All Chapters of Alpha Raphael's Second Chance Mate : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

RAPHAELI watched as she walked past me like I wasn't there, her eyes burning with hatred and hurt. I haven't seen this part of her, at least not yet.I had never imagined that she would be this cold, this filled with hatred as our eyes met and she walked past me. I stood in the corridor, still observing her. My hand was still on the banister from where I had just come down the stairs. I had expected anger, tears, maybe another confrontation, some version of the fire I knew lived in her, but not this, not that flat unwavering look that said she had already made a decision somewhere in herself and closed a door I didn't know I needed open. My chest pulled tight, as I turned back toward my room. The engagement decorations were still up in the main hall below, lights warm, flowers everywhere, Serena's voice echoes from somewhere in the crowd, laughing at something. I kept walking. At the top of the corridor I stopped. My mind went back to earlier in the stairwell, Nora on one knee

The logs covered six months of Southern Pack council activity, every meeting, every internal decision, every piece of intelligence that had moved through official channels, spread across the desk in precise order as Damon placed the last file down at seven in the morning. Raphael stood at the head of the table with his hands braced on the surface, his eyes moving through the records without speaking, his jaw set hard enough that the line of it was visible from across the room. Nora on the other hand stood to his left, close enough that their arms nearly touched over the files, it was close enough that when she reached for one record her sleeve brushed his, neither of them moving apart.She pulled the first cross-reference sheet toward her, the dates down the left column matching perfectly against Serena's outgoing messages in the phone record beside them, each date highlighted in red where the two matched, eleven out of eleven."Every single leak," Nora said, her finger moving dow

Marcus walked into the study without knocking, and the man behind him had to be carried in.Two Ashveil warriors held him up between them. His head hung down. Blood had dried dark along the side of his face. Nora's stomach dropped the second she saw him. Raphael was already moving, pulling out a chair, while shouting for Daniel down the hallway."He insisted on coming himself," Marcus said. His voice sounded rough, tired. "I told him to stay behind. He wouldn't listen.""You should have made him listen," Raphael said, easing the man into the chair."Try making Elias do anything he doesn't want to do." Marcus rubbed a hand over his face. "He got further than any of us. Three relay points before they caught up to him."Nora bent down a little to look at the injured man's face. He looked young. His jaw was swollen on one side. His shirt was torn at the collar, like someone had grabbed him hard enough to rip it."What did he find?" she asked.Marcus didn't answer right away.That alone to

Greenwood They reached the gates of Greenwood a little after noon.Nora saw them before she even fully processed where they were, and her chest tightened at the sight of the trees, the road, the pack she had once called home. Beside her, Raphael slowed his horse, his eyes already scanning the warriors lined up ahead.For a legal handover, a father collecting his son with proper documents, Kael had brought at least thirty men. They stood in loose formation across the grounds, arms crossed, watching them come."That's not a welcome party," Damon muttered from Raphael's other side."No," Raphael said. "It isn't."Nora barely heard him. Her eyes had already found Lena, standing near the entrance of the main building, and in her arms, wrapped in a blue blanket, was Eli.Her whole body locked up.He saw her first. Small arms shot out toward her, his little fingers opening and closing in the air, that same reach he always gave her when he wanted to be held. A sound came out of him, high a

The LetterThe letter was on the desk between them, sealed with the Elder council's stamp, and Nora barely noticed Raphael's face when he opened it. She was still folding a small blanket on the chair, one of Eli's, the one she couldn't bring herself to put away yet.She looked up when the room went too quiet.Raphael read the letter in silence, his eyes moving down the page once, then a second time, and something in his shoulders locked into place that she hadn't seen since the day they'd told him about Eli's DNA results."What is it?" she asked.He didn't answer. He set the letter down on the desk, careful, like it might explode if he moved too fast.She crossed the room and picked it up herself.Serena's name jumped out first. Then the words after it, laid out in formal Elder council language, cold and official. A claim of pregnancy. A claim naming Raphael as the father. Three independent witnesses. An external Alpha authority is already involved.Nora read it twice.She put it back