All Chapters of The Deaf Alpha’s Unexpected Mate : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

KAELThe world had been silent for three years, two months, and sixteen days.I kept count the way a prisoner marks walls. Scratches in the mind, etched into the space behind my eyes where sound used to live. Not because I missed it (I told myself I didn't miss it) but because an Alpha who loses track of time loses track of power, and power was the only currency I had left.I stood at the window of my study, watching Mohan drill the recruits in the courtyard below. His mouth moved, sharp, clipped commands I'd once been able to hear from three floors up, and the young wolves snapped into formation like marionettes on strings. He was good. Precise. The kind of Beta who didn't need his Alpha's ears to run a war.Which was fortunate, because his Alpha's ears were rotting in silence.I pressed my fingertips against the glass. Cold. That was something I could still feel. Temperature. Texture. The vibrations of footsteps through the stone floors when someone approached my study door. I'd lea

SERAPHINEThe summons arrived at breakfast.I was in the kitchen, scrubbing porridge from the bottom of the communal pot, a task that technically wasn't mine but had become mine by the quiet, persistent logic of the orphanage: if you're the one who doesn't complain, you're the one who gets asked. My hands were raw from the hot water, my left hip aching from standing too long on the uneven stone floor, and I was thinking about the painting.I was always thinking about the painting.Not the one I'd delivered yesterday; that was done, gone, out of my hands and into a world where it would probably lean against a wall in some corridor and be forgotten. I was thinking about the next one. The one taking shape behind my eyes in the hours between sleep and waking. A forest scene. Silver birches in winter, their bark like old bones, a single wolf moving through the trees with its head low. Something about the loneliness of it appealed to me, the idea that even wolves, who lived in packs, could

SERAPHINEI should have said no.The thought circled through my mind like a bird trapped in a room, beating its wings against the walls of every rational argument I could construct. I should have said no when he offered the commission. Should have said no when he agreed to twenty per cent without real resistance, a concession that came too easily from a man who negotiated territorial borders for a living. Should have said no when he'd held my hand and something electrical had raced up my arm and settled behind my ribs like a second heartbeat.I should have said no, because powerful men don't offer orphans anything without expecting repayment, and the currency they demand is never the kind you can afford.But I'd said yes.And now I was standing in the common room of the orphanage, my back pressed against the wall, trying to explain to Ally why this was a rational decision and not the first step toward my own destruction."Twenty per cent increase in provisions," I said. "That's enough

KAEL"You're staring," Seraphine said, without looking away from the window."I'm assessing.""Assessing what?""Whether that dress will survive a council session." It wouldn't survive what I actually intended to say to Draven Cole, but that wasn't information she needed yet.She didn't answer. Her hands stayed folded too tight in her lap, knuckles pale, and I let the silence sit between us, counting the mile markers of my own territory sliding past the window. Trade routes I'd built from nothing. Mines that fed three currencies. Shipping lanes that made half the twelve territories richer than kingdoms three times their size. None of it mattered in a room I couldn't hear properly, and none of it would matter tonight if Draven walked out of Crescent Hall believing I was as broken as he wanted the council to think.Crescent Hall received us the way it always did. Cold stone slick with torchlight, the low collective growl of nine Alphas who did not want to breathe the same air. Two seat

SERAPHINEI couldn't tell you how my night was, because I never slept. Not once. I lay under sheets softer than anything I'd ever touched, staring at a ceiling I couldn't see in the dark, and Mohan's voice kept circling back no matter how many times I tried to push it out.You have no idea what you did today.His hand was still there, a phantom pressure against my throat every time I swallowed. I kept touching the spot, checking for marks that weren't there, because the fear had left something behind even if his fingers hadn't bruised.By the time grey light crept through the curtains, I gave up pretending sleep was coming. I sat up, and the first thing I noticed was that my old dress, the faded, mended one I'd worn every day for three years, was gone. In its place, folded over the arm of a couch I hadn't even registered the night before, sat something new. Pale gold, soft to the touch, the kind of fabric that didn't fray at the seams the moment you looked at it the wrong way.I put i