All Chapters of ALPHA MARRIED A STRIPPER : Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

'AT LUNA MIRELLE'S PLACE' Rhydian had always believed that the best plans were the ones that looked like accidents. The cottage sat at the northern edge of Thornwell territory, tucked back from the tree line like something that had been trying to disappear for years and was mostly succeeding. Luna Mirelle's retirement, the pack called it. A dignified withdrawal. A choice. It had never been a choice. Rhydian stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the dark tree line, listening to his sister move around behind him with the particular unhurried energy she got when things were going well. The cottage smelled like lavender and old grief and the specific kind of loneliness that settled into walls when someone had been alone inside them for too long. He'd always found it depressing. Saskia found it useful. "She's not going to tell him anything useful," Saskia said from across the room. Her voice was light, almost bored. "She barely knows anything." "That's no

The cottage door came off its hinges.Not intentionally. Kadence hit it at full stride with his shoulder and the old wood simply gave way, the frame splintering outward like it had been waiting years for an excuse. He was through it before the pieces finished falling, his wolf fully at the surface, eyes blazing gold, every sense he had reaching ahead of him into the room.Lavender. Old wood. The dying warmth of a low fire.And his mother, sitting in the armchair by the fireplace with her hands folded in her lap, watching him the way she'd watched him since he was small. Like she already knew what he was going to do before he did it and had quietly made peace with it.Alive. Unharmed.Alone.Kadence stood in the wreckage of the doorframe and felt the rage in him crest and break against nothing, because there was nothing to break against. No Rhydian. No Saskia. Just the cottage and the fire and his mother's careful eyes and the particular silence of a room that had recently held somethi

Three days passed the way days did when you were trying not to think about something. Slowly and then all at once.Monday she took the long way to campus without deciding to, adding twelve minutes to a walk she'd done the same way for two years. She noticed halfway there and kept going anyway, telling herself it was the weather, the grey October morning that made the shorter route feel exposed in a way she couldn't explain.Tuesday she sat with her back to the wall at the coffee shop near the college, the small table in the far corner that nobody ever took because the lighting was bad and the wifi signal barely reached. She'd never sat there before. She opened her textbook and studied for two hours and didn't look up at the door more than four or five times and told herself that was fine.Wednesday she checked the security app before bed. Found nothing. Checked it again at two in the morning when she woke up for no reason and lay there in the dark with the warmth in her chest doing it