Todos los capítulos de Alpha, I Won’t Let You Banish Me Again: Capítulo 181 - Capítulo 190

AidenElla had stopped looking at me like I might disappear if she blinked.I noticed it around midmorning on the third day, when I came back from a brief meeting with Leo and found her sitting up in bed with one of the books from the packhouse shelf open across her knees. She looked up when I walked in and said, "There's tea on the table if you want it," the way a person says something like that when they've been sharing space long enough to start knowing each other's habits. Casually. Without the measured caution she'd had when we first got here.It was a small thing. I stood in the doorway for a second longer than I needed to, and then I went and got the tea.The truth was, I had been handling her as if she might break, and she had noticed, and she had decided at some point to stop tolerating it. I wasn't certain exactly when the shift had happened. Somewhere between the moment she'd said I know in response to my confession about the mate bond, and now. She had decided, in that qui

KellyI told my daughter the truth in the herb garden, between the lavender and the sage, on the kind of cold, bright morning that makes the whole world feel like it has been washed and put out to dry.I had thought about doing it inside. I had thought about doing it at the kitchen table while making sandwiches, like we used to.In the end, I chose the garden because I realized I want to preserve all the good times we have had in the kitchen as a lasting memory. That’s why I chose the garden. I looked at my daughter as she plucked a lavender leaf and smelled it. My daughter was growing, and her curiosity couldn’t be stopped. She looked up at me and smiled. Her bright smile was even brighter than the sun. She turned her focus back at the herbs right in front of her as I stood. I gave her more time to explore, to enjoy, before I dropped something a child her age shouldn’t be experiencing. I slowly walked down the path when I felt my daughter’s small hand in mine and the other carryi

The gazebo had been built for waiting. I understood that, finally, standing inside it.It was old. It was even older than the stories the fae kept about it. The wood was pale, and the carvings on the columns were not decoration so much as record, names, and dates. The roof was an open lattice. Sunlight fell through it in an uneven grid and lay itself across my mother’s face, across her folded hands, across the hem of the dress she’s wearing. Twelve years.Twelve years, and someone had been changing her clothes, cleaning her, taking care of her.I held that thought tight against the inside of my chest because if I let it loose, it would have undone me. I can now see that she was loved-something I'd longed to believe, yet fear I might never fully feel. The kind of love that she deserved and never got from my father. And I knew who. This realization made my heart tighten with hope, emphasizing the deep emotional connection I longed for.Viktor now stood at the gazebo’s threshold, exact

LeoThat is the part I keep coming back to, after, when I am alone with my own breath and the soreness in my left shoulder where the chain bit through to skin. He knew the fight had turned before I did. I am not sure, but I could see it on his face. The smug look he's wearing now tells me he knows more than he's letting on. He had been running on me since the second clash, delaying me and keeping me in the same spot I had been since the clash began. The steady, patient, infuriating defense of a man who only needed to keep me in one place. What stood opposite me then was just a tired old wolf who had run out of road and knew it.I would like to tell you I felt sorry for him. I did not.Since I couldn’t be there for the ritual that Kelly and my daughter were doing, Ella helped me out by casting a spell. I spell that would make me feel exactly what was happening even when I’m not there. Mateo offered to let me stay with my wife and daughter, but I refused to leave them to fend off the v

I had never truly understood the fire.I had only seen it in fragments. The candle in the kitchen. In the warmth that spread across the floor beneath Lylia's feet on cold winter mornings. Those were only glimpses.I had never known what the fire really was.Until now.Now, I know.After finding out about my mother and the endless secrets she kept, I found out that it is not a wolf thing. That there was something more inside me that I hadn’t discovered. That is what I learned: in the second after Merry’s wolf-suppressor took my wolf away from me, when by all the laws of the world I had been raised inside, I should have gone to my knees beside my brother and watched my half-sister walk past me with a smile.My wolf was gone, but I was not alone.The fire still lived within me.Waiting.And very much alive.It flowed inside of me, but this time I wasn’t afraid of it. This time, I welcome it as it came up the inside of my arms like a thing that had been waiting for a chance to flow. It c