All Chapters of A Dorm With My Alpha Mate : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Malrick's POVThe quiet was a living thing. It pressed against my ears—a thick, woolly silence broken only by the drip of water somewhere in the dark. The Bindery was not a prison of bars, but of stone and shadow. My cell was a cave, carved deep into the belly of the Iron Den. The air smelled of wet rock and old, cold earth. The wolf’s bane lashes on my back burned: a constant, smoldering fire that kept my wolf weak, my healing slow. The pain was a companion. I welcomed it. It kept the other thing away—the memory of the wraiths’ cold, the echo of the void they showed me. That was a different kind of pain, one that threatened to unravel my mind.I sat on the rough stone floor, my back against the wall. A single torch flickered in the corridor outside the iron grate that was my door. A guard paced by every hour. His footsteps were heavy, bored.I let my head fall back against the stone, closing my eyes. This was not the end. It was a setback. A tactical retreat. I had planned for conti

Malrick’s POV“I am emptiness,” I said, and my words were cold, flat stones. “I am the severer. I have cut bonds. I have made wounds. Your dark is a comfort. My quiet is a weapon. Stand in my way, and I will show you the void I carry.”The creature recoiled, its wings rustling. It sensed the truth in my words. It sensed the hollowness I had learned to wear as armor. The deep dark feared many things, but perhaps it feared a mirror of its own nothingness most of all.“Pass, scar,” it whispered, shrinking back. “But the dark remembers. It will be waiting for you.”I walked past it, my heart a cold drum in my chest. The blue light faded behind me. I was back in the black, but I walked taller.Ahead, a pinprick of grey light. Not torchlight. Moonlight.I scrambled towards it, the water long gone, the tunnel floor rising. The light came from a crack in the ceiling, hidden by thick roots. I climbed, using the roots as a ladder, my muscles burning. I pushed through the crack, dislodging dirt

Kai’s POVThe bond hummed in my chest—a steady golden thread—but today it carried the sharp taste of Aria’s dread. It woke me before dawn, a silent alarm. I reached for her, but my hand found cold sheets. The space beside me was empty.I was already pulling on my boots when the first alarm bell rang. Its clang was a cold fist around my heart. I knew, even before I ran into the courtyard and saw her face.The news spread like wildfire in dry grass: Malrick. Gone. Tunnel. Illusion. The words were sparks that lit panic in every eye.I stood on the low wall with Aria, listening to fear ripple through the gathered wolves. Her voice cut through it—sharp and clear—turning their fright into focused anger. She called him a rat. She said we were not cheese. I felt the shift through our bond; her defiance flowed into me, mixing with my own cold rage. We had been played, but we were not beaten.The second bell meant the search parties were leaving. I watched Finn lead the first group out, his fac

Malrick’s POVThe cold of the deep cave was a familiar friend — it did not ask for warmth, it did not pretend to care, it simply was: clean and sharp and true. I stood in the center of the cavern, my breath making short, white clouds in the air, and before me the rogues shuffled, a mass of matted fur and hungry eyes. They were beasts, and they were perfect.“Look at you,” I said, my voice echoing off the wet stone. “Cast out, beaten, called ‘lesser’ by those who chain themselves with feeling. They gave you this name to make you small, but I am here to tell you it is your glory.”A big rogue with a scar over his milky eye snarled. “We are strong — we live free.”“You live in ditches,” I corrected, my tone slicing through his pride. “You scavenge, you run — that is not strength, that is survival. I will give you more: I will give you purpose, and I will give you a world where the strong are not burdened by the weak.”I walked along their ragged line. “You fight for meat, for territory —

Aria's POVI found Kai in the strategy room, bent over a map with the elders. The air was thick with tension and pipe smoke.“The eastern tree line is still too close,” Elder Bray argued, jabbing a thick finger at the parchment. “They could use it for cover for archers.”“We have cleared it back by fifty paces,” Kai said, his voice calm but firm. “Any closer and we lose our own sight lines. We must trust the watchers in the towers.”“Trust is not a strategy,” Bray grumbled.“No,” I said, stepping into the circle of lamplight. They all looked up. “But knowledge is. Malrick will not use archers.”Bray’s bushy eyebrows rose. “And how do you know this, girl?”The “girl” was a deliberate needle. I felt Kai’s flare of irritation through our bond—a hot spark. I sent back a pulse of cool calm before I spoke. “Because archers are a tool for a long game, for a siege. He wants a spectacle. He wants to get in close. He wants to see the whites of our eyes when he tries to break us. His tools will