All Chapters of Bound to the Alpha Twins: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

I found Kaelan in the training yard, just as he had promised. He stood with a sword in each hand, waiting."You're late," he said when I came into view."I'm here, aren't I?"He tossed me a sword. I caught it. The grip was familiar now. I had held it enough times that my fingers remembered the shape of it."Show me what you remember," he said.I swung. The blade cut through the air in a clean motion. He nodded once."Better. Again."I swung again. I focused on the motion. The way the blade moved through the air. I tried to empty my mind.But my mind was not in the yard. My mind was in the Council chamber. My mind dwelled on the unanswered question. The way they had looked at me like I was already dead.I swung again. The blade was off.Kaelan stepped forward. "Stop."I lowered the sword. He walked toward me, his eyes searching my face."Your form is off," he said. "Your mind is somewhere else."My lips stayed shut."What is wrong with you?"I looked down at the sword in my hands. The

She had my face. My hair. My eyes. But something in her expression was different.I touched my cheek. The girl in the glass touched hers too.I had kissed Kaelan. I had let him hold me. I had let him almost mark me. And the craziest part, I had not pulled away.I looked at my neck. The skin was still whole. No mark. No claim. Yet I could still feel the ghost of his teeth grazing my throat, the heat of his breath against my skin. I pressed my fingers to the spot and held them there. The memory of his mouth on my skin lingered like a brand I could not see yet could not forget.I thought about Lucian then, and I hated it, but he always hovered in the back of my mind no matter how hard I tried to block him out.I turned away from the mirror; the scroll from the Council still lay on the table. I had read it over and over again. The full moon. A few nights. The GreeveWood. You will enter the forest at dusk. You will emerge at dawn on the third day, or you will not emerge at all.I did not w

I was not looking at anything in particular.My eyes were open, fixed on the cold, soot-stained hearth of the fireplace, but my mind was miles away.I did not hear the first knock. I did not hear the heavy iron latch lift, or the soft creak of the oak door pivoting on its hinges."Ophelia."My lips stayed still."My lady."I blinked, and the blurred lines of the cold stone fireplace snapped back into sharp focus.Gertha stood a few feet away, her hands clasped tightly in front of her apron. She was watching me with a look that hovered dangerously close to pity."You were somewhere else," she said softly, her voice barely carrying over the draft whistling through the window pane."I was.""You have a visitor," she informed, her eyes darting toward the door. "Elder Maris."I looked down at my hands. The rough, dark stone Elara had given me was still pressed against my palm. It was warm -unnaturally so - retaining a steady, pulse-like heat that felt like a quiet heart beating against my s

***A DAY LATER***The lock on the balcony door was old—iron forged, but the latch itself was worn down by years of damp air and neglect. A thin silver hairpin, slipped between the frame and the bolt with a firm, practiced leverage, was all it took. It gave way with a soft click that seemed too loud in the silence.The night air hit my face in a cold rush.I slipped down the servant's spiral stairwell, avoiding the loose flagstone three steps from the bottom, and emerged into the palace gardens.It was quiet here. Terrifyingly quiet.The moon was a luminous pearl suspended in the dead sky. It fell over the grounds in pools of silver, casting long shadows in its wake.I walked with bare feet through dew-soaked grass, stopping only when I reached the central stone fountain. Beside it grew a cluster of night-blooming roses—dark, deep velvet blooms that smelled of sweet earth and decay.I reached out and plucked one. The stem was thick, guarded by curved, cruel thorns that bit into the mea

The silence was the first thing I noticed.Not the absence of sound, but the weight of it. Like the forest had swallowed everything and was waiting for me to speak first. The air was colder here, heavier. It pressed against my skin like a living thing, thick with the smell of damp earth and decay and something older, something that had been sleeping for centuries.I stood still, my boots planted on the dark soil. The trees were massive, their trunks black and gnarled, their branches woven together so tightly that I could not see the sky. The light was dim, green-tinted, filtering through the canopy like light through stained glass. It was not enough to see by, but enough to see that I was alone.I turned around. There was nothing behind me. No clearing. No Council. No crowd.Just trees.I took a breath. The air filled my lungs, cold and heavy. I did not know what to expect from this place. I had been told stories. Warnings. The forest would test me. It would strip me down to nothing.