All Chapters of What The Alpha Lost: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

The plane’s wheels hit the tarmac with a jolt that rattled my bones, but it was nothing compared to the earthquake happening in my chest.Home.I pressed my forehead to the cold window, watching the familiar grey drizzle streak across the glass. Five years. Five years of anatomy textbooks, sleepless nights in residency, and the sterile scent of antiseptic. I’d left at eighteen, a gangly, heartbroken girl with a chip on her shoulder and a suitcase full of ambition. Now, at twenty-three, I was Dr. Amara Chen. Board-certified, accomplished and whole.Or so I kept telling myself.The woman staring back at me in the dark reflection of the window wasn’t the same one who’d sobbed through airport security half a decade ago. That girl had been all sharp elbows and sharper insecurities, desperate to prove she was more than just the pack’s healer’s daughter. She’d wanted to escape the shadow of her mother’s reputation, the weight of everyone’s expectations, the suffocating smallness of a tow

The pack house was too loud.It was always too loud these days. Someone's kid was shrieking in the corner. A group of young wolves were arguing about patrol rotations. The ancient floorboards creaked under the weight of too many bodies, too much history, too many expectations I'd never asked for.I sat on the worn leather couch, a beer bottle sweating in my hand, and tried to remember the last time I'd felt quiet inside my own head.Valerie pressed herself against my side, her perfume thick enough to choke on. She was laughing at something Lydia had said, her sharp nails tracing lazy patterns on my forearm. To anyone watching, we probably looked like a picture. The strong soon to be Alpha and his beautiful mate. The envy of the pack.They didn't know that her touch felt like sandpaper on my skin.“…and then he said he'd never seen a wolf shift that fast, can you believe it?" Valerie's voice cut through my thoughts. She tilted her chin up, waiting for my reaction.I grunted. Nonc

The bathroom door clicks open.I don’t move from the window and don’t turn around. My reflection stares back at me from the dark glass, my jaw locked, my hands shoved deep into my pockets so Valerie won’t see them shaking.She padded across the room in that deliberate, soft way of hers. The way she always does when she knows she’s done something and wants to manage my reaction before it happens.“Damon.” Her voice was honey over broken glass. “You’re upset with me.”I let the silence stretch. Outside, the pack house grounds lay still under a bruised twilight sky. Somewhere beyond those trees, Amara was driving away. Or maybe she’d already reached the highway. Maybe she was already gone.The thought carved something out of my chest.“I’m not upset,” I said finally. My own voice sounded foreign. Flat. “I’m trying to understand.”Valerie came up behind me. I felt her hand on my shoulder blade, light, tentative, the touch of someone who knew exactly how much pressure to apply. Two