All Chapters of The Deaf Alpha’s Unexpected Mate : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

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