Semua Bab Killed and Reborn: My Alpha’s Obsession : Bab 11 - Bab 20

I didn’t sleep much that night.Every time I closed my eyes, the forest came back.The taste of dirt and blood. The sound of my own scream shearing off. The way the ground had felt swallowing my warmth.“Tomorrow night, under the moon.”Lena’s voice threaded through those images like silk around a noose.They thought they were replaying the same scene.Dress me up. Walk me out. Perform their righteous little ritual for the pack and the witch and anyone else watching.Only this time, I’d asked for a divorce first. I stood up in front of the elders. I’d put a knife in the shape of a contract clause under my bed.Different steps.Same destination.The moon didn’t care about choreography.Just blood.By the time the first thin light of dawn crept in around the curtains, my mind felt like a nest of thorns.Running now wasn’t an option. I’d thought through that half a dozen times, pacing the width of my room until my thighs burned.If I tried to bolt—down to the village, into human territor

The forest looked exactly the same.That was the first betrayal.Same twisted silhouettes of trees leaning in over the path like they wanted to listen to our footsteps. Same tangle of roots waiting just under the thin layer of fallen leaves. Same cold, damp smell of earth that had drunk too much blood and never quite recovered.If I hadn’t woken up choking in my own bed two years younger, I could have believed no time had passed at all.Lucian and I stepped out of the carriage and into the thinning light of twilight. Lanterns bobbed ahead where the elder and junior priestess waited, their small circle of warmth a feeble island in the sea of gathering dark.I knew this place.My bones knew it.The muscles in my legs clenched as if expecting to be dragged.For a heartbeat, I saw another version of myself superimposed on this one—dressed in white instead of red, hair braided with flowers instead of pinned back, eyes bright with naive hope instead of sharp with wary calculation.That girl

The world telescoped.The incense smoke. The terrified faces. The snarling rogues. The elder’s whispered prayers.All of it blurred around the edges.The only thing in sharp focus was Lucian.His chest heaved, and every muscle in his body drew taut as a bowstring. The light caught on the faint sheen of sweat on his throat; his shirt was torn at one shoulder where claws—rogue or his own, I couldn’t tell—had raked through fabric and skin.His eyes were wrong.The gold I’d come to recognize as his had been devoured by something darker—black flooding in from the edges, leaving a too‑bright ring in the center like a dying sun.Shadows crawled under his skin, tracing the thick line of the curse mark beneath his shirt. His lip curled, teeth lengthening, the edges of his canines glinting too sharp to be fully human.The air around him vibrated with a low growl that seemed to come from everywhere at once.My blood dripped onto the stones between us.I watched a droplet fall in slow motion—fat,

By mid‑morning, the whole manor had a new favorite story.“The Luna calmed the Alpha.”“She put her hands on his face when the curse took him, and he stopped.”“They said she stood there with blood on her arm and still told Victor Hale off in front of everyone.”I heard it in fragments—servants gossiping too loud in side corridors, warriors at the pump murmuring between sips, even an elder’s apprentice whispering breathlessly to another: *“She’s not just some decorative human. Did you see the light?”*If I let it, the talk would have gone to my head.If I let it, the fear would have too.Some looked at me with awe.Some with suspicion, eyes narrowed as if they were counting how many witches they’d have to burn to get rid of me.A few looked at me with something vicious and sharp, whispering “ungrateful” under their breath like a curse.I ignored them all.Mostly.When I stepped into the main hall to fetch tea for myself rather than beckon a servant, conversation dipped for a moment, t

*Aria*The dream clung to me like cobwebs.A woman in a broken cabin, eyes like coal. A border of clawed trees. A man at the edge of our land, dark‑haired and amused, as if he’d been waiting there for years.I woke with my heart already pounding, lungs dragging in air like I’d been running.For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.Not the old, cramped guest room my parents had shoved me into after the first time I died.Not the moonlit shrine, with its stone wolves and blood on the altar.Lucian’s room flashed across my mind instead—claw marks in the walls, broken furniture, his body half‑shifted and shaking under my hand.My ceiling met my gaze a heartbeat later: the faint crack like a crooked line, the pale light of morning seeping around the curtains.Blackmoon Manor.My room.Alive.My hand flew to my chest, palm flat against my nightgown, as if I needed to confirm it.I was breathing.I was here.And somewhere down the hall, the cursed Alpha of this pack was probably awake, t