All Chapters of The Alpha Who Forgot Me: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

"BRACE!"The word was barely out of Kai’s mouth before the world turned white.The tank’s cannon didn’t explode in the traditional sense; it didn't produce a fireball or a cloud of smoke. Instead, it unleashed a beam of concentrated, molten silver energy so bright it bleached the color from the night. It shot across the distance between us, moving faster than the sound of its own screaming engine.It hit the asphalt five feet to our left.There was no boom, only a violent, ear-splitting hiss that sounded like the sky itself tearing open. The road, the steel guardrail, and the ancient pine trees standing beside us simply ceased to exist. They didn't burn; they sublimated. Vaporized into superheated steam and ash in the blink of an eye. The air warped from the heat, twisting the trees in the distance into grotesque, melting shapes.The shockwave hit the armored SUV like a physical blow from a giant’s fist. We were tos

REMY POV"Then let's go hunting."Nash’s voice was a low growl, stripped of all warmth, focused entirely on the primal need to retrieve what was stolen. He didn't look back at the ravine where Kai lay hidden beneath the ferns. He didn't look at the burning SUV. He looked only at the tracks in the mud—the small, bare footprints of his son overlapping the heavy, tactical tread of the woman who had taken him.We moved into the tree line, leaving the road behind. The forest here was dense, a choking maze of ancient pines and grasping briars that tore at our clothes and skin. The air was heavy, smelling of approaching rain and the lingering, metallic stench of the crash.Nash was stumbling. Every third step, his boot caught on a root, and I had to catch him, my shoulder screaming in protest as I took his weight. His fever was burning out of control. The skin of his back, where I supported him, was searing hot, damp with sweat that chilled instantly in the night air."I can walk," he grunted

NASH POVThe silence in the Temple of Morana wasn’t empty. It was heavy.It pressed against my eardrums like deep water, a suffocating blanket of grey nothingness that soaked into my pores and weighed down my limbs. I stood at the base of the dais, my hands clasped behind my back, watching the prisoner.The woman.Remy.She hung from the Pillars of Silence, her wrists shackled in silver that burned the air around them. Her head was bowed, her dark hair falling over her face like a curtain, shielding her from the dim, sickly green light of the necrotic candles that lined the bone-walls.She should have been weeping. She should have been begging.That is what Veronica said she would do. Veronica said this thing—this shapeshifter, this parasite wearing the face of my dead mate—was weak. A coward who used magic and deceit to hide her true nature.But the woman wasn’t begging. She was breathi

REMY POVSleep didn't come. It hovered at the edges of my vision, a tantalizing shadow, but the cold would not allow it to sink in. Without my jacket, the air in the Deadlands bit through the thin fabric of my shirt, sinking into my marrow. I hugged Sayler tighter, pulling his small, warm body against my chest, absorbing his heat as much as offering it. He was dead to the world, his breathing a soft, rhythmic rasp that was the only living sound in the vast, crushing silence.Across the clearing, Nash sat propped against the dead tree. He hadn’t slept either. I could feel the weight of his gaze, a heavy, physical thing pressing against my skin. He was watching me. Not with desire, and not with the cold calculation of the spell, but with a hunger that terrified me. He was starving for a glance, a nod, a sign that the wall between us might crack. He was desperate to be seen as something other than a monster.I refused to give him that satisfa

REMY POVThe Deadlands did not know the mercy of night. The bruised purple sky remained fixed in a permanent, sickening twilight, denying the world the solace of darkness or the hope of dawn. Time here didn't march; it oozed, a slow, viscous trickle of suffering marked only by the deterioration of the man lying on the cold stone floor.At first, the smell was simply the Deadlands—the sharp, biting tang of sulfur and the dry, dusty taste of ancient ash that coated the back of the throat. It was an unpleasant scent, but a familiar one, a constant background radiation to this hellscape. But as the hours dragged on, a new fragrance began to permeate the small, suffocating confines of the cave.It started faint, a hidden note lurking beneath the sulfur, barely a whisper. Then, it grew.Sweet. Cloying. Rotting.It was the smell of fruit left in the sun too long, of meat that had forgotten its purpose and turned against itself. It crept o