All Chapters of Initiated by my Alpha Stepbrother's Mark: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Kaireen's Pov "You don't deserve her," Rowan said, and it came out quiet and final and underneath the coldness of it there was something that was almost pain, something that sat too close to the surface for a man who kept everything at a controlled distance. "Go back to your club. Go back to the women you keep in your penthouse. Go back to every single part of your life that has nothing to do with this one."Kade's eyes went flat,The air changed.A muscle in Rowan's jaw jumped. It was the only external thing that moved. He looked at me then, and whatever was in his eyes in that moment was complicated and real and it made my chest hurt in a way I was not expecting. "Goodnight, Kaireen.""Kade—""Get some sleep," he said simply. And then he turned and walked back to the car and the driver had the door open before he reached it and it closed behind him with a soft, expensive sound and the Mercedes pulled away from the curb and was gone.I stood there.Then I turned to Rowan.He was alr

Kaireen's Pov His hands landed on my ass with a sharp crack that vibrated through bone before pleasure swallowed the sting whole.I bit down on my moan so hard my teeth hurt.He yanked my skirt down in one smooth pull and it pooled somewhere behind us and the cool air of the room hit my skin and then his hands were back, warm and rough and completely without apology, palming me like I was his to hold exactly this way, like the concept of asking had never occurred to him.I pressed my forehead against the door and said nothing.I was not going to give him the satisfaction. I was not going to make a single sound, not one, not after everything this evening had already taken from me in the dignity department. Kade was still somewhere downstairs with a split lip that my brother had put there for kissing me, and here I was bent over with said brother's hands on my skin and my body behaving like a traitor of the highest order."Look at you," Rowan said, low and unhurried, and his thumb trac

Rowan's Pov Three days was all I had before the lycan pack made good on their threat and everything back home started bleeding. Three days to get Kaireen willing and moving, and here I was in the passenger seat of Neon's car watching the city go past and wondering how many ways this evening could still go sideways.Kaireen sat behind me and had been quiet for twenty minutes. With her, quiet was never actually quiet. It was something being processed, something being built into an argument she would drop on me later, fully formed, at the worst possible moment.My wolf wasn't concerned. He was fat and satisfied and purring against my ribs like an idiot.Neon drove with both hands on the wheel, eyes forward, face blank the way it went when he had opinions he was keeping to himself. He always had opinions. Tonight I hadn't given him the opening and he knew better than to take one without permission.The address was in the older part of the city where the buildings still had brick and the

Kaireen's Pov "What does she need," Rowan ignored me and asked, And the way he said it, quiet and direct and non-negotiable, like the answer was going to happen regardless of what it was, made something shift painfully in my chest.Sera folded her hands. "Fresh spring water. Directly from the mountain rocks inside a pack territory. Not bottled, not filtered. Straight from the source, with the pack energy in the ground running through it. She needs to drink it consistently for thirty days and we need to hope that it is enough to reverse what has been done." She looked at me with eyes that were sorry before she even said the next part. "I cannot promise it will work. Her case is unlike anything I have treated before. Her wolf has never had her first shift. That alone makes everything more complicated. So I am not giving you a guarantee. I am giving you a chance."A chance.One chance. Thirty days. Mountain water from a pack I had been thrown out of.I had stood up from that chair and

Ronan's Pov I used to think I knew what pain was.I had catalogued it carefully over the years, the way you catalogued things that kept returning, so you could prepare for them. I knew the pain of being sixteen and standing in front of my father after losing a spar to his beta's son, a boy two years younger than me, a boy I should have beaten without breathing hard, and watching my father look at me with that specific kind of disappointment that did not need words but used them anyway.You are not worthy to be called an alpha, he had said. A real alpha does not lose. A real alpha does not feel pain. A real alpha does not let his face show the world what is happening inside him.I had stood there with blood in my mouth from where I had hit the ground and my ribs screaming from the impact and I had looked my father in the eye and I had not let my face show a single thing. I had been sixteen and I had already learned that lesson completely.I knew the pain of the years after that. The t