Alle Kapitel von Marked By The Rival Alphas: Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 10

Lyra POV"Say it again." My father's voice dropped low. That was always the warning. Not the shouting. The quiet.Kieran stood his ground, though I could see his hands trembling at his sides. Every elder, every warrior, every pack member who had gathered to celebrate my brother's acceptance into Lunar Dominion Academy was watching him now with their mouths open."I said no." Kieran's voice cracked on the last letter. "I won't go."The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.I stood at the edge of the crowd with my fists buried in the fabric of my cloak. I watched my father's jaw tighten. Watched the muscle in his neck jump. Alpha Doran Nightbane was not a man who received the word no for an answer. Certainly not from his son."You are refusing a place at Lunar Dominion." My father said it slowly, like he was tasting something rotten. "In front of your pack. In front of your elders. You are standing here and telling me..""I'm telling you I won't be used." Kieran'

Lyra POV The room was too small. That was the problem. That had always been going to be the problem, but standing in it now with Ronan Bloodcrest breathing the same air as me, I understood it in my bones in a way I hadn't before. Two beds. One window. One bathroom with a door that didn't lock properly. Roughly the same amount of space as my bedroom at home, except at home nobody was watching me the way Ronan watched everything. Like the world was a puzzle he was personally offended by.I had barely slept.I lay on my side facing the wall and counted my own breathing and listened to him shift in the bed across the room and told myself over and over that I had survived worse than this. I had run twenty miles through winter forest with a sprained ankle. I had trained alone in the dark for years with no one cheering me on and no reward waiting at the end. I could survive a roommate.Even this one.Morning came grey and cold through the single window. I was up and dressed before Ronan mov

Lyra POVThe door came apart like it was made of paper. Wood split and the frame buckled and Ronan stood in the gap with his chest heaving and his eyes almost completely black, his wolf so far forward that the human parts of him were barely visible. His hands were braced on either side of the broken doorway and he was breathing hard and fast like he had been running.He looked at me. I was on the floor with my back against the wall and my knees pulled to my chest, trembling from the effort of holding the shift back. My eyes were glowing, I could feel the heat of them, that particular burn behind the iris that meant my wolf was seconds from taking over completely. The binding across my chest had loosened in the struggle. My scent was everywhere, filling the small bathroom, pouring out into the room beyond, impossible to miss and impossible to misread.There was nothing left to hide behind.Ronan stared at me confused. The growl in his chest died. Everything died. All the noise and fury

POV: LyraRonan didn't say a word to me during the rest of training. He didn't have to. I could feel it building in him the entire session, that particular stillness that wasn't calm at all but something pressing hard against the inside of a very controlled surface. He ran his drills. He sparred with a Thornfield heir and put the boy on the ground twice without breaking a sweat. He didn't look at me directly.But I felt him watching. The moment the instructor dismissed us, Ronan appeared at my shoulder like he had been standing there all along."Walk with me," he said.It wasn't a request. He took me through a side corridor off the lower yard, down a short stairwell, and into one of the equipment storage rooms. Stone walls. No windows. Shelves of practice weapons along one side. He pushed the door shut behind us and the noise of the yard disappeared.He turned around and looked at me. I crossed my arms and looked back."Say it," he said."Say what?""Don't." His voice came out low and

LyraThe board went up at dawn. By the time I reached the main corridor after morning drills, half the academy was already crowded around it. I heard the noise before I saw the list. That particular mixture of voices that meant something had happened that people had opinions about.I slipped through the edge of the crowd and found my name.Kieran Nightbane, Second overall. I read it twice. Then I stepped back and kept my face completely neutral while something warm and fierce moved through my chest that I refused to call pride. Not here. Not where anyone could see it.Ronan was first. That was expected. That was fine. The second was not supposed to be me.The reaction started slowly and then all at once. I heard my name being passed through the crowd in pieces, the way a wave builds before it breaks. Some of it was surprising. Some of it was genuine respect. And some of it, coming from a cluster near the left side of the board, was something much less generous. I already knew which cl