All Chapters of Initiated by my Alpha Stepbrother's Mark: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Kaireen's Pov "I'm not trying to control you," he said, his voice dropping. "I'm trying to stop you from doing something you can't take back.""Joining a professional club is not something I need protecting from.""That club," he said, "just got raided by federal agents tonight. Draco, Kade's personal bodyguard who has been with him for six years, was arrested. The man who grabbed you tonight has broken three people's bones in that building in the last two months alone. And you were sitting in the middle of all of it in a green dress with no one watching your back." He paused, jaw tight. "So don't tell me I'm overreacting."I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again."That doesn't give you the right to drag me out like luggage," I said finally."Maybe not," he agreed, and the honesty in it caught me so off guard I almost forgot I was furious at him. "But you weren't leaving on your own."We stared at each other in the amber light spilling out from the building behind me, the sound

RONAN'S POV The moment Kaireen walked out of the Ironwood Pack, something in me broke open.Not loudly. Not the way things break in battle or in grief, where everyone around you can see the damage and knows to give you space. This was quieter and meaner than that, the kind of fracture that happens on the inside where nobody can see it but you feel every single crack every single hour of every single day.My wolf had been impossible since she left. Restless in a way that went beyond frustration, beyond anger. He paced the inside of me like a caged thing, tearing at the edges of my composure at the worst possible moments, during pack meetings, during treaty discussions, during the long evenings when I sat in my office staring at documents that needed my signature and couldn't make myself pick up the pen.Because I had duties. Real ones, the kind that didn't pause for personal complications or forbidden bonds that shouldn't exist in the first place. The eastern packs had sent representa

Rowan's Pov Let me be very clear about something. Everything that happened tonight, every single bit of it, was my doing. The raid. The FBI tip-off. The lease freeze on Rhia's mansion. All of it. Every carefully placed phone call, every anonymous report filed through channels that nobody could trace back to me without knowing exactly where to look. I knew Kade's operation inside out. We had been friends long enough for me to understand how his empire was built, which corners had been cut, which paperwork had been stretched thin, which connections lived in the kind of grey area that collapsed the moment someone with the right clearance decided to look directly at it. I knew all of it because Kade had never kept secrets from me the way he kept them from everyone else. Which meant I also knew exactly which buttons to press. One anonymous tip to the right journalist. Two phone calls to people I'd done significant favors for over the years, people who sat in government offices and o

Kaireen's Pov "I've liked him for over a year," she said, and the words came out a little rushed, like she needed to say them before she lost the nerve. "Since Kade first introduced me to him. And I know, I know he's difficult and he's got that energy that makes you feel like you're two inches tall in the best and worst way at the same time. But Kairi, the man is—" she stopped, pressing her mug against her lips. "He is so beautiful it makes me stupid. And I know he doesn't notice me. I know. He has never once looked at me the way I look at him and I have been standing in his line of sight for a year."Something in my throat tightened in a way I absolutely refused to name."Rhia—""Now I'm staying in his mansion," she continued, "and I don't even know if he's going to glance at me. And yes I know he can be an absolute asshole and he treats you like you're his personal problem to manage, but have you ever actually looked at him? Like properly? The way he walks into a room and everythin

RONAN Neon dropped the third stack of documents on my desk at exactly eight in the morning and I looked at him with the kind of expression that should have ended careers.He looked back at me with the kind of expression that had absolutely no interest in ending anything."Sign them," he said."I'm not in the pack right now," I said. "I'm in the city. I'm a person in a city who does not currently have a desk covered in pack management paperwork.""You have a desk.""Decoratively.""Alpha Thornwell—""Neon."He set his pen down on top of the stack and crossed his arms and gave me the look. The one I had been on the receiving end of for the better part of eight years, since long before I became Alpha and he agreed to stand beside me as my Beta because he trusted me and I trusted him in the specific, rare way that only came from having been through things together that neither of you talked about with anyone else. He was one of the few people on earth who could look directly at my face w