Alpha’s Forbidden Mate のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 91 - チャプター 100

Xander kept the old bakery going, less out of hope than habit. Most mornings he'd set the dough to rise before dawn, and in the hours before the city woke, he'd mix by hand in the orange half-light, huffing yeast and memory. There was never as much to bring to market as they'd planned, but Carolina claimed that was deliberate sabotage, since her favorite part was giving away the leftovers. She’d hawk cinnamon rolls to surly ex-cons and homebound nannies, bartering for gossip and, once, a stray kitten which she immediately named after Olivine (“Ollie” for short, who spent her days perched atop the register, hissing at anyone who wore too much perfume).They tried out new recipes, sometimes from the algae cultures Xander grew in fish tanks, sometimes from scrawled notes left in the bakery’s margins by the building’s former owners. Each time one of his mutant sourdoughs unexpectedly exploded, Carolina would shriek with delight and chase him around the kitchen with a towel. Sometimes he’d

Start of Book 3 They started with the windows first, because that’s what always broke in the fights. The city had gone nearly polite in the past six months, the violence turning subtle, as if even the troublemakers sensed that some things were trying too hard to keep from falling apart. Carolina stood on the kitchen counter, a roll of glaziers tape clenched between her teeth, patching the old panes while Xander measured the new ones in the alley below. On their best days it was a real operation, twenty pairs of hands shifting between glass and brick and scaffolding, even Mira showing up twice a week with a caddy of tools and condescension.They joked that the pack house was the soul of the block, because there was always dogs barking out front, and coffee, and someone beautiful or bleeding or both on the stoop. The bakery was stitched up next door, the apartments stacked above it like a hive, and the empty lot behind slowly became a garden, presided over by Olivine in a broad-brimmed

Sunday brought a thin hush over the city, as if all the usual noise had pressed pause. The bakery opened at seven, but nobody showed before eight, so Carolina took the hour to sit on the stoop with Xander and nurse bitter coffee, watching crows hurl insults at the slow parade of churchgoers. His head rested on her thigh, heavy as remorse, and she ran her fingernails through the patchy stubble above his ear. He was always warmer than he looked. Sometimes she daydreamed about what it would feel like to take his wrist, bite hard enough to bruise, and claim some small part of that heat as her own.He cracked one eye open, squinting at her. "It's rude to stare at broken things," he murmured.Carolina snorted. "You don't know the half of it." She pressed her palm against his heartbeat, drumming slow and stubborn beneath his ribs.In the distance, the city coughed to life. Sirens mourned the loss of night, trams ground anxious under their cargo, and someone spilled a dozen bottles in the all

On Tuesday the rain started and didn’t stop for sixteen hours. Carolina’s phone died at noon, and at two the power flickered and limped out. Across the silent bakery, she heard Niko pacing, the soft tread of over-washed socks and the whistle of breath through their teeth. She found them in the staff closet, perched in the dark on an upturned milk crate, knees hugged to their chest.“It’s just a storm,” she said, but she kept her voice low, in case it wasn’t.Niko glanced up. “I know. I just—” They trailed off, shaking their head hard enough to whip hair in their eyes.Carolina crouched. “I’ll keep watch, okay?”After a long quiet, Niko nodded, and when she stood, they followed her into the kitchen, where the gas stove still worked, and together they made grilled cheese in silence but for the pop of butter and the scrape of spatula across cast iron.The rain rattled the shop windows like wet gravel. The whole city felt peeled and raw, as if under permanent surveillance. Carolina leaned

After the bluebells, silence. Not the kind that meant peace, but the kind that pulsed under the surface, watchful, tensed for something new. In the hush, Carolina found herself waking before dawn with a need to move, or to hit something, or maybe just to run. The city felt different: slower, yes, but also as if it watched her with all its windows, waiting to see what she’d do next.For three days, she waited for the other shoe to drop.Instead, Niko started painting portraits on the blacked-out bakery window, one face after another in thick blue and cloud white. The twins invented a tea from the bluebells, bitter and floral, which they swore would make you see the future if you let it steep long enough. Mira came every afternoon, reading recipes and old magazines aloud while she chopped fruit or rolled out dough. Even Olivine showed up now and then, usually with a borrowed guitar and stories about the lives she lived between midnight and morning.It would’ve been easy, Carolina suppos