Semua Bab The Alpha's Christmas Sin: Bab 51 - Bab 60

Ava's POVSera did not go easy on me. She never did. But today was different. Today she pushed with the specific focused intensity of someone who had received information she was not going to share directly but that was visible in every drill she ran and every correction she made and every time she reset and came at me again without giving me the full breath I was hoping for.She knew about the anchor threat.She had not said so. But Sera communicated through what she chose to train rather than through what she said and today she was training me specifically for one scenario. Protecting myself when Damian was not there to anchor the power.We had been working for an hour before I said it out loud. "You know..."She attacked mid sentence. I moved without thinking, the wolf already responding before my brain caught up with what my body was doing."Know what?" "About the anchor. About what they need to do before they can attempt the ritual."She came at me again. Faster this time. I def

Ava's POVThe city was still mostly asleep.That specific quality of five in the morning where the streets belonged to nobody in particular; the delivery trucks, the early joggers, the people whose lives ran on schedules the rest of the city did not share. The SUV moved through it quickly. I tracked every intersection, every alley, every parked car with the territorial awareness that had become my baseline.Nothing wrong yet. But somewhere in my mind i knew the ‘yet’ had weight.I noticed Leo drove the way Luca drove. Efficiently, taking the route that got us there fastest without appearing to be in a hurry. Damian sat beside me in the back. His hand was in mine on the seat between us. For the anchor.The bond was humming raw, the way it had been since I read Jamie's text and understood what it meant. Every instinct pointed in the same direction. Toward Magazine Street.I replayed what Leo said. Twelve minutes, he had said. Maybe less if she has people already staged.I had been count

Damian's POVThe plan was made. Orders had been given. Positions had been assigned. The pack would move before nightfall. By the time the sun set over the mountain, every variable we could control would already be in place.It should have been enough to settle the house. But it wasn't.I stood at the study window, watching the grounds below without really seeing them. Two vehicles moving south. A warehouse that wouldn't be used. A mountain that would and a woman who had just chosen to walk toward a fight she didn't yet understand.The door opened behind me. Quiet. I didn't turn. I didn't need to. The bond had already shifted because it was Ava. Her presence filled the room in a way that had nothing to do with space. The territory responded to her even here. Faint, but unmistakable.“You sent for sera” she said.“Yeah.”“She's already organizing the field teams.”That didn't surprise me.“What about you?” I asked.I paused for a beat “I'm ready.” Then I turned.She stood near the doo

Ava's POVShe came at midnight.She didn’t come from the direction any of us had expected. Not from the city side where the road wound up toward the mountain through the tree line. Selene entered the clearing from the north, the bayou side. The direction of her property, which meant she had not driven to the mountain. She walked the whole way. That told me enough. She had walked because a wolf running through claimed territory would have lit her up like a signal fire.I felt her before I saw her. That wrongness threading through the territory, controlled and deliberate like she knew how to move through places that didn't belong to her.She thought that would hide her. But she was mistaken.I didn't move, neither did I touch the altar. I let her step into the clearing thinking she still had the advantage.‘She's here,’ I told Damian through the bond.‘I sensed it’Selene stepped out of the tree line with four wolves behind her.She stopped and looked at me. I saw something flicker in

Ava's POVThe drive back was quiet. It wasn’t the comfortable kind. It was the kind that sits between two people who both know something changed, but neither has named it yet.The bond was different. It was not broken, neither was it weaker. It wasn’t just… the same. Something had settled into it; fine, suspended, impossible to separate out like silt after water moves through. I felt it like a bruise before it surfaces as I sat beside Damian.Luca drove. Sera rode up shotgun, quiet and still. The pack had dispersed. Marcus's wolves had vanished back into the outer territory like they'd never been there.Selene was somewhere ahead in the dark, moving north. Her plan had met something it wasn't built for. She'd regroup. That I was sure about. Tonight hadn't taken that from her but I knew it had cost her something. I could feel that as clearly as the bond beside me.***When we hot to the manor, Leo was standing at the door. His eyes went to Damian first, then me, then the space between