All Chapters of Too Late To Beg, My Alpha: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

33 Chapters

Chapter Eleven

Luna Jane's PovI had been standing outside that door for four minutes before I decided to walk through it.Not because I was uncertain—I was never uncertain; I had not had the luxury of uncertainty in twenty-three years of navigating this pack's politics—but because I believed in timing. In letting a room reach the right temperature before you walk in, and changing it.The temperature had been right."My daughter," I said, settling into the chair with the ease of a woman who understood that ownership was mostly a matter of posture, "has proven herself worthy and educated, capable, and patient. She has been patient for years. I looked at Darryn directly. "He was supposed to marry her. That was the arrangement before he saw that girl and lost his senses entirely.""Mind how you speak," Darryn said very quietly—the dangerous kind of quiet."Dahlia—""I said," and now there was something in his voice that made even Elder Corvin go still, "mind how you speak about her in front of me." Or

Chapter Twelve

Dahlia's Pov I woke up wanting noodles, spicy ones, the kind that made your eyes water and your nose run and made you keep eating anyway because the burn was part of the point.Then I craved seafood, shrimp, and a mountain of onions. Boiled eggs and fried eggs, both, because the baby had decided one type of egg was insufficient, and I had learned in the past few weeks that arguing with the baby was a losing position.I lay there for a moment with the craving sitting on my chest like a very specific, very insistent instruction. Outside the cabin, the settlement was already moving—footsteps on packed earth, someone splitting wood, and the distant clang of the kitchen that meant breakfast had started.I got up, had my bath, and stood in front of the small pile of clothes that counted as my wardrobe. Most of what I had brought didn't fit anymore. The pregnancy had seen to that—my body doing six months of work in four, expanding in ways I had stopped trying to predict.What fit was the pa

Chapter Thirteen

Illara's POVThe cough woke me up before dawn. Not the kind of cough that went away after three rasps; it was the one that made you feel like a boulder was sitting gracefully on your lungs.I sat up and pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and waited for it to pass, and when it did, I sat in the quiet of the small cabin and looked at the ceiling and did the honest accounting I did every morning.Less breath than yesterday. More pain behind the ribs on the left side. The fatigue that had stopped being something I could sleep off and become instead the water I was swimming in permanently, always present, always pulling.Through my window, I could see the east cabin. Dahlia's light was already on. She didn't know how sick I was. She didn't know Sable had come to me three weeks ago and told me that what was growing in my lungs was not something that would be moved by medicine or time.I had told Sable to keep it between us. She had argued. I had been firm.Dahlia had had enough. I left

Chapter Fourteen

Hera's POVWhile Dahlia was at the forgotten wolf settlement, thinking about her life, I was busy with mine.I stood in front of the mirror for twenty minutes before I came downstairs. Not vanity — strategy. The green dress, the hair down, the specific way I had arranged myself to look effortless while being anything but—my mother had taught me this. "Presentation is the first argument you make," she always said. Make it before you open your mouth.I had been making this particular argument for three years. Tonight it had a stage.Darryn's ascension feast. The pack closed the door on everything before and called it a new era.Tonight, if I did this correctly, was about being seen as what I already knew I was: His Luna.I came down the stairs, and Luna Desnona of the Shadowfang pack touched my arm. "Hera," she called. “You look very stunning, and I must say green suits you.""Thank you," I smiled. “What can I say? I'm dressed to impress."She leaned in. "He hasn't looked at anyone all

Chapter Fifteen

DAHLIA'S POVShout-out to every expecting mother because pregnancy was no joke. Back at Ashwood, I'd seen women carrying pregnancies like it was easy... Hell nah, this shit is hard.After I got back to my room, I was hungry again, and guess what I was craving?Noodles, the same ones that Oryn had made for me earlier.“I'll just drink two cups of water, and I'll be fine.” I tried to lie to myself, but after five minutes, the baby was kicking, and I was so hungry.I snuck back to the kitchen to make something, and Oryn was there too. She said she was also hungry, so she came down to make something.“Your baby is going to be chubby, I'll tell you that for free.” She rubbed my tummy. “Gosh, he eats a lot.”“Which is why his father is going to cook for him," I said.Oryn chuckled. “What choice do I have?” And with that, she got to cooking.The noodles came out exactly right. The broth was properly spicy, the shrimp were pink and curled, the onions were soft, and both eggs were sitting on t

