All Chapters of The Alpha’s Unbroken Mate: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The fortress was silent when the drums finally stopped.Smoke clung to every stone, thick as mourning veils. I moved through it like a ghost, the taste of ash coating my tongue, the ground beneath my boots slick with blood and rain. The dawn that rose above the mountains wasn’t gold it was red. The kind of red that stains, not warms.“Lucian?” My voice cracked against the emptiness.No answer. Only the creak of broken wood and the faint hiss of dying fire.I stumbled through the outer courtyard where the walls had caved inward, my mark pulsing weakly under my skin. The air still carried traces of his scent iron, storm, and pine but it was fading, fraying like smoke on wind. I pressed my hand to the mark as if I could summon him back through sheer will.The bond was still a hollow ache. No heartbeat. No warmth.Just silence.Bodies lay scattered along the broken stairs wolves I’d trained beside, laughed with. Some were half-shadowed, faces burned away by the same darkness that had devo

The silence after Mirek’s vanishing felt alive like something breathing against my skin.The Shadow Realm didn’t know quiet. It pulsed. Whispered. Moved.Lucian stirred in my arms, barely conscious. His heartbeat was faint, but it was there irregular, fragile, the sound of a dying ember refusing to go dark. His skin glowed faintly under the gray light, and for the first time, I saw what the Shadow Alpha had truly done to him.He hadn’t killed Lucian.He’d split him.Half here, half beyond. Bound between worlds.“Lucian,” I whispered, pressing my hand to his chest. The mark on my wrist flared in response white and gold against the shadow-black ground. The veins of his corruption pulsed in answer, like the two marks were trying to reach each other across an invisible divide.His eyes fluttered open, dull gold against the gloom. “Where… are we?”“The Shadow Realm,” I said quietly. “He brought us here when the fortress fell.”Lucian winced, trying to rise, but the effort made the shadow i

The air in the cavern felt colder the next morning.Not the kind of cold that came from mountain air or lack of fire this was the kind that sank beneath skin, that crawled into the hollow between ribs and stayed there.The survivors were awake before dawn. No one slept much after the confrontation. Kael’s challenge had fractured what was left of our unity. Wolves moved in small clusters now, whispering, watching Lucian with wary eyes.He sat near the edge of the tunnel, his back to the stone wall, eyes half closed but awake. The corruption was worse. Black veins had crept up his throat, pulsing faintly with every breath. The tether between us burned dull and heavy.I knelt beside him. “How bad?”Lucian’s voice was quiet, rough. “I can still fight. But not for long.”“You’re lying.”His lips twitched faintly. “Of course I am.”I wanted to smile, but couldn’t. His humor felt like a blade against an open wound.I took his hand warm, fevered, trembling and whispered, “You shouldn’t have s

The darkness did not settle. It moved.It crawled across the heavens like ink seeping through old parchment, swallowing stars, eclipsing every distant glimmer of night. Wolves who had stilled under my light now trembled once more, not from frenzy but from something far worse.Dread.It wasn’t simply the absence of the moon. It was the presence of something else. Something ancient. Something hungry.A whisper of wind stirred across the fortress ramparts, yet no breeze touched our skin. The air had gone cold and stagnant. Every torch flickered in silent protest. Then..A mist slithered through the treeline.Grey. Thick. Rippling like breath.“The fog…” Kael breathed, voice shaking. “It wasn't there a moment ago.”Lucian stepped in front of me by instinct, shoulders tense, eyes fixed on the forest below. “Pull everyone inside. Seal iron gates, reinforce lower halls. Now. No one touches that fog.”“It’s spreading fast,” Kael warned. “If we move too slow, it’ll”A scream cut through the ai

The descent began in silence.Stone swallowed every footstep, every ragged breath, as Serena led them through the fractured arch beneath the fortress where torchlight could not reach, where history had been buried under blood and oath. The catacombs yawned open like a throat, devouring the last strand of moonlight that clung to the ruin above.No turning back.Behind her, the survivors moved as shadows: Ravik limping but unbroken, Cassian with his blade drawn, Elara clutching her staff like a spine made of iron. Thirty wolves, maybe fewer, each bearing wounds that would never heal. Yet they followed—for her, for the Harbinger Mark that pulsed at her throat like a living brand.Lucian, her soul whispered. I’m coming.But the air grew colder. The further they moved, the more the world above felt like a memory.The walls here were carved with symbols. Wolves, moons, serpents coiling through runes that predated all packs. Some glowed faintly as she passed. Others recoiled in darkness. The