All Chapters of The Cursed Alpha’s Only Mate: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Third POVYsabella could not stop shaking.Even as she held Tori in her arms, feeling the warmth of her friend's body, the solid reality of her shoulders, the familiar scent of lavender that had always clung to her, she could not believe this was real. For three years she had mourned. For three years she had carried the guilt of surviving while Tori and Samantha had supposedly died in the frozen forest. And now here Tori was, alive, breathing, crying into her shoulder."I thought you were dead," Ysabella whispered, her voice breaking. "I thought both of you were dead. I mourned you. I lit candles for you.""I know." Tori pulled back, her face wet with tears, her smile trembling. "I wanted to tell you. So many times, I wanted to send word. But we could not risk it. If the king had found out we were alive, if he had found out about her..."She trailed off, shaking her head.Ysabella gripped her hands. "Tell me everything. How is this possible? How are you alive? The king said he could

Hecate POVThe hem of my black velvet robes whispered against the polished stone floor as I walked through the castle corridors that night. The sound was the only company I wanted. The only sound that did not remind me of what had happened in my studio earlier.I could not sleep.Of course I could not sleep. How could I, when every time I closed my eyes I saw his face? When every breath I took carried the memory of his hands on my hips, his mouth on my neck, the desperate way he had held me like I was the only thing keeping him from drowning?I had thought about going to my studio. Work usually settled my mind. Grinding herbs, mixing tinctures, the precise dance of magic and medicine. But tonight my hands trembled too much. My thoughts were too tangled. I would have ruined a batch of potion or set something on fire.So I walked.My feet carried me through the sleeping castle, past the guards who nodded at me with sleepy respect, past the servants who hurried to their quarters, past th

Hecate POVHours passed. Or perhaps it was only minutes. Time had lost all meaning in the white silence of the storm.The snow eventually stopped falling, but the cold remained, a living thing that clawed through my robes and seeped into my bones. My fingers were numb around the reins. My face was raw from the wind. But I did not stop searching.The silver thread from the tracking spell still glowed faintly ahead of us, pulling me deeper into the rogue forest. Aileen was alive. I could feel her life force at the edge of my awareness, flickering like a candle in a storm, but still burning. Somehow, impossibly, she was still alive.Beside me, Maddox rode in silence. His stallion was flagging, its breath coming in thick clouds, its hooves dragging through the drifts. He had not complained once. Not about the cold, not about the hours, not about the danger that lurked in every shadow between the trees.But I saw the tension in his shoulders. The way his hand never strayed far from the swo

Hecate POVThe rogue den was unlike anything I had ever seen.It was carved into the side of a hill, a gaping mouth of stone and shadow that reeked of blood and old meat. Torches flickered along the walls, their smoke curling toward a ceiling lost in darkness. Bones littered the floor. Animal bones, mostly. But I did not want to look too closely at the ones that were not.Maddox walked beside me, his shoulder brushing mine, his hand never straying far from the blade at his hip. I could feel the tension radiating from him, the barely contained violence humming beneath his skin. He was moments away from shifting. I could see it in the way his eyes flickered gold, in the way his canines pressed against his lower lip.We stopped before a throne made of antlers and fur.The man who sat upon it was enormous, broad shouldered and barrel chested, with a beard that hung down to his chest and eyes the color of rust. His name was Malakar, and everything about him suggested cruelty. The scars

Maddox POVMaddox entered Odette's chambers like a storm.The door slammed against the wall, and the maid who had been arranging the queen's pillows flinched, nearly dropping the armful of linens in her arms. She curtsied quickly and fled, her footsteps echoing down the corridor until there was nothing but silence.Odette did not flinch.She sat in her wheelchair by the window, her back straight, her hands folded in her lap. The morning light caught the sharp angles of her face, the thin line of her lips, the cold fire in her eyes. She looked like a queen carved from ice. Beautiful. Untouchable.And utterly furious."What was that scene you made out there?" Maddox demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "Arriving like that. Demanding answers. Putting me in an uncomfortable position in front of the entire court."Odette's smile was slow and sharp. "Uncomfortable? I am sorry, husband. Did I embarrass you in front of your mistress?"Maddox's jaw tightened. "Watch your tongue.""My tongue