All Chapters of What The Alpha Lost: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

(Amara's POV) "You're quiet tonight," my father said, setting down his fork. "I'm thinking." "About?" I looked around the dinner table, my mother ladling out seconds nobody had asked for, my father watching me with the particular patient attention that had always made it impossible to hide anything from him for long, the kitchen smelling like the same pot roast recipe that hadn't changed in twenty years. "About why I came back," I said. "I thought you came back because you finished school," my mother said, not quite looking up from the pot. "I did. But that's not the only reason, and we all kind of know it." My father set down his water glass. "You don't have to explain yourself to us, sweetheart." "I know. I want to, though. I think I need to say it out loud, actually, so it stops living in my head as this vague, embarrassing thing I don't examine too closely." My mother finally sat, folding her hands on the table, giving me her full attention in a way that felt almost unbea

(Amara's POV) "You're the new doctor." I looked up from the supply closet, arms full of gauze I'd been recounting for the third time that morning just to have something to do with my hands, to find a man in the doorway I didn't recognize dark hair, kind eyes, a white coat that still had the stiff, unworn look of something recently purchased. "I'm a doctor," I said. "New is relative. I used to work here, actually, before I left for school." "Liam Chen." He held out a hand. "I started about eight months ago. Nobody mentioned there'd be a second doctor joining, or I'd have introduced myself properly instead of ambushing you in a supply closet." "Amara Hayes." I shook his hand, his grip warm and steady. "And this is a pretty normal place for me to be ambushed, honestly. I spend more time in this closet than any other room in the building." "Counting gauze?" "For the third time this morning. It's either recount gauze or think about things I'd rather not think about, and gauze doesn't

(Damon's POV) "Not as coworkers." Three words, drifting out of the clinic office through a door Chen hadn't bothered to close all the way, and they hit me like a fist to the sternum before I'd even registered what I was hearing. I stopped in the hallway, one hand still raised to knock, and listened to my own wolf go very, very still. Mate, he said. Not a growl. Something quieter, more dangerous. He's asking for what's ours. She's not ours, I reminded him, the same argument I'd been having on a loop for weeks now, worn thin from repetition. She rejected that the day I called her 'no one' in front of the whole pack. Doesn't matter. He shouldn't be asking. I pushed the door open before I'd fully decided to. "Amara." Her head snapped up, and for one unguarded second I saw something flicker across her face not quite guilt, not quite surprised, something complicated I didn't have the right to try to name. Chen stood close to her desk, closer than colleagues usually stood, and I watc

(Damon's POV) "I need to talk to you." I'd crossed half the gathering hall before I'd fully decided to do it, my mother's words still ringing in my skull risk something real and some reckless, cornered part of me had decided this was the night to find out what that actually meant. Amara turned from her conversation with Chen, surprise flickering across her face before it hardened into something more guarded. "Now's not a good time, Damon." "It's important." "Everything's always important to you lately." But she excused herself from Chen anyway, murmuring something about pack business, and followed me away from the hall's noise and light, out through a side door into the cool evening air. I led her toward a stand of old oak trees at the edge of the grounds, out of sight from the windows, out of earshot from the music and chatter still drifting from inside. "This had better actually be important," she said, following a few steps behind, arms already crossed against the night air.

(Amara's POV) "You're standing in the corner of the clearing like a disgruntled cat," my mother said, elbowing me gently toward the firelight. "You're supposed to be enjoying this." "I'm observing." "You're brooding. There's a difference, and you're doing the second one." I let her tug me closer to the bonfire anyway, the whole pack gathered under a sky gone clear and silver, the full moon hanging fat and close above the tree line. I'd always thought the moon was something of a liar promising hope and renewal to wolves who howled at it, when really it was just a cold, indifferent rock that happened to pull at our blood on a schedule. Tonight, for the first time in longer than I wanted to admit, I was almost ready to believe it anyway. "You're doing it again," my father said, appearing at my other side with a mug he pointedly didn't offer me he knew better than to hand me anything hot before a run. "That thing where you're here, but your head's somewhere else." "I'm here, Dad."