All Chapters of The Alpha's Betrayal: Pregnant And Accused: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Diana's POVNate found me in the east corridor after Val's briefing.He arrived at Black Gold on day four of the displacement. Val had sent three Blue Moon wolves for the interim coordination work, and Nate was one of them.Nate had been running the Blue Moon logistics side of the rebuild from the east room. He was quiet, efficient, never in the way. Always exactly where he was needed.I'd known Nate for six years.He was tall, had dark, long hair that needed cutting. He was calm; the kind of calmness in his eyes was like that of someone who had decided a long time ago that most things weren't worth panicking for.I'd noticed all of that years ago and stopped noticing it the way you stopped noticing anything that had always just been there.We fell into step the way we always did. Easy, with no effort."Good briefing?" he said."Fine," I said. "Long.""Val talks a lot when he's worried.""Val talks exactly the right amount," I said.Nate smiled the easy, friendly one he gave everyone.

Alisha's POVThat Morning at BlackGold pack, I found Levi in the east corridor twenty minutes after the yard cleared.He was with Morrison speaking quietly the way they did when something needed processing between elders before anyone else heard it. They both looked up when I came around the corner.I told Levi about the shield. Just the facts. I was direct. Val pushing me down. Alexander in my arms. The shield rising not around me but around Alexander. Covering him fast like it knew exactly where it needed to go before I did.Levi went very still. Morrison looked at him.Levi took a deep breath and fixed his gaze at me."Around the child," he said. Making sure he had it exactly right."Around Alexander," I said. "Not me. Him."Levi was quiet for a long moment."The bond runs both ways," he said. "The twins stabilise and amplify the power of people around them. But when one of them is directly threatened, the connection reverses.Also, the people bonded to them instinctively pushes t

Joshua's POVThree days before Blue Moon's departure, I was still thinking about my conversations with Cole.Though not in a bad way. Just the way things sat when they'd needed to happen for a long time and had finally happened.I had a twenty-minute discussion with Cole in the far corridor. Nothing was fully fixed, but we had made a start. That was more than we'd had before.I needed fresh air and strolled. In three days, the Blue Moon pack would go home. Val, Diana, Nathan, Sophie, Alisha, and the twins.I let myself sit with that for a second. Alisha was going back to Blue Moon. Back to her room there, back to the territory that had kept her safe when mine couldn't, back to Diana and Lydia and the life she'd built during the months away.One more chapter of that life before the permanent one started. I knew it was right. But didn't make the knowing feel lighter.I left the packhouse without deciding where I was going and ended up at the east yard. The quiet stretch of open ground b

Alisha's POVI didn't sleep the night of the proposal. Not from worry or from doubt. Just from the particular aliveness of someone who had received something so significant, their body hadn't caught up yet.I lay in my Blue Moon room with the ring on my finger and the mate bond humming at a frequency I'd never felt before. It was deeper, more settled, like something that had been slightly off-key for months had finally found its note.Joshua had driven back to Black Gold that evening. We'd sat in the Blue Moon garden until the stars came out, not talking much, just present, and then he'd kissed me at the packhouse door the way he kissed me now, like he wasn't going anywhere, even when he was, and he'd driven home.I'd lain in my room and understood that I was leaving.Not that night, not the next day. But soon. Properly and permanently.The decision wasn't difficult. That was the thing I hadn't expected. After the banishment, the months of rebuilding, the life I'd built here, I'd exp

Alisha's POVI went to the great hall before sunrise.It was a five-minute walk from the packhouse across the yard. The path to the pack had worn smooth over decades of use.The cold hit properly once I was out of the trees. Early winter in Black Gold smelled like pine and frost and something that had no name but meant *home.*The hall was unlocked. It always was. I stood in the doorway and looked at the space. Same floors. The same high windows catch the first pale light. Same walls that had held every Alpha ceremony this pack had seen for three generations.Nathan's wedding was two weeks ago.In a week, mine would be too. I stood there until I was sure of it. Then I walked home.Celine knocked at nine on the dot. She had a notebook under her arm that made Sophie's planning notebook look like a grocery list. She sat down at my kitchen table, opened it to a page that already had three columns of dense notes, and looked at me like she'd been waiting for this moment for weeks."I starte