All Chapters of The Biker Alpha’s Hated Mate: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

AvelineThe sunlight crawling across the floor of Matteo’s suite felt like an insult. It was too bright, too golden, a mocking contrast to the heavy, suffocating silence that had settled between these four walls.I hadn’t moved from the bed in sixteen hours.I was still draped in the black silk robe he’d forced me into—a garment that felt like a second skin, slick and cold. I stared at the door Kai had pounded on the night before. Matteo had vanished into the hallway for hours, returning in the grey smudge of dawn with a look on his face that I couldn't decipher. He hadn't looked at me with his usual sharp, biting hatred. He had looked at me as if I were a puzzle he was tempted to smash just so he didn't have to solve it.Then, he had sat back in that armchair. And the silence began.The door opened now, the heavy click of the lock echoing like a gunshot. Matteo walked in, followed by a young omega carrying a silver tray. The scent hit me instantly, cruel and agonizing: toasted sourdo

AvelineThe sound of the heavy deadbolt sliding into place was a rhythmic execution of my hope.Matteo had left ten minutes ago, his face a mask of fractured granite after seeing my sketchbook. He hadn’t waited for an answer; the arrival of the Council’s Executioners at the gate had forced his hand. He’d shoved the book into the pocket of his tactical vest, gripped my jaw with a bruising, desperate strength, and told me that if I moved from the room, he’d let the Council have me.Now, I was alone in the silence of his suite, the scent of him—cedar, rain, and that dark, intoxicating musk from our encounter in the bathroom—clinging to my skin like a shroud. My body still felt the phantom heat of his touch, my pulse still stuttering from the way he’d looked at me before the world fell apart.I paced the length of the room, my bare feet silent on the cold hardwood. The "Executioners." I knew the stories. They weren't just soldiers; they were the Council’s cleanup crew, shifters who had lo

AvelineThe air in the Great Hall was thick with the scent of old wood, expensive bourbon, and the stifling, predatory musk of a hundred wolves. Sitting at the center of the long, arched table, I felt like a sacrificial lamb dressed in emerald silk. Matteo’s hand was a heavy, possessive brand on my thigh beneath the table—a gesture that was supposed to project unity to the pack, but felt more like a leash.Across from us sat the woman Kai had warned me about. Serafina Moretti.She was stunning in a way that felt sharpened to a lethal edge. Her skin was the color of cream, her lips painted a blood-red that matched the silk of her own dress, which clung to her like a second skin. They called her La Vipera, and looking into her hooded, calculating eyes, I understood why. She didn't just look at me; she dissected me."So," Serafina began, her voice a low, melodic purr that carried easily across the sudden hush of the table. She swirled a dark vintage in her crystal glass, her gaze never l

AvelineThe air in Matteo’s study was thick with the scent of old paper, expensive bourbon, and the electric charge of a storm about to break. We had just survived the gas—Kai had managed to trigger the emergency ventilation before we lost consciousness—but the revelation of the journal had left us both frayed, raw, and bleeding in ways that weren't physical."You knew," Matteo growled, pacing the length of the room like a caged beast. He slammed his hand onto the surface of his heavy oak desk, making the crystal decanter rattle. "You’ve had that journal for years, Aveline. You let me treat you like a prisoner, let me look at you with nothing but loathing, while you held the truth in your hands.""I was a child when I found it!" I screamed back, my voice cracking as I stood on the other side of the desk. "And when I grew up, I was a ghost. Who was I supposed to give it to? You? The man who rides a bike named 'Vengeance' and looks at me like I’m the plague?""I would have listened!""N

AvelineThe silence of the suite was different now. It wasn’t the heavy, charged silence of Matteo’s presence, nor was it the vibrating tension of our argument on the desk. It was a hollow, ringing quiet—the kind that settles over a grave before the first shovel of dirt hits the wood.I had spent the last hour in the bath, trying to scrub the scent of the wolf-bane gas from my lungs and the feel of Matteo’s desperate, bruising kisses from my skin. My body felt like a map of contradictions. My pulse still hammered with the memory of his hands on my hips, but my chest ached with the coldness of his rejection when he saw the brand.He looked at me like I was a broken thing, I thought, pulling the damp silk robe tighter around my frame. Not a mate. A tragedy.I stepped into the bedroom, the moonlight cutting through the tall windows in jagged, silver blades. The fire in the hearth had burned down to orange embers, casting long, dancing shadows against the heavy velvet curtains. I just wan