All Chapters of LURING THE DARK ALPHA : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

OCTAVIAVanessa led me around the corner into another hallway. The air smelled faintly of spices and meat as we approached, and my stomach gave a loud growl, reminding me I hadn't really eaten much of the breakfast Elara brought me earlier that morning. I hadn’t been in the mood, and frankly speaking, I didn’t even know when the last time I actually had an appetite for food was. Because who needed food when they could just train all day and spend their nights going on deadly missions for sick, old, manipulative fools who wanted so badly to believe they owned them? Yeah, it definitely couldn’t be me, right?Vanessa looked at me and laughed. "Hungry?" she asked. I ignored her. For some reason, she seemed to find that funny. She threw her head back and let out a loud laugh that had me cringing a bit. Too loud.“Good thing we’re already heading to the pack house dining,” she said finally, after another round of laughter.I nodded and glanced around. The entire place was alive, kids runnin

DORIAN I hadn’t planned to eat lunch at the pack house today.I rarely did. Too crowded. Too many voices. Too much of everything I preferred to avoid. But after a long morning dealing with rogue border patrol reports and three separate council complaints, Colton had convinced me to “make an appearance.” His words, not mine.So here I was, sitting at the head of the table, scrolling through a report on my phone, ignoring the way the dining hall had gone unnaturally quiet when I walked in. It wasn’t intentional arrogance, it was necessity. If I looked up, I’d have to engage. And if I engaged, I’d lose the peace of this one small moment.Except… peace was proving impossible today.Because of her. The woman sitting a few seats down from my left.Octavia.I didn’t have to look directly at her to know she was watching me. I could feel it—heat along my skin, the quiet pull of a predator tracking its prey. She thought she was being subtle, adjusting her hair so it caught the light, angling h

DORIAN The moment I stepped out of the dining hall, the air shifted.Inside, the scent of food and the noise of the pack had been muted under tension.Out here, the tension melted into full focus.My steps echoed against the hallway as I walked.Every wolf I passed pressed their back to the wall, bowing their head in respect—or fear. It didn’t matter which.The truth was, I was already wound tight.The breach report could have been a coincidence.But I didn’t believe in coincidences. Not here. Not when it came on the heels of one very particular new arrival.Octavia.She’d sat there in that dining chair, all big eyes and calm defiance, pretending her pulse wasn’t hammering. Most people flinch when I look at them like that. She didn’t. Or maybe she was just better at hiding it.Either way, she was hiding something.And now, less than a day after she supposedly stumbled into my territory fleeing a rogue attack that slaughtered her pack, I had a breach.I could almost feel the universe

OCTAVIAI couldn’t sleep.No matter how many times I rolled over, punched the pillow, or forced my eyes shut, my mind kept replaying the same scene over and over again.Dorian’s voice. His eyes. That hidden door.“Curiosity gets people killed.”The words echoed in my head like a warning, but instead of scaring me into silence, they only made my chest tighten with something stronger than fear.What was behind that door? And why did it bother him so much that I had been in there? It was his private library—so what? That didn’t mean it couldn’t be explored by someone else. Why was he being so petty?I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling. My wolf’s voice slid into my mind again. “I told you to leave. I told you not to go in there. You’re lucky you walked out of that room alive.”I sighed, dragging a hand over my face. “Stop being dramatic, Zara. You sound ridiculous. He wasn’t going to hurt me.”“You don’t know that,” my wolf snapped. “You don’t know him. He’s the Alpha, Octavia. His w

OCTAVIA.I was halfway to the staircase that led downstairs. My mind was still caught in the temptation in flesh that called herself Selina, but most of all, the strange painting I had paused to study minutes ago. The pictures stayed with me no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. It was as though the canvas itself was holding secrets I wasn’t meant to uncover. Zara stirred uneasily inside me, still murmuring her doubts, when a loud voice cut through my thoughts.“Octavia!”I stiffened, almost missing a step, then turned quickly. Vanessa was striding toward me. Someone was with her, and it took me a moment to recorgnize who she was. It was the female she introduced to me yesterday at lunch as the head female warrior. What did she say her name was again?....... Yeah, Tanya. Vanessa wore her usual bright smile, the kind of smile that could melt suspicion without effort. It had worked on me yesterday, drawing me into a conversation I hadn’t expected, and in spite of myself, I’d almost