All Chapters of MARRIED TO AN ALPHA, CLAIMED BY THE LYCAN KING : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Ethan's POV That was the hardest thing I had ever done in my thirty-five years of life. Sending Arabell away. I stood in the middle of my room with my back to the door and listened to her footsteps retreating down the corridor. Each one was softer than the last, fading, moving further from me, and I had to lock my jaw to keep myself from turning around and calling her back. The sound of the door clicking shut behind her was the worst part. That finality. That small sound that meant she was gone and I had been the one to make her go. My hands were still tingling from the feel of her skin. I could still feel the warmth of her under my palms, the smooth silk of the dress and the heat of her body beneath it. The way her waist had curved into my hands like it had been made for them, the specific give of her flesh under my fingers when I had gripped her and pulled her closer. I had felt the waist chain against my palm, the delicate metal warm from her skin, and I had wanted to trace ev

Ethan's POV The walls of Blackthron's main hall were older than I remembered them. I had been here many times over the years, standing in this same room with Alexander, discussing borders and treaties and the particular challenges of ruling a territory that sat at the edge of so many competing interests. But I had never seen Alexander look the way he looked now. The lines on his face were deeper than they had been the last time I saw him, the grey at his temples had spread further, and there was a weariness sitting underneath his composure that he was trying very hard to hide. He stood across from me with his hands clasped behind his back and his shoulders set in that particular way Alphas held themselves when they were trying to appear stronger than they felt. I recognized it because I had worn that same posture myself many times. "Andrew's patrols have been moving along the southern border for weeks," Alexander said. "Small groups. Discreet. They don't cross into my territory, b

Ethan's POV. Darkness. That was the first thing I registered. I was floating in it, suspended in something that had no shape or form, and I could not tell if my eyes were open or closed. Everything felt distant. My body was impossibly heavy, my limbs pinned to whatever surface I was lying on by a weight that was not physical but still absolute. My shoulder burned, a deep relentless fire that pulsed with every heartbeat, and every breath I took scraped against my ribs like broken glass. I tried to move and nothing happened. I tried to speak and my throat would not cooperate. Voices reached me before sight did. Muffled and distorted, as though I was submerged beneath deep water. The words came through in fragments, pieces of sound that I could not assemble into meaning. I strained toward them, toward the surface of whatever dark water I was drowning in, and gradually the fragments began to take shape. "...the arrow was coated in wolfsbane." I forced my eyes open. The light was

Bella's POV The ceiling was the same ceiling I had been staring at for hours. I had lost count of how many times I had traced the cracks in the plaster, the small imperfections that caught the moonlight filtering through the curtains. I had memorized every single one of them. The one that looked like a river branching into smaller streams. The one that curved like a crescent moon. The one that was shaped almost like a hand reaching for something just out of reach. I could not sleep. My body was exhausted, heavy with the weight of everything that had happened today. The ride back from the palace. Andrew's hand on my throat. Hailey's smirk. The rain. The blood. The unanswered questions piling up in my head. I should have been asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. But my eyes would not stay closed. Every time I tried to let go, the mark on my palm would pulse. Warm at first, then hot, then burning. I had turned my hand over and looked at it in the darkness, watched the faint re

Ethan's POVThe rain had eased into a light drizzle.I stood shirtless in front of the tall windows of my chambers with my back to the room. My shoulder was tightly bandaged where the arrow had struck me, but the white cloth was already stained dark, the poison seeping through despite the healer's careful work. The wound throbbed with every heartbeat. The veins around it had turned black, spreading outward like roots reaching toward my chest, toward my heart.The cold was moving through me. Slow. Patient. I could feel it in my blood, in my bones, in the spaces between my ribs where my lungs worked harder and harder to draw each breath. My body was fighting something it could not win.I pressed my palm flat against the window. The glass was cold. I let the chill of it seep into my skin and spread up my arm, let it ground me in something other than the poison that was taking me apart from the inside.She had been standing in this room hours ago. I could still see her. The black dress. T