All Chapters of Kill Me Alpha, Before I Do (Beast Of Flames Book 1): Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Romy POVThe phone belonged to one of the kitchen girls.Not Petra–Petra I liked, and I wasn't going to burn her. It was the one who left her jacket on the south terrace twice a week and spent her break leaning against the service wall scrolling through something that wasn't estate business. I'd borrowed it for eleven minutes on Tuesday while she was in the linen store, sent the message through a relay Xry had set up for exactly this kind of situation, and put it back before she'd finished folding the second sheet.I'd been waiting four days for a response.It came on Saturday morning, through the same relay, routed to a numbered account I could access through Zaric's secondary terminal when he left it unlocked for the forty seconds it took him to refill his coffee.He did it every morning at nine-seventeen. I'd been counting for two weeks.The message was twelve lines. I read it three times in those forty seconds, committed it word for word, and walked out of the study before Zaric

Rowan PovZaric put the report on my desk at eleven in the morning, which meant he had been sitting on it long enough to decide how to present it, which meant it was worse than a straightforward briefing.I was already reading the patrol update from the southern boundary when he came in and set the folder down without being asked to sit, which was also not a good sign."Bette," he said. "Sorrel's assistant."I looked up."She's been coming to the estate three times a week for the dress fittings," Zaric said. "Personal phone, Lyon carrier network, never connected to the estate servers. Someone borrowed it. Six times over the past two weeks, eleven-minute windows each time, always while Bette was inside the fitting room with Sorrel."He tapped the folder. "The messages were routed through three redirects. I caught the third one because the routing sequence used a method I recognised from the syndicate networks I've been mapping since Buston.""Viper's method," he said.I set the patrol r

Romy PovThe library had an entire section on pack lore that nobody had touched in years. I found it three days after my conversation with Rowan.Dust coated the upper shelves. Several books had fused at the spines from years of neglect. The air smelled of old paper and cedar wood.I stood on a ladder, scanning titles.I wasn’t interested in pack history or ancient Alpha bloodlines.I was looking for one thing. How to break a fated mate bond before either person has been marked.There were nine books that mentioned it. Three claimed that severing was impossible, and two contradicted each other so badly that they were almost useless.The remaining four were more promising—old records, disputed rituals, and one particularly ancient text written in a dialect I couldn’t read without help.Ferris produced a translation guide the next morning without asking a single question.By that point, we’d settled

Romy POVI sneezed so hard my eyes watered.Groaning, I reached for the tissue box on the breakfast table and discovered there was only one left.Great.I blew my nose, dropped the tissue beside my plate, and sniffed miserably.By breakfast, my head already hurt in a way that made the dining room chandeliers feel offensive. The sunlight pouring through the windows hit the silverware too brightly.Across from me, Sorrel lowered her tea. “You look awful.”I snorted. “Thank you.”“No, really.”I rolled my eyes.“You say that every morning.”“This time you look like death with prettier hair.”Callum chuckled softly, earning himself a glare from me–one that would've been more intimidating if my eyes hadn't been watering from the runny nose.Rowan looked up from where he sat at the head of the table. His gaze stayed on me longer than everybody else’s had.“You’re cold,” he said.“I’m sitting three feet from a fireplace.” I quipped, shivering slightly.“You’re still cold.”I hated that he was

Romy POVThe second physician arrived Friday afternoon and confirmed everything Dr. Evander had already told us, right down to the tone of cautious optimism that irritated me on instinct.By Saturday I was in a terrible mood about it, and by Sunday I had spent most of the day trying to figure out how to admit I had been wrong about the orchestration without Rowan enjoying the experience too much.I still had not managed it by Monday morning.What I had managed, quietly and without making a production of it, was to stop resisting the wolf every time she surfaced.It had started sometime on Sunday evening. A tiny thing at first. A flicker of warmth beneath my ribs instead of the usual irritation that followed her presence.Every time she stirred, I stopped forcing her back down. I let her stay for a few seconds longer than before. Then a minute. Then longer still.The warmth had stayed with me through the night and into Monday morning, low and constant in my chest. The wolf seemed absur