Semua Bab The Alpha's Ruined Bride: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Kessa.The week ran out so fast. It was my first day at the pack council meeting, and of course, Mia was right there with me. She had always been supporting me, and while she was here, there was nothing to stop me."Good morning everyone." I greeted.None of them responded. Only Mr. Lucas acknowledged me with a brief nod, and I understood exactly why the rest of them were doing it. I was a lady, and I had just overthrown their Alpha. Funny how fragile men became the moment a woman took up space they had decided belonged to them."Well, since we are all on the same page, I will move over to the business of the day." I set my folder down on the table and remained standing, because I had learned early that a person who stood while everyone else sat controlled the energy of the room."From all that we know, I am aware that you feel a certain kind of hatred toward me as your Alpha," I said, letting my gaze move across every face at the table slowly. "And it is sad, genuinely. But I want yo

Third POV.Everything had been going as planned.But Kessa becoming the Alpha was not part of the plan, and it was moving too fast. Far too fast for comfort.The room was dim, the kind of dim that was deliberate, curtains drawn against the afternoon light, a single lamp burning low in the corner, casting long shadows across the faces of the people gathered there. There were not many of them. There never were. That was the point. The fewer the people who knew the shape of a thing, the fewer the people who could unravel it."Shouldn't you stop her?" Someone said from the back of the crowd.The question landed in the silence and sat there, unanswered for a beat longer than was comfortable.The figure at the front of the room did not turn around immediately. They stood with their back to the rest of them, facing the covered window, one hand resting flat against the wall beside it. When they finally turned, their face was composed in the particular way of someone who had spent years practi

Kessa."Let me know when you trust me enough to tell me the truth." Alpha Ronan said, and I smiled.I wished it was going to be as simple as it seemed, to believe in him and let him know every single thing. To open that door fully and trust that what was on the other side of it wasn't going to be used against me.But I had learned, the hard way and more than once, that trust was not something you extended because a person felt safe. It was something you extended because they had proven they were.Ronan had not proven that yet.And yet here I was, sitting across from him in a restaurant I hadn't expected to enjoy, having a conversation I hadn't expected to feel normal, and finding it increasingly difficult to remember all the very reasonable reasons I had for keeping my walls exactly where they were.The food arrived, and the conversation settled into something quieter. We ate mostly in silence, but it wasn't the uncomfortable kind, it was the kind that existed between two people who h

KessaI was heartbroken, but it wasn't enough to let me abandon the responsibility I had sworn to take over. Today, I decided to take the drastic step that I didn't really know I would ever do, to see my father.We sat opposite each other, eyes staring into one another, and none of us said anything. We let our eyes and our breath do the talking. It literally went on for minutes, not even broken when Dylan walked into the room without knowing what he was walking into.Had I been the one that did something as stupid as that, father would have scolded me, then made sure I was punished for it. The double standard of how everything worked in this house had always been funny to me.But I believed I had already cracked it now that I was in that seat myself."As much as I would have loved to win the staring contest with you, I have a lot to do." I rubbed my fingers together against my knee, steadying myself.I licked the side of my lips. Unlike every other day, I truly didn't come to attack h

KessaThe most annoying thing has always been finding out that you were being lied to, and there was nothing you could actually do about it. That specific kind of helplessness, knowing the ground beneath you is hollow without being able to see where the hollow ends, was a particular kind of torture.Thinking through it, it was good to know I was being lied to. At least I knew. At least I wasn't still walking around in the comfortable dark. But knowing and having someone to confront about it were two entirely different things, and right now I had neither. Everyone somehow wanted to cover their tracks and make sure the truth never revealed itself. Every door I pushed open led to another closed one."I said, do you want to postpone the pack meeting today?"Beta Quinn's voice pulled me back into the room.I had totally forgotten he was still in the office with me while we narrowed down the list of things that needed to be done for the pack. The women wrongly imprisoned after the last pack