All Chapters of THE ALPHA’S GHOST: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

ETHAN’S POVThe yard hit me like a physical blow before I even reached the door. Wolves ran from the packhouse in a tide of panic, dragging wounded bodies, carrying each other on shoulders, slipping in smoke and water and fear. I ran because running felt like the only honest thing to do. Every step was the same. My boots slapped wood and concrete. My lungs filled with smoke. My mind narrowed to one line and that line was Kaye. I pushed through the crowd of wolves and past a cluster of enforcers trying to form a shield. Their faces were pale, their hands shaky, and even the hardest among them looked like boys who had been taught to hide fear and could not anymore. The closer I got, the louder the sound of Carly’s body cracking became. It sounded wrong in a way that had nothing to do with bone and everything to do with loss.When I reached the medical wing the sight took the air from my lungs. The room was chaotic. Beds were overturned like broken boats. Smoke curled like a living thi

Ethan’s POVThe moment the last word left Carly’s mouth, something inside me snapped. I surged toward her, reaching for my sister with a hope so desperate it felt thin and foolish. I wanted to believe that if I touched her, if I held her, if I called her name the way I had when she was small and rolled in mud and laughed until she hiccupped, I could pull her back.But the girl on the bed was not Carly.Her head tilted in a strange, almost curious angle as I approached. Her silver eyes did not flicker with recognition. They did not soften with memory. They stared straight through me as though my body were only a shape in her way.“Carly,” I said softly. “It is me. I am here. I will get you out. I promise.”She moved before the last word left my mouth.She launched herself off the bed with a burst of speed so sharp it blurred my vision. Her body struck mine with the force of a falling tree. We hit the floor hard, the tile cracking beneath my shoulders. Her weight held me down, but it w

Ethan’s POVThe packhouse had become a place of broken rules and louder panic. I had seen chaos before. I had led wolves through storms, through floods, through raids that left men and women hollowed and furious. I gave orders the way my father had taught me, clipped and clear so that confusion could not grow between syllables. Lock down every sector. Seal the medical wing. Push the healthy to the eastern rooms.Move the wounded to the central hall and secure it. My voice traveled faster than feet for a moment and then the sound of it was swallowed by the greater noise of wolves screaming.The problem was not only that the pathogen moved through blood or touch. It moved through the loudness of fear, through the way one wolf seeing another go savage sent a ripple through whole rooms until the hinge of control snapped in too many heads at once. We tried to quarantine. We tried the old rules that had saved us in other wars. We dragged quilts and beds and tables across doorways. We lock

ETHAN'S POVMy wolf answered before I made the choice to follow. He howled, a raw, animal sound that I had only ever let loose in the deepest, loneliest parts of my grief. It tore out of me and I think every wolf inside our borders heard it. It went up and over the ridge, a single long note that carried fear, anger, and a grief so pure it felt like a blade. I heard it change the air itself. I did not pause to think. The only thing that mattered was the shape I felt missing from the world where the mate bond used to be.Theo was performing CPR like a man who knew how to bargain with death. He pressed on Kaye’s sternum with steady, clinical beats that shook the thin bed frame. Each compression felt like a small plea. The rhythm was too loud in the room. I watched his jaw work and his shoulders push and I realized I had been frozen in the doorway because the sight of him fighting for her like this made me both furious and hollow.For a breath I forgot that Theo had been my ally in a way

ETHAN'S POVThey moved like a single machine.At first I thought it was panic. Wolves moving in a herd, driven by fear and hunger. Then one of them leapt across the yard and landed with the precision of a trained fighter, his feet finding ground without slipping, his hands moving to needles clipped to his belt. He did not bite. He did not tear. He trapped a man who had been trying to help a child and with movements too clean for chaos he jabbed the syringe into the captive’s neck. The man went still, eyes wide, and the syringe hissed faintly as fluid entered his bloodstream.That was when the pattern became clear.They were not killing us to destroy. They were infecting us to remake us. The syringes were not weapons to spill blood. They were tools to spread the thing Jon Tulip had made. The transformed wolves moved through the yard like soldiers on a drill field. They worked in squads. They flanked and they covered and they moved wounded wolves into their line like rescuing injured