All Chapters of The Alpha's Cursed Bride: Chapter 31 - Chapter 33

The Full HearingEmily's POVThe full council chamber held twenty one Alphas.I had seen three at the emergency hearing. Twenty one was different. Twenty one was every significant pack in the region represented, every pair of eyes in the room carrying the weight of whatever the next few hours decided. The chamber was the same stone-walled space but it was fuller and louder and heavier in the particular way that rooms get when the decisions made inside them are going to be felt outside them for a generation.I walked in beside Lucas. He was formal today, the closest thing to dressed up I had seen him, which still mostly looked like himself with a cleaner jacket. He moved through the room with the particular ease of a man who is used to being the most powerful person present and has long since stopped needing to demonstrate it. Beside him I felt, for the first time, not small but proportionate. Like I was exactly the size I was supposed to be.My parents were in the gallery. My mother h

The First ShiftLucas's POVCaius went completely silent.Not the silence of waiting. The silence of witnessing. He pressed himself to the very front of my consciousness and stayed there, watching with every bit of attention he had.Emily stood on the hill with the territory spread out below her and the moon above and she closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed from the deliberate deepening of focus that I recognised from wolves about to shift. The moment of letting go that every wolf described differently but that always looked the same from the outside, a particular quality of stillness that was not passive but profoundly active.The light came first, softer than it had been in the medical wing or on the road, even warmer. It moved across her skin from her chest outward in slow, even waves, like ripples from a stone dropped in water. Her hair lifted slightly at the ends even though the air was still.Then she shifted.I had seen hundreds of wolves shift. The fastest could do it in und