All Chapters of The Alpha’s Forgotten Bride: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

(Calla’s POV)His mouth was on mine and I could not think straight. I missed this so bad it hurt. I missed him so bad it hurt. Rowan kissed me rough now, not soft like before. He kissed me as if he waited for so long to kiss me like that. And I also kissed him back just as hard as he did. I grabbed onto his shirt tight because I was scared this was not real.He carried me up and I made a little noise. Not because I did not want it but because I was not ready. He was still strong. I wrapped my legs around him and he kept on kissing me. He kissed me as if we were both going to die if we stopped kissing.I did not even notice we moved, not until my back hit the wall. Then the door. He pushed it open with his foot and did not stop kissing me once. My heart was going crazy.He carried me into my bedroom. The room I said no guy would ever come into again. The place where I hid from everything. But with him here it felt different. It felt okay.The door shut loud behind us. He kicked it and

(Calla's POV)The house seemed thicker the next morning, as though it had soaked up every one of last night's secrets and was now holding them captive within its walls, replaying them with each creak of floorboards, each groan of beams.Rowan was absent.Nothing was left. Not on the sheets still smelling of his cologne, a dark, rich smell that curdled in my stomach. Not in the air, which had returned to its spent vanilla candle and coffee scent.Not even on the ground where his boots had leaned against the door, kicked off in that sloppy way that had been close in the darkness.He was a ghost, a flickering appearance and disappearance in my life without a word. Had it not been for the flavor of him still lingering on my lips, mint and something else, something uniquely him, if not for the ache within that brought back every touch of his calloused palms, every shiver he drew from me with his lips, I could almost deceive myself into believing it never occurred.Close enough.But it did.

(Rowan's POV)East Wing was quieter than the rest of the packhouse, a place I had only visited occasionally. Halls of this wing were older in some way, outside the scope of remaking that had changed the middle parts over the years into something contemporary.My heels echoed off the creaking wooden floors, the sound hollow and lonely, as though the walls themselves were shuddering with some hidden memory that I was not privy to. There was something familiar here, lurking in these shadows, beyond my fractured memories.By the time I stood at the front door of Calla, I had my mind made up or so I'd reassured myself, anyway. My hand paused a moment of doubt before I thrust it out again and in that moment of hesitation, I was wondering why I was here. What I needed to know. What I was afraid to know.I rapped hard, once, and the door creaked open before I had a chance to rap a second time. She was there, hair unbound to her shoulders in waves that seemed to contain cups of sunlight from h

(Calla's POV):The news came sooner than I had been expecting. Maybe I had needed delay, something that had given me time to steel myself, time to build walls around the jagged shatterings of my self. But Rowan's voice over the phone that morning was abrupt, though his words weren't so."We need to talk," he'd said, and then the phone had hung up. No hello, no warning. Just those four words that'd put my world to one side of wrong.I marched the hour that passed in my apartment, sour coffee cradled in my hands, staring at the clock as if it would go any slower if only I stared long enough. Asher was at school, none of his whole world knowing its axis was turned. I wished he were where he was, that naive certainty of a six-year-old's existence where mommy was just mommy, and things like paternity tests complicated didn't enter in.By the time the knock on the door did arrive at last, I almost jumped out of my own flesh. My hands shook to close around the handle, and I stopped myself, h

(Rowan’s POV)We walked in silence. Our footsteps did not make sound as we walked. My mind was racing with possibilities. What could he possibly tell me that he thought would break the bond between us? What truth was worth that kind of fear?I tried to think back over all our conversations. Looking for clues I might have missed. Has he ever lied to me outright? Had there been times when his explanations did not quite add up? I could not think of any. But then again, I had not been looking for lies from him.The route he was taking was not familiar to me. We turned down streets I rarely used. Through neighborhoods I did not know well. The buildings got older and more run down as we walked. Windows were boarded up. Doors were chained shut. This part of the city felt abandoned."How much further?" I asked."Not far," Knox replied. But he did not slow down.I wondered if he was delaying. Passing the long way on purpose to give himself more time to think. Or maybe he was just being careful