All Chapters of The Alpha I Saved Ruined Me: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The Table They Built Against MeTalia’s POVI was pressing a damp cloth against my hand when I heard a knock on the door.My skin had settled into a deep, throbbing ache. I had torn a strip from the cloth on the bed and soaked it in the cool water from the wash basin, and that was the best I could do.I heard the knock again.I went and opened the door. The maid standing in the doorway was one of the two who had dragged me to Monica’s chamber. She looked at my face with disinterest.“The Alpha has sent for you,” she said. “You are expected to have dinner with the royal family.”I stared at her and chuckled.“Is this another one of your plans?” I asked. “Are you taking me somewhere to finish what your mistress started?”She didn’t even blink. “I don’t have any plans, I’m just here to deliver the Alpha’s message.” She looked at the cloth wrapped around my hand without any particular reaction. “Clean yourself up and behave yourself at the table. Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”She mea

What the Mountain KnowsTalia’s POVThe physician came in the morning.He was an older man, quiet and careful, he looked like the kind of person who kept his thoughts behind his eyes. The maid who accompanied him stood near the door with her arms folded and a frown. She watched every movement the physician made and every movement I made, steady and without blinking.He unwrapped my hand and looked at it without reacting, which told me it looked as bad as it felt. He cleaned it with something that made me press my lips together very hard, then began to apply a herb compress, his fingers working efficiently.My ribs ached where I had hit the table edge. My shoulder had stiffened overnight from the way I had fallen. There were places on my body that the physician hadn’t looked at and couldn’t see, and I was thinking about how to change that while the maid’s eyes stayed fixed on me from across the room.I said nothing about the rest of it.Instead, while the physician was occupied with my

The Dead They Leave BehindTalia’s POVI found them around the bend of the mountain path, where the rocks flattened into a narrow ledge overlooking the lower valley.Valik was crouched down with three guards around him, all of them looking at something on the ground. I slowed as I approached, my eyes adjusting to the angle, and then I saw what they were looking at and I stopped walking entirely.A female body, from what I could tell, lying on her side on the cold stone, one arm stretched out like she had been reaching for something when she fell.Kneeling close to the body was a woman I didn’t recognize. A wolf, from the way she looked, from the way the guards around her had positioned themselves with that specific tension of people managing something unpredictable. Her hands were covered in blood from the wrists down. Her fangs had pressed through her lower lip, not fully extended but not retracted either, sitting at that in-between point that meant her wolf was close to the surface.

The Bell That Speaks for the DeadTalia’s POVThe guards dropped me on Monica’s chamber floor.I caught myself on my left hand and stayed there for a moment, not because I couldn’t get up, but because moving too fast would have cost me more pain than the moment was worth.Monica dismissed the guards with a wave and looked down at me.“Why are you still breathing?” she asked. Not angry, but genuinely curious.“Are you scared?” I asked with a chuckle. “What?” She asked curiously.“It’s very obvious that you want me dead because you feel defeated, even though Valik is close to you… he still feels distant.” I mocked her. “Anyways, I told Valik about the rope and note you sent to me.”Fear moved behind her eyes. It disappeared so quickly that if I hadn’t been watching for it I would have missed it entirely.Then she laughed.“And?” she said. “What did he do about it?”I said nothing.She crouched down to my level, close enough that I could see the carefulness in her expression, every part

The Mountain’s SecretsTalia’s POVI looked at the contents of that box for a long time, tears started rolling down my cheeks. I have never missed my mother the way I did right now, how would she feel to see her only daughter being treated this way. At that moment, I needed a hug, someone that would tell me that it’s okay and that I would scale through.The scene of Valeria walking in here with her cloth over her nose like my very existence was a deadly disease she didn’t want to contact. Mother and future daughter-in-law, sitting somewhere in this pack having a conversation about the most efficient way for me to stop existing.I picked the box up, walked to the window, and threw itI watched it fall and hit the ground below without looking to see if anyone noticed. Then I turned back to the room, picked up the dirty cloak I had been using as an extra layer on cold nights, pulled it around my shoulders, and left the roomI walked through the corridors, it was busy enough that walking