Lahat ng Kabanata ng Alpha's Rejection, Double Revenge: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

The wind shifts, and everything in me stills.One foot stuck mid-turn, frozen in the dirt. My chest locks, breath caught beneath muscles coiled so tight I swear I hear something in my spine creak. A split second, no longer, and it hits me.That godsdamned scent.Lavender and ozone. Rain on hot stone, sweet and wild. The memory crashes through six years of barriers built to protect. One I'd buried deep and burned the ground over.That doesn't matter.The moment it reaches me, everything inside surges. Snarling, clawing as the wolf that lives just beneath my skin, the one I've caged and trained and starved of her, is triggered feral.Cassia.Her name detonates. Shrapnel in my blood. Flame under skin.I stagger. Behind me, spars scatter. Conversations stall. Silence ripples through the clearing like something physical. The younger ones frown, confused. But the older warriors, the ones who'd stood beside me the day I banished her, they know. They smell exactly what I did.Not just her. Gri

The cafeteria. Stone walls and exposed beams. Still full of too many eyes.I walk in with Leo and Nova flanking me like little shadows, heads down, steps tight. The buzz of conversation dims the second we enter. Not loud enough to be obvious.But I hear it anyway."She brought kids?""Thought she was exiled…""Did you see how Kade looked at her?"I keep walking.The long wooden tables stretch from wall to wall, filled with soldiers and Omegas and every rank in between. They look cleaner than I remember. More structured. Less wild. Like everything has been buffed into place since I left.Leo grips my hand tighter.Nova sniffs. "They're talking about us.""I know, baby," I say. "Let them."We slide onto an empty bench near the far side of the room. I angle myself so I can watch all three exits. Old habit. Hard to break.A server, young and jumpy places three plates down with a barely murmured greeting. Scrambled eggs, toast, fruit. Nothing fancy. I check it all anyway. Old habit. Harder

I've been awake since before the light came.Old habit. In five years of running, dawn was never safe enough to sleep through. So I'm at the forest edge before anyone else stirs, boots sinking into dew-soaked ground, watching the silver mist curl through the pines like something breathing.I tell myself it's patrol instinct. Perimeter awareness. The same thing that kept us alive on the road.I don't let myself think about last night. About the wall. About the way his nose dragged along my throat like a question I almost answered.Almost.The forest is quiet. Too quiet for this time of morning, no birds, no rustle of small animals in the undergrowth. Just that particular stillness that means something is paying attention.Someone is watching me.I don't turn. Don't change my pace or my breathing. I keep my eyes on the tree line and wait, the way I've learned to wait without tension, without tell, like a woman who has all the time in the world and nothing to fear from whoever is behind h

"Before the council session," he says quietly. "The bond changed. The way it felt heavier, doubled, like something new had been added to it that hadn't been there before." He stops. Starts again. "I knew what it meant. I'd felt it described in old records. The bond-weight of a bloodline beginning.""So you knew.""I knew there was a child." His jaw tightens. "I didn't let myself go further than that. Didn't let myself — " He stops again. A muscle works in his throat. "If I'd let myself think about it fully. About who they'd be. What they'd look like." He looks away. "I wouldn't have been able to do what needed to be done."The silence between us has a different quality now. Not the silence of things unsaid, the silence of things finally, irrevocably said."And now?

I know exactly what I'm doing.That's the thing I need to be clear about, at least with myself. I am not confused. I am not running. I am not falling into something by accident or letting my guard down or being reckless in the way I used to be reckless, back when I was twenty-two and believed that loving someone hard enough was a kind of armour.I know exactly what I'm doing and I'm making him watch.It starts three days after the sparring ring.Rhett finds me at breakfast, or I find him, which is closer to the truth, because I'd clocked his usual table two days ago and positioned myself accordingly. He looks up when I sit across from him, takes in the fact that I've brought two coffees, and grins with the particular delight of a man who has decided he enjoys being surprised."You're early," he says."I'm strategic." I slide one cup across. "There's a difference."He wraps both hands around it and leans back, watching me with those warm, assessing eyes that don't miss much. "How are th