All Chapters of Scorned by the Alpha, Kept by the King: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I burned the eggs. It was the third time this week, and Isla was kind enough not to mention it which meant she was either developing emotional intelligence at an alarming rate for a four-year-old, or she was too focused on the cartoon wolves chasing each other across the tablet screen to notice. Probably the second one. "Breakfast," I said, sliding a plate of toast in front of her. The eggs went quietly into the bin. Isla looked at the toast. Looked at me. Looked back at the toast. "Where's the eggs?" "We're having toast today." "We had toast yesterday." "Toast is a complete meal." She considered this with the gravity only a four-year-old can bring to breakfast negotiations, then picked up the toast and bit into it without further argument. I exhaled. This was my life now, and I loved it. I loved it fiercely and deliberately, the way you love something you chose and fought for and built with your own two hands from nothing. A small apartment on the east side of Creston a hum

I felt his eyes on me for the rest of the ceremony.Not constantly he was too controlled for that. But in the gaps between speeches, between the formal exchanges of pack allegiances and the droning procedural language of interpack law, I would feel it. A weight. A pressure at the side of my face that had nothing to do with the room and everything to do with the man at the head of it.I didn't look back.Looking back would mean acknowledging it. Acknowledging it would mean admitting that the thing I had felt when our eyes first met was real and I had spent five years becoming someone who did not entertain things she couldn't afford.Isla fell asleep against my arm halfway through the third speaker.I shifted her carefully, letting her head rest in my lap, and kept my eyes fixed on the front of the room with the focused blankness of someone who was absolutely, completely fine.The ceremony ended at dusk.Wolves dispersed in clusters toward the guest quarters temporary accommodations the

I found Damon waiting outside the children's area at pickup time.Not inside. Not approaching. Just waiting. Positioned near the door with his hands in his pockets and the carefully constructed casualness of someone who had planned exactly where he would be and wanted it to look accidental.I stopped walking when I saw him.He saw me stop. Something moved across his face not guilt, not quite. More like the expression of someone who had rehearsed a conversation and was now recalculating based on the audience."I just wanted to see her," he said. Before I could speak. Before I could turn around. "That's all, Zara. I'm not I just wanted to see her.""She's not yours to see.""She might be."The words landed quietly. The hallway was empty enough that no one heard them except me, and the silence that followed had the particular quality of something that couldn't be unsaid.I crossed the distance between us in four steps and dropped my voice to something that carried no heat whatsoever, bec

I didn't sleep.I lay in the dark listening to Isla breathe and ran the same calculations over and over until the numbers stopped changing and the conclusion sat in front of me like something I couldn't walk around anymore.Elder Cass knew.Not everything not the full picture, not the name for what Isla carried. But enough. Enough to look at a four-year-old across a dinner table and go quiet with the particular stillness of someone whose instincts had just handed them something significant. Enough to say remarkable bloodline in a room full of ranked wolves and let the words do their work.By morning it would be a conversation. By afternoon, a rumor. By the time the second summit session ended, every Alpha in attendance would be asking questions I had spent four years making sure no one thought to ask.I needed to leave.I sat up carefully so as not to wake Isla, pulled my knees to my chest, and stared at the thin line of pale light under the door.The problem was Damon.Under interpac

Home smelled like flowers and old wood and the particular quiet of a life that belonged entirely to me.I stood in the doorway of our apartment for a moment before stepping inside a habit I had developed without meaning to, this brief pause on the threshold where I let the familiar wrap around me like something earned. The small living room with its secondhand couch and Isla's drawings taped to the wall in uneven rows. The kitchen where I burned eggs three times a week. The window above the sink that looked out onto the street where normal people with normal problems walked their dogs in the early morning.Creston. My city. My life.Isla pushed past me and went immediately to check that her stuffed animals had survived our absence, conducting a rapid census with the focused efficiency of a general assessing troops after a campaign. Apparently everyone had made it. She announced this with satisfaction and disappeared into her room.I dropped our bag by the door and sat down on the couc