Alle Kapitel von Alpha：No Second Chance: Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 29

Angel's povBenjamin hadn't tried anything. That was enough for me to agree to take on the assignment.He walked me through the rest of the villa — the office layout, the supply rooms, the schedule for Lily's sessions broken down by day. He delivered all of it in the flat tone of someone who had given the same briefing too many times to find it interesting anymore. I listened and took mental notes and didn't ask for anything to be repeated.When we finished he took out his phone near the corridor junction and turned slightly away."You won't believe who's working under me now," he said into the phone. "Bastien's mate. Yes — that Bastien. The one who threw me out like I was nothing." He laughed. "Funny how that works. He thought he finished me. Now his mate is my subordinate." Another laugh. "Karma, right?"I looked at the wall and waited.He hung up when he noticed me watching and didn't comment on it. We headed toward the elevator for the conference room on the fifth floor. He presse

Angel's PovGraham didn't move for a long moment after Bastien left. The color had gone out of his face completely and he stood there with his arrogance gone and nothing underneath it. Bastien hadn't looked at me once. He had simply said what he said and walked out, and the room had felt it the way rooms felt Alpha authority — immediately, in the chest, below thought.One by one people found reasons to leave. Graham straightened his jacket with hands that weren't steady and laughed at nothing and walked out faster than was dignified. The others followed.I let out a breath I hadn't noticed I was holding.Outside I opened the car door for Benjamin. He looked at me over the roof."You handled that well in there," he said. "Graham was out of line and you didn't make a scene.""I need the money," I said. "That's all."He got in. I closed the door and went around to the passenger side."You and Bastien," he said, once we were moving. "What is that?""We're divorced."He was quiet for a mom

Kian's povBastien agreed to the match without hesitation, which surprised me less than the crowd's reaction to Angel issuing the challenge.The wolves around us had spent the last hour forming a picture of her — the Omega hire, the discarded mate, the woman Lilian had described as trading on male goodwill and fabricated credentials. They had filed her accordingly. Watching her step into the clearing and call out a Mystic Pack Alpha by name quietly dismantled that filing, and they didn't quite know what to do with the dismantling.Lily was practically vibrating beside me. I put a hand on her shoulder to keep her in one place.Angel shifted first.Her wolf was a deep grey, almost blue in the forest light, leaner than I remembered from the training yard but moving with the same quality — nothing wasted, nothing performed. She didn't charge. She circled, wide and unhurried, reading the ground, reading him, building a picture before she committed to anything.Bastien's wolf was larger. He

Bastien's povEight years. Eight years of meals together, of pack events, of mornings in the same house, and I had not known what she was capable of in a shifting match.I had watched her move through that clearing with the controlled precision of someone who had been trained at a level I hadn't accounted for, and the knowledge of it sat uncomfortably in my chest the whole drive back from the grounds.Not because she had beaten me — I had felt the match was genuinely even by the end, not the walkover it had looked like from outside — but because I had not known.Two months had passed since that day and I had not reached out to her once.I had taken a minor injury during a northern border patrol three days ago — nothing serious, a gash along my forearm from a fence line that had given way. I had cleaned it myself and not thought much about it.But sitting in the car with Adam on the way back from the territory meeting, my arm catching the light at the wrong angle, I thought about the w

Bastien's povLilian came the morning after Finn's allergy episode with an apology already shaped and ready.She was sorry about the chocolate. She hadn't known how serious his allergy was, hadn't understood the extent of it, would never have given him so much if she had. Her voice was soft and her eyes were appropriately troubled and she stood in the entrance of my study with her hands folded in a way that looked like contrition."Let me make it up to him," she said. "A camping trip. Fresh air, time together. It would help him forget the scare.""No," I said.She blinked. Then rearranged. "Then let me visit. Even for an afternoon. I'll cancel whatever I have — he shouldn't think I've disappeared." She held my gaze. "Please, Bastien."Something in the persistence of it moved me where the apology hadn't. I nodded.She smiled immediately.Finn heard her come in and ran from his room before she had cleared the entrance hall. He threw his arms around her waist and she crouched and laughed