Chapter Sixteen

Dahlia's POVThe baby was warm.That was the thing I kept coming back to, even as Darryn knelt at my feet in the ash-grey dirt of Ashwood, his broad shoulders shaking, his voice cracking around the word ‘please’ like it was the first time he'd ever said it. I held him tighter and looked down at the man who had once been my whole world and felt—Nothing.No, not nothing. Something worse than nothing. Something quiet and final that had no name.“Forgive me,” he said. “Please, forgive me.”The sky had been pale when we'd started. I noticed it darkening now at the edges, the way storms moved in over Ashwood—fast and without warning, always while you were looking somewhere else.“Dahlia! I looked up. Luna Jane stood at the treeline. This version of her was wrong in the specific way dreams made things wrong, too sharp in some places and blurred in others, her mouth moving around my name while her eyes said something that had no translation.She took a step forward toward me, and in her hand

Chapter Seventeen

Third-person POVThe hospital….The room smelled like antiseptic and old coffee, and the particular staleness of air that was heavy with the exhales of too many frightened people."Since they got to the hospital, Oryn didn't sit down. She packed back and forth, occasionally stopping to glance at the door of the room Illara had been wheeled to. Sable sat on the plastic chair closest to the door and did not move at all, which was worse.A nurse passed through twice, and neither of them looked up.When the doctor finally came, he was younger than either of them expected—late thirties, tired eyes, and a clipboard he carried like a prop. He introduced himself.Sable nodded, and Oryn stopped pacing.He started with the lungs, which made sense. He had her file, the existing diagnosis, the familiar map of damage they'd been navigating for two years.Sable tracked every word, nodding in the measured way of someone who had done her own reading, who knew the terminology, who had sat with Illara

Chapter Eighteen

Hera's POVA popular saying or a wise person said that a way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Right?The bacon was on fire, not in a good way, but in a pretty bad way. It was producing a flame that had no business existing in a domestic context. I grabbed the nearest thing—a dishcloth—and made the situation considerably worse before I made it better, and by the time the flame was out, the bacon was a memory, and the kitchen smelled like a personal failure.I placed one hand over my nose to stop myself from inhaling too much smoke. How was I supposed to win Darryn if I were this bad at breakfast?"Sweet goddess," said Mara. I spun around, and the three helpers, or shall I say cooks, stood in the doorway. Mara, Lena, and Bette, holding the morning groceries and wearing the collective expression of people watching something they would be discussing for years."It was under control," I said. “I'm almost done with breakfast.”"Yes, Miss Hera," said Mara, who had never meant yes in

Chapter Nineteen

Hera's POVMy mother had many talents, but you see, manipulation was the primary one; the real gift—the one that made it truly impressive—was how she packaged it.She never asked you to do something unreasonable. She presented you with a situation that had already been arranged and informed you of your role in it."Darryn mentioned needing support on the Ashford trip," she told me over breakfast, not looking up from her tea. "Pack representation. It makes sense for you to go.""He said that?" I was surprised that he'd asked me to follow him. "Those words.""He indicated as much." She turned a page. "Your bag is already packed. The car leaves at nine."Darryn was standing at the car when I came down with my luggage, and the expression on his face told me everything I needed to know about what he had and hadn't indicated.He looked at my bag, at me, then at my mother's window on the second floor with the look of a man adding things up and arriving at a conclusion he'd been expecting and

Chapter Twenty

Dahlia's POVThe east supply room took three hours, and my feet took the worst of it. I'd gone through the boxes that were unusually full of things that maybe dated back to the Stone Age.I wanted to throw some of them out, but Petra told me not to, saying that these pieces were older than.What rubbish!By the time I was done, the baby wasn't taking it easy on me due to the whole bending. I got back to my room at half past two and dropped onto the bed without removing anything except my shoes, and that alone felt like an achievement worth documenting.Twenty-three minutes, that was all I got before the devil in human form herself barged into my room."Storage room B needs finishing before dinner," Petra said from the doorway. "Caden left it incomplete, so I want you to finish it up, and there must be no mistakes."I stared at the ceiling. "I just did three hours in the east room; I'm done with all my chores. If Caden didn't do his job, it's not my cross to bear.""And now there's the

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