All Chapters of Claimed by the Triplet Alphas: Breeder for the Lycan King: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

KiaThe plan came together in the six minutes it took Declan to walk me through the tree line to where a single horse waited, saddled and quiet, its breath making small clouds in the mountain dark."The battle at the perimeter," I said. "You arranged it.""Morgan owed me a favour," Declan said. "Enough wolves to make it real, not enough to cause serious casualties. A distraction, not a war.""And if someone died," I said."Nobody died," he said. "Morgan's people are disciplined. They know the difference between a raid and a fight."I looked at the horse. I looked at the packet in my hands. I looked at the dark tree line between me and the estate where lights were multiplying and voices were sharpening into the specific urgency of people who had just understood something had gone wrong."The faking," I said. "You mentioned a way to make them believe I was gone. Permanently.""The east creek," he said. "Runs fast this time of year from the mountain melt. Deep enough. If your jacket is f

KiaHer name was Sable.She ran a small practice from a narrow building three streets from the market, the kind of place with no sign, identified only by the blue cloth hung over the door that the women of Endra's east side all seemed to understand without explanation.She had found Sable the same way she found most things in Endra, by listening at the tea house counter while the city talked about itself. Three separate women in four days had mentioned Sable's name in the context of difficult pregnancies, complicated situations, questions that other practitioners answered with judgment rather than help.She doesn't ask where you've been, one of them had said. She only asks where you're going.Kia had walked to the blue cloth door the next morning.Sable was small and somewhere between fifty and seventy, the kind of age that was distributed evenly rather than concentrated in the face, with brown hands that had delivered more than she could co

XanderHe felt her at the edge of the northern human territories.Not clearly with the precision of close proximity. More like the sense of a signal through significant interference, the bond is present but attenuated, carrying distance in its texture the way a voice carries distance when heard through walls.Alive and moving. Frightened in a managed, functional way, the specific fear of someone who was scared and had decided to be competent about it.He stood at the territory boundary marker, his hands in his jacket pockets, Bren two steps behind him, and he breathed in the cold air and tried to locate the direction of the signal the way you orient toward a sound that is just at the edge of hearing.East.Possibly south-east."She's beyond the boundary," Bren said quietly."Yes," Xander said."The Volkovs," Bren said carefully. "They don't know you can feel her.""No," Xander said."You're not going to tell them," Bren said."Not yet," Xander said."Because" Bren started."Because if

KiaSable had a habit of making tea before difficult conversations.Kia had noticed this in the three weeks of appointments, the specific sequence of it, the small copper pot, the measured herbs, the particular attention Sable paid to the temperature, as if the making of the tea was the preparation for whatever needed to be said rather than a comfort offered afterward.Today the tea took longer than usual."Sit down," Sable said, without turning from the stove.Kia sat.The examination room was warm and small and smelled of dried herbs and beeswax candles and the faint mineral smell of old stone buildings that had absorbed decades of human life. Outside the narrow window, Endra was conducting its mid-morning business, cart wheels on cobblestone, vendors calling, the ordinary percussion of a city that didn't know or care what was happening in this small room.Sable brought two cups to the table and sat across from Kia and wrapped her hands around her own cup and looked at her patient w

LiamThe village of Cress was three territories east of the pack boundary and had a tavern that served information alongside its beer if you ordered correctly.Liam had been here twice. The first time two weeks ago, following a rumour about a dark-haired pregnant woman who had asked about routes east. The second time today, following the specific thread of that rumour to its source, a driver who ran supply carts between the human settlements and had sharp eyes and a better memory than most."She was polite," the driver said. He was a broad man in his fifties with the sun-worn look of someone who spent most of his time outdoors. "Asked about Endra specifically. I wanted to know about the east market district. Whether it was the kind of place a person could be is unremarkable.""What did you tell her?" Liam said."That everywhere has remarkable people if you look right," the driver said. "And that Endra's east district was the best place in the region to be left alone if you wanted it."