บททั้งหมดของ The Alpha’s Dead Luna: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

ALESSANDRO I have not slept in days. The clock in my study has ticked through two full nights since Julian took her, and every single sound feels like a hammer against my skull. I was loosing my damn mind. Because I am one word away from burning this entire place down.“She’s not at the northern border,” one of my men had said earlier, his voice trembling. “We tracked them as far as the old mill but then the trail disappeared.”I stood behind my desk, both hands pressed against the polished wood, staring at the map spread before me. “She can’t just vanish!” I roared.The man flinched.“She’s pregnant!” I slammed my fist down so hard the ink bottle toppled over. “You are telling me a seven-month pregnant woman disappeared under your watch?”“We are still searching...”I moved before I could think.My hand closed around his collar and I dragged him across the desk.“You are still breathing,” I said quietly, my face inches from his. “That is the only reason you are still speaking.”H

JOSELYN I have never liked the smell of blood, but I've been involved in a lot of killings. I sat in the back seat of my car, the windows tinted dark enough to swallow my reflection. The warehouse ahead of me was abandoned with cracked walls, broken glass, rusted gates hanging like crooked teeth.I adjusted my coat and stepped out before my driver could open the door. The night air was sharp, biting against my skin. Two men were already waiting inside.“You’re late,” one of them said casually.I smiled thinly. “You fucking right to complain, I pay you so you shut the fuck up.”He smirked.“Is it done?” I asked.The taller one nodded. “The guard won’t be leading any searches anymore.”“How clean?”“Clean enough. The guy is dead, we killed all the witnesses as a bonus.”I folded my arms, hiding the tremor in my fingers.“And his wolf?” I asked quietly.The second man exchanged a glance with the first. “We did what you asked.”Meaning it was handled.Alessandro can’t investigate what

ALESSANDRO The ground shook beneath the pounding of hundreds of hooves, the thunder of them rolling across the hot desert toward the south . Dust rose in thick clouds, stinging my eyes and coating my tongue. Almost as one, the cavalcade curved and slowed, then came to a rolling halt.“The Rio.”I turned to my men, my blue eyes blazing. “We can’t stop now, we’ve lost too much time as it is.”My second in command and I rode at the front of the fifty-man posse, flanked by my beta. We made an imposing, fearsome sight. We were all dressed the same in dusty leather chaps, worn boots, sweat-soaked cotton shirts, bandannas knotted tight at our throats, battered Stetsons pulled low. Every one of us carried hardware, and plenty of it. Rifles rested in scabbards. Six-shooters were strapped to our thighs. My beta wore a bowie knife at his hip, and Storm carried one as well.But it wasn’t just our numbers or the sheer amount of firepower that made us frightening. It was the aura around us, the po

JULIAN I had known we would be followed. I had been certain of it. It wasn’t logic, it was sheer, hardened instinct.And I had been right.I crouched on a rock ledge above the narrow trail that wound toward the rim of the plateau. The path was treacherous even in daylight—slow, rough, and easy enough to break a horse’s leg. At night it was worse. Yet the rogues moved fast, surely, quietly. Only their mounts betrayed them with the scrape of hooves against stone.There were four of them.It was no coincidence that they had chosen this trail.I hated wasting four bullets. But I didn’t have much choice.I fired. Rapidly.The first two shots took the leaders. The third winged the man behind them. The fourth missed the last rider entirely.One of the leaders toppled from his saddle and pitched off the hillside into the gorge below the same gorge Emily had rolled into earlier. He was probably already dead, if not dying. The second leader fell too, but he rolled clear and returned my fire. T

JULIAN I had meant to wake before dawn.I hadn’t.When I stepped out of the cave and into the hard blaze of morning sunlight, I paused, squinting against the glare, calculating the hour by the angle of the sun. It would be close to nine. We had lost three, maybe four hours.I wasn’t pleased.Every lost minute was a gift to the law.I scrambled carefully down the rock slope below the cave, boots finding holds out of long habit. At the bottom, I leapt from a boulder onto a narrow deer trail and followed it at a swift clip until it ended at the edge of a cliff. There I stopped and raised my field glasses.I scanned south first. Nothing. No movement. Just the tortured folds of arid mountain country, rock and scrub twisted beneath a merciless sky. I turned east. The same, barren ridges and dry gullies, no sign of rogues.Then I swung west, toward the town. Through the lenses, the town lay quiet and sleepy, looking no different than it had the day before. No dust rising. No unusual stir. T