All Chapters of TWO ALPHAS ONE BOND : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

LYRA Mira didn’t sleep. I knew because I didn’t sleep either. Every time I drifted up from that thin, restless haze of almost-sleep, she was still there, cross-legged on the floor beside the low table she’d dragged over from the corner. Books were scattered around her like a storm had passed, each one yanked from the library shelves as if she were waging a personal war against every single page. “Listen to this one,” she said sometime around three in the morning, holding a book up to the lamp’s soft glow. “‘The trial of Luna Sera Vael, conducted in the year of the Blood Moon, concluded after six hours of continuous combat, during which the challenger employed both shifted form and a paralytic compound derived from–’” She cut herself off. “Actually, scratch that one.” “Mira.” “I’m curating,” she said, voice steady. “There are good ones. Precedents that went well.” “How many went well?” A pause. “Mira. How many went well?” “I’m still curating.” She turned a page like that and set

LYRA Day three. I knew it was day three because I’d started marking time by the way the light filtered through the narrow window. In the morning, it was pale and thin, almost fragile. By midday, it warmed just enough to feel like a promise. Then, late afternoon, it faded into a soft grey before vanishing completely. Three cycles of that now. Three mornings waking up on the cold iron bed, the plain white linens stiff beneath me, staring up at the ceiling until my mind caught up with where I was and why. The room had shifted from feeling like a prison cell to something more like a grim fact, something I no longer argued with. I was up before the light changed, sitting cross-legged on the bed, one of the books from the shelf open in my lap. It was the one on combat theory, the same one Mira had flagged in her bag. Her neat handwriting appeared in the margins of my copy too: “Pay attention to this. This one matters.” “Skip this, it's outdated, pre-shift era, ignore.” Having Mira’s voic

LYRA Day five, and Darius was late. I was stretched out on the courtyard grass, flat on my back, the sky above a dull, steely gray. The minutes ticked by, each one stretching longer than the last. This wasn't like him at all. For four days straight, Darius had been punctual to the second, a man who seemed to have built his entire existence around precision. His absence, then, felt jarring, and a tiny, anxious corner of my brain, despite my best efforts, started conjuring up all sorts of dire possibilities. "He's fine," Sky said, her voice interrupting my thoughts. "Probably just got held up." "You don't know that," I retorted. "No, I don't," she conceded. "But I'd rather assume he's okay than spend the next ten minutes spiraling with you." A genuine laugh almost escaped me. There was a subtle shift in her tone, a lightness, a newfound certainty in her words that hadn't been there before. It was as if the careful distance she'd maintained since that tense council meeting had final

LYRA Day six. The courtyard was still steeped in the pre-dawn chill, but I was already there, my body moving through sequences with a kind of frantic energy that had little to do with training and everything to do with the fact that I'd spent the better part of the night caught between two people who loved me. My body, apparently, hadn't gotten the memo that focus was the order of the day. "You're grinning, Lyra," Sky's voice cut through the quiet. "I'm not," I insisted, though I knew it was useless. "Yes, you are. You're literally grinning while throwing a strike." "It's just my face," I mumbled. "Oh, no, it is not," she countered, her voice laced with a warm, amused pause. "You had a good night." "Sky…" "A ‘very’ good night, from what I could tell," she finished for me, her teasing relentless. "We are not doing this right now." "We absolutely are," she shot back, her tone playful but firm. "There's nobody else here. Let me have this." I bit back a laugh and threw the sequ

LYRA It's been three days since Aurora walked out, three days since the rhythmic tap of a tray at the door, the soft scrape of it sliding beneath the gap, or any sound from the corridor beyond that confirmed the world outside this room hadn't simply ceased to be. Three days of the sliver of window, the stark white of the ceiling, and a silence that had begun as a low hum and by the second morning had sharpened, acquiring jagged edges. I’d known this was coming. Mira had warned me. The final isolation, no contact, no exceptions, no nothing. I’d nodded, told her I understood, and I meant it, then. I hadn’t understood anything at all. The first day, Sky was still with me. She was quieter, more withdrawn, muted like she’d been in the beginning, before the dagger had fallen between us and irrevocably sealed us apart. I noticed it subtly, like the whisper of a draft under a door, a faint chill that hinted at a source I couldn't yet pinpoint. "Sky?" I asked, mid-sequence in the cramped