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Home / Werewolf / The Alpha's Ruined Bride / Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

All Chapters of The Alpha's Ruined Bride: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

93 Chapters

81

Beta Quinn I paced around my room for twenty minutes before I admitted to myself that I wasn't going to be able to sit with this. The thing running through my head wasn't complicated, even if the situation around it was. Fiona was in the dungeon, kessa had put her there and reason, the real reason underneath the official one, underneath the filed report and the cited incident and the formal language of it all had my name somewhere in the middle of it. I had made the choice, not Fiona. I was the one who had walked away from what Kessa and I had been. I was the one who had turned toward someone else, who had made a decision that had cost Kessa something she had never fully shown on her face but that I knew had cost her because I had known her long enough to read the things she didn't say. Fiona hadn't done that. Fiona had simply been there. If there was a score to settle, it was with me. And Kessa knew that. She had always known that. Which meant putting Fiona in that dungeon wasn't

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Ronan "I swear I don't know who the boss is. I was only told to stay at the border with them, then someone would come and do the rest of the work." The man's voice broke around the words, the crying making them uneven, his body struggling to produce coherent sound while the iron was pressed further into his side. His screams filled the dungeon the kind that would bounced off stone walls and come back at you from every direction. The other inmates had pressed themselves to the far ends of their cells, as far from the noise as the space allowed. I looked at him, first lead and he was giving me nothing with any use in it, just the bottom of a chain, someone who had been told where to stand and when, with no visibility above his own instruction. Either he genuinely didn't know who had sent him, or he had been given exactly enough information to be useful and no more, which was a deliberate structural choice by whoever was running this. Both possibilities were frustrating in different

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Kessa"Dylan was the one that ordered the attack on the two guards."Alpha Ronan said it the way he said things that had weight, without buildup, without softening it into something more digestible. Just the words, placed directly in front of me.I stared at his mouth for a moment as the information settled. Not because I was struggling to understand it, I understood it immediately. I was just sitting with the particular quality of being right about something and finding no satisfaction in it.I knew that Dylan was up to something. I had known it the way you knew things that you couldn't yet prove, in the body, in the specific unease that came when someone you shared blood with was moving in the dark. I had told Beta Quinn. I had ordered the surveillance. I had put the pieces in motion.And still, I looked at Beta Quinn across the room. He caught my eyes and had the sense to look exactly as responsible for this as I thought he was."I knew that he was up to something," I said. my voi

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Kessa Somehow, I found myself walking to the dungeon at midnight. I couldn't sleep, couldn't lie in the dark and let my thoughts settle into anything restful, they kept moving, kept circling back to the same points. Dylan, the attack, Ronan sleeping in the guest room down the corridor, the heirloom still missing and my father sitting awake by his window with his tight jaw and his choices written all over him. I wrapped my robe tighter and walked. The air changed as I descended, cooler, heavier, carrying the particular smell of stone and confinement that dungeons never fully lost no matter how long they sat empty. My feet knew the way, I had given the order, I knew exactly which cell. "Good morning, Alpha Kessa." The guard at the gate bowed. I nodded and kept walking. The corridor was dim, lit by the low wall fixtures that stayed on through the night. I moved through it quietly, the sound of my own footsteps against stone the only thing accompanying me, until I found the cell and

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RonanI was up before the sun properly decided what it was doing.The guest room had been comfortable enough, but I hadn't slept deeply. There was too much running underneath the surface, Dylan locked up far away Naledi confined back in Vaelthorn, the investigation still open at its edges. And Kessa somewhere in this building, carrying everything she had been carrying before I arrived and everything I had added to it by showing up with news that implicated her brother.I dressed early, moved through the pack house quietly, and collected Dylan from his cell with Beta Sage and two guards.He looked like a man who had spent the night deciding which version of himself to present and hadn't landed on one. His jaw was set, his posture constructed into something unbothered, but his eyes moved too quickly. The eyes of someone calculating rather than someone confident.I told myself I wasn't looking for her as we came through the main corridor toward the entrance.But I registered the absence

