All Chapters of Betrayed by the Mafia Alpha: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Lila's primary point of view, Maximus' (interludes)The moon room was colder than usual. The empty space left behind was not the stone or the morning's thinness. The Gate had stopped humming. The spiral was gone. Fate had broken like a tangled thread, leaving only stillness behind. Lila's spine was no longer braced for prophecy as she stood barefoot on the polished floor with her arms at her sides. Her body was entirely hers for the first time in weeks. No sigils twitching under the skin. No warnings stitched into her ribs. Just breath. Elora entered without knocking. The smoke from her brass bowl of incense curled like soft ghosts as she carried it. They didn’t speak, not at first. There were no words. There are no new directions. There are no omens to thread around. There's no need to get ready for good or bad. Only quiet. And quiet, Lila was learning, could be sharp. Later that morning, the Council sent offerings. In the west alcove, she discovered them stacked: fruits a

Lila The mirror should have fractured. Its surface curled once, pulled taut across its frame like stretched skin trying to hold a breath too large. The shimmer followed. Not light, not magic just silver suspended in memory. It gave three pulses. Slowly. Each throb whispered something unfinished. Then the glass cleared. She remained there. Not the child. Saela. Behind her, the girl with spiral-marked palms and unflinching eyes. Saela’s hand rested lightly on the child’s shoulder, like she wasn’t guiding her, only anchoring her. They didn't look happy. They did not grieve. They just watched me. Not with warning. Not even with love. With something rarer invitation. I pressed my palm to the mirror. Flesh met cold surface. I didn’t flinch. One sentence I whispered felt too brief at the time. I’m still listening. The child came to me before dawn. She didn’t knock. Didn't wait. She walked in barefoot, curls tangled, clothes loose like she had dressed for sleep, not cer

Lila Kehra didn’t sleep anymore. At least not in the way we understood sleep. She rested under the mirror tree with her hands folded across her chest and her gaze turned inward, like her soul had wandered somewhere we couldn’t follow. I felt it when I passed her in the morning. Something shifting inside her. It was like watching the stars move in different directions with one's eyes closed. She was no longer making spirals. That alone was enough to make me uneasy. Instead, she used chalk to etch veins into the stone ruthless, branching, curving in no known pattern. Not symmetrical, not ceremonial. The lines ran like roots that had given up trying to return to order. They stretched. The spiral was undergoing change. And she was chasing its transformation. For the past two days, Casten had been inside the inner sanctum. He entered quietly, unnoticed, barefoot, sunburned, and with his lips cracked from the wind and silence. His eyes showed an odd yearning, not for blood or fo

POV: Lila (primary), Maximus (interludes), Kehra (whispers) Lila That morning, the birds did not sing. They hovered, shifted on branches, opened beaks but sound never came. The air wasn’t empty. It was listening. We now comprehend what that meant. The Gate had turned again. Neither opened nor pulsed Just… angled. The way a person's face slants toward a whisper they know is meant for them. Kehra was already awake when I reached the mirror courtyard. She stood with her back to the cracked glass, chalk-stained fingers folded behind her, spine straight, eyes focused on the eastern moss wall. She no longer traced spirals. She was drawing veins. Jagged, branching lines that pulsed faintly in low light, converging toward an unseen center. They weren’t symmetrical. Not guided by ritual. They spread like untrained, alive nervous systems. “I stopped seeing loops,” she said when I came near. “Now I just feel pull.” Maximus (interlude) She hasn’t slept beside me in four days. Sh

POV: Lila (primary), Kehra (interior echo), Maximus (reflection) Lila The brand-new map didn't just appear. It folded. Across time. Across breath. Not on paper, or bark, or stone but across my senses. When my fingers touched the iron, I'd feel it. When the wind skipped once before shifting directions. When a word I hadn’t said rippled the mirror pool before I even reached it. > Elora stated, "It's rewriting orientation." > “Whose?” I asked. She paused. > “Yours.” The fifth spiral had stopped deepening. Instead, roots had begun to tilt. Not grow. Not bloom. Tilt. That shouldn't have any significance. However, anyone who had been following the Gate for a sufficient amount of time understood that force was not required for change. Sometimes, a lean was a summons. Kehra no longer walked in straight lines. Because the light moved differently—less glimmer and more pulse—I was only aware that she was near. And Maximus, now, wasn’t trying to hold me close. He’d begun circ