All Chapters of Alpha’s Forbidden Mate: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The new city woke hungry and unpredictable, more wild animal than civilization—a fact underlined by the way it swelled and mutated every day. Carolina, who had never before craved steadiness, now found herself flinching from each new electric outburst, each mini-riot, each fevered celebration. She chalked it up to lack of sleep, the recent gunshot, maybe Lyme exposure. But the ache behind her eyes grew by the hour, and a sour lurch pulled at her belly most mornings until past noon, as if she’d swallowed something malignant.The first time she woke up retching, Lyra glowered at her from the blanketless mattress and announced, “You’re falling apart, boss.”“I’ll survive,” Carolina growled, flushing the stained water down the market-house drain. But after the third straight morning, Marcus—who had not forgotten his place as armchair medic—left a battered first-aid kit by her cot. Inside, alongside the standard pills and battered scissors, was a brightly colored box scavenged from somewhe

Briony was the last one awake. She’d traded her overalls for a mismatched suit—coat two sizes too big, sleeves rolled and stained—and sat on the roof picking at a tin of beans. She didn’t notice Carolina at first, or maybe she was just pretending not to, chewing slowly, eyes on the mist-shrouded towers. From this angle, the city could have been anything: a graveyard, a cathedral, an ugly diamond.“Can’t sleep?” Carolina offered, settling down beside her.Briony shifted, considered her. “I can sleep anywhere. Just don’t like to.” She scooped a spoonful of cold beans. “You’re not drinking. Kind of obvious what that means.”Carolina let the accusation hang, testing how it fit her skin. “I’m not making it a thing.”Briony shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Only question is: you gonna stay put, or you gonna run?”“I’m not running,” Carolina said, and even she was surprised that it came out true.Briony risked a smile, lips quirking. “So what’s it like?”Carolina thought about the ball of cells ins

The construction started the day after the last blackout. Riss, true to her word, had cobbled together a crew of greasers and ex-military with the kind of knowhow that survived in blue-edged memories instead of text. She even wrangled a pair of solar roofers from the outskirts, their gear so clean it looked stolen from a museum. Carolina had expected resistance: turf squabbles, sabotage, even a mutiny. But the pack surprised her, maybe because they wanted a place to last.First, the roof: patched with triple-lap membranes, then armored with photovoltaic sheeting that shivered with new power as soon as the clouds thinned. At night, the school glowed, a signal fire to every refugee and opportunist in the hurricane districts. Carolina oversaw the operation from the nest above the gym, watching the lines snake out and the panels go up. It made her dizzy to think of how fragile the place had been, how easily one storm could’ve drowned them in the dark.Second came the windows—stormproof, b

The elevator was out—iced shut at the rail; they took the stairs, two at a time, feeding off the urgency of a day that didn’t let up. Xander pushed open the apartment door with his shoulder, nearly sending it off the hinge. Carolina followed, warmth slapping her face after so much bone-cold public.Inside, the air was thick with new baby, leftover broth, and the faint metal of repair work. Morgan was with Riss and Briony for the night—Lyra’s idea, so Xander and Carolina could “role-play being alone, like the old days.” The last glass from dinner sat, untouched, on the windowsill; beyond it, shards of city light glimmered in refrozen puddles.Xander looked at her, the mask of Alpha slipping the second they were alone. For a heartbeat, she wondered if she’d recognize who he really was anymore. But he held her gaze with a hunger so naked and honest she felt it throb in her teeth.They never made it to the bedroom. Xander pressed her against the kitchen counter, the formica gritty against

Book twoShe woke to silver moonlight tremoring on the ceiling and the taste of gunmetal in her mouth. Carolina kept herself still, counting the heartbeats it took to clear the sleep-fog and gauge whether the thud in the pipes was the old radiator or a warning.Xander wasn’t beside her. The mattress, a patchworked thing of scavenged springs and layered comforters, still bore his indentation—but there was no heat, none of the feral pulse that always lingered at her back. She lifted Morgan’s arm from her waist, extricated herself, and padded into the hall, toes curled against the cold plank floor.There was blood in the air.She found Xander at the door, backlit in mercury streetlight, shirtless, flecked with someone else’s red. His chest still heaved with the tail of adrenaline. On the landing was a second body, barely adolescent, curled in the fetal position around a wound in the side. Xander had stripped off one of his own socks to tangle around the kid’s arm as a tourniquet.Carolin