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Kessa "Are you sure you are okay?" Mother's voice was soft, careful, the kind of careful that told me she had been holding the question since last night and had finally decided she couldn't hold it any longer. I stared at my reflection in the mirror as her hands moved the comb through my hair, and felt the question settle in my chest before I answered it. "I don't know, mother." The admission came out quietly, with the particular weight of something sitting on your shoulders all night. "I feel bad about it. Sending my own brother to be punished by another Alpha." I breathed out slowly, and with the breath went something. "Dylan deserved this. He did it knowing the consequences. So I don't know why I'm even feeling bad." Mother set the comb down. She sat down beside me. "Look, Kessa." She said my name the way she had started saying it recently, like it belonged to her, like she had the right to it, and was still learning to use that right without apology. "You are my daughter. N

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Kessa.I stared at the woman who had been imprisoned for far too long, a year and a half. It was like an eternity, though I had no way of knowing how she looked before all of this."I’m sorry you had to go through all of this, but can you tell me again?" I asked softly, the weight of her pain evident in my voice.Her eyes were brimming with tears, and I could see them clearly, pooling at the corners. I felt a sharp pang of pity for her. Just imagining spending even a single day in a cell for a crime you didn’t commit, a crime with a truth so glaring, was enough to break anyone.The middle aged woman swallowed hard, her gaze locking with mine before she exhaled shakily. "My husband had worked as a pack guard for years. Everyone knew it. But then there was an insider attack. My husband, he was a victim. He was shot." She paused, swallowing back a sob.I moved closer to her, standing by her side and gently patting her back. "Get me chilled water," I mouthed to Beta Quinn.He nodded and l

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Ronan."Hope I’m not distracting you?" I asked Kessa, my fingers brushing a stray strand of hair from her face.She looked beautiful, no doubt about it. But there was something about the way her eyes shimmered in the light, something I couldn't ignore. Every time I looked at her, there was a trace of Aurora in her. It gnawed at me, making it hard to move forward. It felt like I hadn't really let go, even though I’d told myself I had. I kept on reminding myself I had moved on, yet her face lingered in my thoughts."No, I needed the rest," Kessa breathed out, her eyes still closed, as if she were trying to find solace in the silence.I leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, feeling the warmth radiating from her body. She was tense, more than usual. The weight of whatever was pressing on her was clear, especially when she had pulled me into that hug earlier, as if she might never get the chance to do it again."Do you want to talk about it?" I asked, my voice low and calm.I w

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Naledi.I knew Ronan had left the house. I knew exactly where he had gone. How? Because I had planted a tracker on his phone, and there was no way he would ever figure it out.I stared at the food the guard had brought me, the bland meal sitting untouched in front of me. It had been four days since I'd been confined to this room, isolated, with only a sliver of sunlight to remind me of the outside world. Food and my phone were the only things I had access to, but that was a poor decision on Ronan's part. Maybe he didn't know I still had my phone, or maybe he did and just didn't care to address it."Are you sure you can't open the door for a few seconds?" I pressed send, smiling at the thought of how easily I could get under Beta Sage's skin.I had always known myself to be manipulative, it was the only way I knew how to get what I wanted. And it always worked."I can't. The last time I fell into your words, I faced a huge problem. So no." Beta Sage's reply came quickly, but it didn't

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KessaI had no idea what I was thinking when I agreed to follow Ronan. I had so much to do, so much that needed urgent attention. It felt like everything was piling up. Although it hadn’t reached my ears yet, I knew the council members were already talking.Those men would judge me, criticize me, and insult me. I could already hear their voices in my head, echoing the harsh words I had been dreading. But I shouldn’t be worried, right? I was used to it, used to everything they threw my way."My angel," Mother’s voice broke through my thoughts. "I see that Alpha Ronan has taken a liking to you." Her words were soft, but they stung in a way I wasn’t expecting.I let out a low groan. I was still in my room, packing. Even though Ronan had said it would be two days, I had already gone overboard, preparing more than necessary."He seems like a good man, but the stories." she trailed off, her voice filled with concern.Zipping up the luggage, I dropped it onto the floor with a soft thud. "Mot

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