All Chapters of THE ALPHA’S GHOST: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

KAYE'S POVThe bond screamed.It was not pain the way a wound hurts. It was an invasion. It was pressure and cold flooding a place that had always been warm and shared. One second Ethan was there in the familiar steady way he always was, a presence like stone and heat and control. The next second something tore through him and the bond twisted until it felt like my chest had been split open.The pathogen hit him like a wave.I felt it the instant Lucas injected him. It rushed into Ethan’s system with a violence that made my knees buckle. His wolf surged to meet it, furious and strong, but the dose was wrong. Too much. Too fast. It slammed into him like poison poured straight into his veins. I tasted metal and panic and something darker that did not belong to Ethan at all.“No,” I whispered, already running.I did not remember deciding to move. My body simply went. The courtyard blurred as I pushed forward, breath tearing from my lungs. Wolves collided around me, bodies slamming into b

KAYE'S POVThe pressure changed.One moment the fight was centered inside Ethan, the pathogen wrapped tight around his heart and his wolf, clawing for control. The next moment it noticed me fully. Not just my hands. Not just the bond. Me.Its focus snapped onto my body like a hook.I felt it turn, a sudden greedy shift, and then it lunged.The pathogen surged out of Ethan in a violent rush, pouring toward me through the bond and through my hands pressed to his chest. It felt like ice water flooding my veins, like something alive forcing its way into my bloodstream. My breath hitched hard and my vision fractured into white sparks.This was what it wanted.This was why it had waited.For a split second, terror flooded me. I felt it probing my cells, searching for a place to settle, to root, to claim. I felt its hunger, its certainty that my body was the perfect vessel. That I had been built for this.Then something unexpected happened.My body did not reject it.My body accepted it.The

KAYE'S POVThe dark did not feel empty this time.It felt thin, like a veil stretched too tight, trembling under the weight of everything pressing on it from both sides. I was not falling, and I was not floating. I existed in a narrow place where breath did not matter. My body felt distant, like something I had worn once and then set aside.I knew I was dying again.Not in the dramatic way stories describe, with rushing light and peace. This was quieter. My body was burning through whatever reserves it had left, tearing itself apart to keep me present for even a few more seconds. Then she was there.Subject Zero stepped out of the dim space like she had been waiting just beyond it. She looked exactly like me again, but older in a way that had nothing to do with years. Her eyes carried weight. Her presence pressed against the air around us, steady and unafraid.“You are running out of time,” she said.Her voice was calm, not cruel. It was the voice of someone stating a fact that could

CHAPTER 57Kaye’s POVThe bond did not settle the way I thought it would.I expected warmth and quiet and maybe relief. I expected the edges of the world to soften now that my heart was beating again and my body had stopped burning itself apart. Instead, the bond opened wider, like a door that refused to close, and everything poured through.Ethan’s memories crashed into me without warning.I saw fire first. Not the way it looked from the outside, but the way it felt from inside his chest. The sound of his mother screaming his name while the roof gave way above her. I felt his legs freeze when he realized he could not reach them in time. I felt the exact moment his father pushed him back, ordered him to run, and stayed behind.The guilt hit harder than the flames.It settled into him and never left.I saw his sister, Carly, younger and shaking, her scream tearing free when she realized their parents were not coming out. I felt Ethan wrap his arms around her with hands that would not s

KAYE'S POVThey carried Vanessa into the medical wing like she might shatter if anyone moved too fast.I stayed close, my hands hovering uselessly as the backup doctor and two healers worked around her with urgent precision. Her body was thin to the point of fragility, bones sharp beneath skin that looked stretched and bruised. Scars covered her arms, her neck, her collarbone. They were not random. They were clean. Measured. Surgical.My stomach twisted.These were not the marks of a rogue attack or careless torture. They were the marks of someone who knew anatomy. Someone who cut with purpose.“She is alive,” the doctor said finally, voice tight. “But barely. Her wolf is suppressed almost completely. I have never seen suppression this severe without death following shortly after.”I felt a chill slide down my spine.Wolf suppression was not just physical. It was spiritual. To damage a wolf this deeply meant stripping away instinct, identity, and the core of who a person was. It was n