Semua Bab Bound to the Alpha Who Killed Me: Bab 81 - Bab 90

LYRAThe line doesn’t vanish when the threat does.That’s the lie I catch myself almost believing, that because the construct is gone, because Cain’s breathing evens and the forest stops holding itself taut, we can return to what we were before.But lines don’t dissolve.They persist.They shape how everything after must move.I feel it in the bond first, not as pain, not even as distance, but as resistance. Where emotion once flowed smoothly between us, there’s now a slight drag. Like running a hand over wood and catching on a grain that wasn’t there before.Cain feels it too. I don’t need to ask.He’s too careful now.“Are you—” he starts, then stops himself. Rephrases. “Do you feel… intact?”The question costs him something.I answer honestly. “I feel… defined.”That seems to hurt him more.The heart between us beats steady, neutral. Watching.Learning.I close my eyes, not to rest, not to dream, but to check the inside of myself the way one checks a wound after the bleeding stops.

LYRAIt goes for the space between us next.Not my memories.Not Cain’s.Ours.The Devourer presses gently at first, testing the seam where our histories overlap. The moments shaped by proximity. By repetition. By choice.The first time Cain laughed with me.The night we almost didn’t survive.The quiet understanding that formed before either of us named it.The pressure is subtle, invasive in the way only intimacy can be. It doesn’t try to pull the memories free. It tries to inhabit them. To stand inside them like a room and see how they were built.I stiffen.This is worse than before.Because these aren’t just recollections.They’re agreements.I feel Cain register it the same instant I do. The bond hums, alert but not panicked.“This is different,” I whisper.“Yes,” he says softly. “It’s not asking.”The Devourer speaks, measured and careful.Shared history stabilizes bonds.Understanding it would improve efficiency.My hands curl into fists.“You don’t get to audit our past,” I s

LYRAThey don’t arrive like enemies.That’s the first mistake the world makes.There is no tearing of sky, no violent announcement, no predatory heat crawling up my spine the way it does when the Devourer leans too close. The forest simply… yields.Space loosens.Roots withdraw.Ash stirs where no fire burns.And they step out of the Hollow like something long expected.The Forgotten Kin are not monstrous.They are scarred.Some wear their age openly, bodies bent by time, eyes clouded with memory too heavy to hold alone. Others look young in the way immortality sometimes lies, faces smooth but expressions ancient, mouths shaped by silence rather than speech.All of them carry the same mark.Not the Bloodveil crest.The older one beneath it.The name that was never meant to surface.The land recognizes them instantly.So do I.Cain stiffens beside me.The bond doesn’t flare.It tightens—controlled, alert, braced.“They’re real,” he murmurs.“Yes,” I say. “And they didn’t come to be for

LYRAThe Hollow does not celebrate.That’s the first thing I understand as the council’s voices fracture behind us and the city exhales like something wounded but not yet dead.There is no triumph in the ground beneath my feet. No warmth. No reassurance.Only gravity.The Hollow pulls—not forward, not down, but inward. Toward a center that has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with cost.Cain feels it too. I know by the way his steps slow. By the way his shoulders square, not in dominance, but in readiness.“It’s not finished,” he says quietly.“No,” I agree. “It’s just done hiding.”We stop at the edge of the city where stone gives way to root and ash. Where the land stops pretending it was ever neutral.The Forgotten Kin are already there.Waiting.Not assembled like an army.Positioned like punctuation.CAINI am keenly aware of what I no longer have.No insignia.No authority.No shield of inherited command.What I have instead is worse—and better.Attention.The s

LYRAThe Hollow does not wait for permission.That’s the first truth I learn when it happens.Not in ritual.Not in solitude.Not in the careful space I promised myself I would choose.It happens in the open.The square is crowded—wolves pressed shoulder to shoulder, voices overlapping, tension still humming from the council’s fracture. Memory has made everyone restless. Names once buried now hover at the edges of conversation like ghosts no one wants to acknowledge aloud.Cain walks beside me, close enough that our arms brush with each step. Not claiming. Not guarding.Present.I think—foolishly—that matters.Then the ground drops.Not physically. Not enough for anyone else to stumble.Just enough for me.A pressure locks around my spine, sharp and absolute, like invisible hands finding bone and saying here.I gasp.The world doesn’t blur.It opens.Sound folds inward. Every heartbeat in the square becomes audible—too many, too fast. Beneath them, another rhythm asserts itself, older