All Chapters of Alpha’s Forbidden Mate: Chapter 41 - Chapter 46

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