All Chapters of Alpha’s Forbidden Mate: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The first day after was always the worst. The way every look sideways had a question folded into it—How long have you been hiding this? What will you do now? She let each stare slide off her as she crossed the muddy lot, Xander at her side, the two of them a gravity well for gossip. She was not unused to attention; she just hated the kind that involved her feelings.The training field was a wet sprawl of grass, cordoned off by battered fencing and the odd, half-collapsed barricade. Most of the others were already assembled, their breath rising in steamy clouds, half-listening to Hayden’s attempt at a pep talk while they passed a dented thermos around. Carolina caught the drift of cinnamon and remembered, faintly, the last time she’d let herself want something as basic as comfort.Hayden’s voice broke over the field: “—and that’s why if you aren’t at least pretending to care today, someone’s going to get their ass handed to them.” She glanced up, spotted Carolina and Xander, and someho

The return to the house was a wet blur. They let the darkness muffle their footfalls and pretended not to notice the twin beams of porchlights tracking them over the marshy lawn. Xander’s shoulders dripped, a fresh stripe of mud painting his cheek. Carolina caught the turn of his jaw, the way he kept glancing at her as if to confirm she was real, still tethered to his side. It made her feel less like a person and more like a crisis he’d learned to nurse. The foyer was empty, except for a pair of discarded boots and the echo of a door closing somewhere above. They shed their coats in a heap, careful not to touch, but then Xander’s hand found her wrist and, as if remembering itself, held there. It was nothing like the first time. That had been reckless, gritted-teeth and bruised lips, an animal need that didn’t apologize or linger. But now there was a hush to the world, a deliberate pause, like the space between lightning and thunder. Xander’s

Carolina’s room was the smallest, a hutch above the covered porch where the dampness crept in through the carpet and the windows wouldn’t latch. She sat cross-legged on her duvet with the envelope, turning it by its corners, staring at the blunt, ceremonial print of her name and the snake-trail return address. She had already read the letter twice, but it kept calling her back in the way only a wound could.This would be the third time—this time, out loud.She braced herself, then began, doggedly, in a whisper: “I know you think you’re lost. You’re not. The hunger is the answer, not the problem.” She choked, skipped ahead. “You are more like me than you think. I do not regret what I did. Only that you hated me for it.”On the second page, a crease caught her fingernail, and for a moment she was a child again: sitting on a stool in a greasy kitchen, forced to lift her chin so her mother could pinch her lips apart and see what she’d been chewing. There was always suspicion. Cheeks flush

The whole house reeked of anticipation. Even the walls, unsentimental and battered, seemed to vibrate with it. Carolina could barely breathe for the static charge between bodies, for the way every floorboard groaned underfoot like it was being broken in for the first time. There were new faces in the corridors, unfamiliar scents that ran wild along memory and sent a shudder through her. Guests, mostly—elders in sharp wool suits and ancient leather, a handful of uncollared juveniles still trying on their various hungers.The run took place at the edge of the preserve, where the woods surrendered to rock and the air burned with the onset of real winter. Marcus stood at the mouth of the path, flanked by Lyra and two of the stone-faced councilmen. He gave no pep talk; just turned and started running, hungry as a spear through the trees.The pack followed in a messy, beautiful surge. Xander pulled ahead almost instantly, legs piston-steady. Carolina lagged, her lungs still sore from yester

The house was the deadest it had been in weeks, every room emptied of all but the gnawing sense of a new order. Even the wolves downstairs had gone quiet, as if afraid of incurring their successors’ wrath by making a sound. Carolina and Xander threaded the steps up toward the alpha’s floor, their footsteps the slowest thunder.He unlocked his door. It was a utilitarian space, desk, bed, and a closet still half-packed and unpacked from moves he’d never committed to. She crossed the threshold and hovered near the window, arms folded. Xander watched her, leaned back against the door like he wasn’t sure if this was the right play, only that it was the only one left.She turned. “You going to brood all night, or do you want the rest of your prize?”He blinked, half-wild, then grinned with an awkwardness that was somehow dead-on charming. “I think you’d tear my throat out if I said ‘mine’ two more times tonight.”“Try me,” she said.The first kiss crashed through her—nothing careful, just t