what little clarity I had left.Then I threw the glass. It shattered against the far wall.The sound echoed.A second after that, my ribs felt a

LiraThree years agoI used to count the cracks on my ceiling. Forty-seven. Then forty-eight when the rain cracked the plaster. Then forty-nine. A spider had spun a web between two of them, and I named it Aria. Ironic, wasn’t it? The real Aria was somewhere far away in the New Moon Pack, probably walking in gardens, probably laughing at boys who offered to be her mate.And me?I was wilting in a locked room. My only sunlight rationed through morning hours when my father unlatched the windows, always watching. Always timing it.“You’ll get sick,” he’d say if I stayed too long in the sun. But that wasn’t what he meant. He meant: you’ll get ideas.And I did. In that room, I built fantasies and kingdoms and knives out of paper. I wrote letters I was forced to send, filled with fabricated joys and cheerful lies. “I’m fine,” I wrote to Aria. “They’re good to me. I like it here.“None of it was real. My hands shook with every word. But I couldn’t tell her the truth. Not while he always watch

KolI found the car’s quietness to be a little boring.Sitting beside the driver, Liam was quiet as the car rolled down the street. At the back, next to me, was Aria. She was rested with her hands folded comfortably on her lap. Even though she looked relaxed and uninterested, her eyes kept following the trees outside.I was able to see everything she did from the corner of my eye. She hadn’t commented much on anything we did after we left the estate.Maybe that was normal. Maybe it wasn’t. I hated how unsure I’d become. Still, I needed to say something. I couldn’t let this silence linger.“So,” I said, clearing my throat. “You never answered the one thing I asked.”She turned toward me slowly. “Kol I—““Why?” I asked. “Why did you try to kill me?”There was a pause, one beat too long.“I…” she started, then looked away again. “I was confused. I was angry. I thought you were someone else—someone who’d hurt my sister. I thought you were the villain in all of this.”Her voice was softer

AriaDarkness. It was covered in darkness and a part of me felt like I was just ten years old once again.Me, Lira and the pack kids were playing near the back of the school. The sun was setting, and my purple ribbon kept slipping from my hair.Lira spun around in a circle while humming a tune our mother used to sing to us. I never really liked it.Then it happened.One of the older girls, Chessa, rushed to me and yanked the ribbon from my head. She called me a mutt, a slave’s daughter, and shoved me so hard I fell into the mud.I didn’t fight back. I never did.Lira, on the other hand, Lira saw red.Chessa took a swift and powerful blow from her as she fell on the floor. And as she reached the ground in pain, she screamed and then she ran away and went off crying.There I was in the mud, shaking and my lip trembling too.Lira approached me, dropped to her knees and helped me to get up.“If the world tries to eat you,” she said softly as she brushed off dirt on my sleeve, “bite it bac

AriaKol and I had been in the cell for days, that we had gotten used to its cold damp air, even though it irked our skins. There were no lights and no movements. Lira had restricted guards from ever crossing our paths. All we could see were distant flickering torches against the transparent rectangular frame on the door but calling on them would be of no use, cause it was soundproof.Kol's head was on my lap. It was heavy but warm. I ran my fingers through his hair gently, the way I’d once dreamed of doing in a very different life, one where we weren’t locked underground. "Do you think we’re going to make it out of here?" I asked softly.Kol didn’t answer. He just stared at the wall ahead, eyes dull and jaw tense. There was something there, something deeper than defeat. Something more dangerous.Revenge.I could see it forming behind his eyes like a promise. One way or another, Kol was going to make Lira pay. And properly. Permanently.But I needed to speak. Needed to unbury the tr