All Chapters of The Alpha's executioner: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

RONAN'S POV She grabbed my face before I could say anything else. Her mouth was on mine, hot and urgent, and whatever question I had been about to ask died on my tongue. I kissed her back. I couldn't not. "Elara—" "Shut up." She pulled me closer. Her fingers were in my hair, tugging, demanding. I stopped trying to talk. We stumbled backward. My shoulders hit the wall. She pressed against me, her body fitting against mine like she had never left. Her hands were under my shirt, cold fingers against my stomach. I groaned into her mouth. Her shirt came off next. I don't remember unbuttoning it. I just remember her skin, warm under my palms, and the sound she made when I touched her. Soft. Needy. I laid her down on the couch. She looked up at me, her chest rising and falling, her lips parted. I watched her watch me as I pulled my shirt over my head. Her eyes traveled down my chest, my stomach, lingered. I kissed her neck. Her collarbone. The space between her breasts. She ar

ELARA'S POVI came out of my room and called for a maid. Two of them came, young and wide-eyed, bobbing their heads before I even spoke."Go to my room. Clean everything. The flowers, the balloons, the sign. Everything. I don't want to see a single petal when I walk in."They nodded and hurried away.I waited in the hallway until they were done. It took them longer than I expected. The flowers were everywhere, scattered like someone had tried to bury the floor in apology. I heard the rustle of plastic bags, the clink of the metal bucket they used for the balloons, the low murmur of their voices as they worked.When they finally came out, one of them carrying the last armful of wilted roses, I stepped past them into the room.It was clean. Bare. The bed was stripped, the sheets replaced. The carpet had been vacuumed. The sign was gone. The balloons were gone. The only thing left was the faint smell of flowers, clinging to the air like a ghost.I locked the door.I went to the bathroom

ELARA'S POV I didn't know how many hours had passed when I finally woke up, but the light outside my window had shifted from the harsh glare of midday to something softer and gold and amber, the kind of light that meant evening was coming and I had slept through most of the day without meaning to. My body was still heavy, my limbs aching in ways that reminded me of everything I was trying not to think about, and my stomach was hollow because I hadn't eaten since before any of this happened. I couldn't even remember when that was.I didn't have the strength to walk to the kitchen, so I pressed the call button on the wall beside my bed and waited. When a maid appeared in the doorway with her face carefully neutral and her hands folded in front of her, I asked her to bring me something to eat without caring what it was. She nodded and disappeared, and when she came back with a plate of seared duck breast and wild mushroom risotto and a small glass of chilled white wine, I ate like I had

RONAN'S POVI waited until the crowd was gone before I moved. The firelight was dying, the torches sputtering and fading one by one, and the open space where the executions had taken place was empty now except for the dark stains on the ground and the men who were already hosing the blood away like it was nothing more than mud that needed washing off. I stood at the edge of the shadows and watched the house where she had disappeared, and I tried to remember when I had last seen her look at me the way she did before she ran—like I was the only thing in the world that still made sense.I walked to the house without thinking about it, my feet carrying me across the grounds and through the back entrance and up the stairs that led to her hallway. The guards were gone, or maybe they were still there and I just didn't see them, didn't care, didn't have the capacity to care about anything except getting to her before she locked herself away and I lost my chance.Her door was closed. I stood i

ELARA'S POVBy the time I stepped out of the bathroom, the world inside my head had gone quiet again.Not peaceful. Never peaceful.Just controlled.The kind of control that came when you locked every feeling in a box, nailed it shut, and buried it somewhere deep enough that even you couldn't reach it anymore. Human beings love calling that healing. It isn't. It's survival wearing makeup.Steam still clung to my skin as I stood in front of the mirror wrapped in a robe, staring at my reflection.My eyes were swollen from crying. The dark circles beneath them made me look hollowed out, haunted. There were bruises fading along my throat, fingerprints blooming yellow and green against pale skin like flowers rotting beneath the surface.I touched one lightly.My reflection stared back at me.Weak.Broken.Pathetic.A slow breath left my lungs."No," I whispered.I straightened.No more shaking. No more crying on bathroom floors. No more lying awake replaying his hands around my throat whil