All Chapters of FATED TO THE ALPHA I WAS BORN TO KILL: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Riven's POVThe second attack came at dawn, faster than any of us expected, no warning horn this time because the enemy had learned exactly which patterns triggered our defenses fastest and simply avoided them entirely.I woke to the sound of the eastern wall screaming under impact and was dressed and armed before I'd fully processed what I was hearing."They're through the lower gate," Marek shouted, meeting me in the corridor, blood already streaked across his young face from a wound I didn't have time to ask about. "Riven, it's Draven's personal guard. He's leading them himself this time."My stomach dropped straight through the floor. "Where's Kade?""Already at the wall. He sent me to find you."I reached the eastern defenses to find chaos barely contained, our own wolves fighting in exhausted, ragged lines against soldiers that moved with that same unnatural, puppet-string precision, and at the center of it all, unmistakable even through the smoke and confusion, Draven himself,

Draven's POVI woke on a cot in the healer's wing for the second time in a matter of days, and for the first time since the ancient thing had first spoken through my own mouth, I felt entirely, terribly myself.That should have been a relief. It wasn't.Because being myself meant remembering everything I'd done while it wore my grief like a weapon. I remembered Riven's face, stricken, betrayed, as frost climbed his arm because of me. I remembered the blade I'd raised against him, my oldest friend, close enough to brother that the distinction had never mattered until tonight. I remembered Nyra's blood soaking through her side because she'd thrown herself between that thing and the man I'd sworn to destroy.I remembered, most of all, the moment my own voice had cracked through the ancient control and begged Riven to help me, and how it hadn't been enough."You're awake." Kade's voice, from the doorway, careful, exhausted."Is she alive?"His jaw tightened. "Barely. The healers are still

Nyra's POVI woke to Kade's scream tearing through my own name, and my body moved before my mind fully caught up to what was happening.I'd been drifting somewhere between sleep and the healer's careful stitching, exhausted enough that even opening my eyes felt like lifting something too heavy, but the terror in his voice cut through the fog instantly, some deep, unshakeable instinct hauling me upright off the cot before conscious thought ever fully arrived.I saw the blade first. Draven's borrowed form, moving with a speed that shouldn't have belonged to any single wolf, blade already descending toward the space where I'd been lying only a heartbeat before.I understood, in the fraction of a second left to me, that the strike wasn't actually aimed at me at all. It was aimed past me, toward Kade, who'd thrown himself forward too late, whose own exposed side was about to meet a blade meant to finish what this entire war had been building toward from the very beginning.I didn't think.

The Mark's POVThe mark had a memory older than the woman who wore it.It remembered the moment Hades pressed his palm to her collarbone in the ash and ruin of the Dreadmoor, remembered the exact shape of the bargain he'd woven into her skin without her consent, a tether meant to bind fate to fate long before either she or the Alpha understood what they were to each other.It remembered every time it had flared in warning, in recognition, in the slow, patient hum of a bond building toward something neither of them had been ready to name. It remembered the courtyard, Mogra's strike, the first time she'd thrown herself into danger meant for him and the mark had blazed white hot in answer, some ancient magic recognizing sacrifice for exactly what it was.It remembered the blade that had finally found her chest, cold and final, and the moment her heart had stopped beating beneath it.And it remembered, too, the promise buried inside its own making, older than Hades' bargain, older even th

Kade's POVI don't remember crossing the corridor. I remember arriving.Orlanna had her hands pressed against Nyra's ribs, her face lit with something I hadn't seen on a healer in this stronghold in longer than I could remember. Hope."There," she said, breathless. "Right there, Alpha, do you feel it?"I dropped to my knees beside the bed and pressed my own palm flat against her chest, and for one suspended, agonizing heartbeat, I felt it too. Warmth. Not the borrowed warmth of blankets or fire, but something rising from beneath her own skin, and beneath my hand, faint and irregular, a single, stuttering motion that might have been her ribs expanding around a breath."Nyra." My voice cracked wide open. "Nyra, please, if you can hear me—"The warmth receded.I felt it go, felt the exact moment her skin cooled back toward the terrible stillness I'd been sitting with for a full day, and the small, stuttering motion beneath my palm simply stopped, as though it had never happened at all."