Semua Bab Taking a Chance with the Crippled Alpha: Bab 11 - Bab 20

Dustan’s POVI didn't think.That was the first mistake.The second was dropping the knife. The third was letting them see my face—see whatever expression had taken up residence there while Elara's voice echoed through my skull like a scream in an empty cathedral.But I was already moving.My hands slammed against the wheels of my chair. Hard. The force of it sent me spinning backward, and I heard Roric scramble to get out of the way."Alpha—""Move."I didn't recognize my own voice. It came from somewhere deeper than my throat. Somewhere primal. Somewhere that hadn't woken up in years.The chair shot towards the cellar stairs. The wheels caught on the uneven stones, nearly tipping me.I had forgotten to switch modes,I was in such a hurry but I didn't slow down. I couldn't slow down. Every second I wasted down here was a second something was happening to her.And I had no fucking clue, why it bothered me so much! "Get off me, motherfuckers!" Her voice again. Clearer now. Closer.And ben

Dustan's POV"Please," I heard a whisper. "Please, I didn't—I wasn't—I was just watching—"A man with shaking knees had crawled to the fireplace during the chaos. He was huddled against the hearth now, both hands wrapped around the iron grate like it could save him. His face was wet with tears. His trousers were wet as well.I took a step towards him.He scrambled backward, his heels slipping on the blood-slick floor. His head connected with the stone mantelpiece, and he cried out. "Please, I'll do anything—anything—I have money—I have—I didn't do anything—"I kept walking.He was still begging when I reached him. Still pleading.His words ran together into a stream of meaningless noise, and I realized with distant clarity that he didn't even know what he was saying anymore. His mouth was just making sounds. Trying to fill the silence before I filled it with something worse.I crouched down until my eyes were level with his.He stared into my face.Into the wolf.Into what looked back

Elara's POVThe day was bright. I sat in the middle of my upper chamber, surrounded by cushions and silks and the gentle hum of female chatter.Sunlight poured through the balcony doors like nothing had changed.Three days. It had been three days.My hair fell in waves over my shoulders, still damp from the bath. Mira worked the comb through the ends. "You have such beautiful hair, my lady," she said, for the third time. "So thick. So strong."I said nothing.At my feet, two other maids knelt on cushions of their own. One was filing my nails. The other was painting them, a pale rose color that I hadn't chosen and didn't care about."Shall I continue with the sonnet, my lady?" asked a third voice. Cora. She sat by the window with a leather-bound book in her lap, her finger tracing the lines of poetry as she read."If you want," I said.She continued. Something about love and loss and the cruelty of fate. The words washed over me like water over stone.One of the maids laughed at some

Dustan's POVThe growl came again. Closer this time. I would have definitely pissed my pants had I been a normal wolf. The Alpha blood in my veins saved my dignity. I didn't think twice. I just ran.My legs pumped beneath me—those same legs that had been useless for years, that had forgotten what it meant to carry a man's weight, that had atrophied and withered while I sat in that chair and played the cripple…They remembered now.Fear is a remarkable teacher. Or whatever miracle. Branches tore at my clothes. Roots reached up to trip me. The forest blurred past in streaks of brown and green and grey, and behind me, I heard it—the heavy, deliberate footfalls of something that had no need to run.I could feel it getting closer. I could feel it's angry breath in the air. It knew I was here.It knew I couldn't outrun it.And that it was enjoying this.My foot caught on something—a stone, a root, I couldn't tell—and I went down hard. My palms scraped against the earth. My chin cracked ag

Dustan's POVI sat in that tree for what felt like hours after the Rogue Lord appeared below me. Though the triple crescent kept me fairly occupied, staying perched like that was literal agony. I tried too hard but I couldn't,for the love of the Goddess, remember where I had seen that symbol before. By this time my muscles had locked up, my hands were cramped from gripping the branch, and my heart was still trying to hammer its way out of my chest.Where had I seen it? All my remaining energy kept meandering that way. I knew it meant something important. But every time I tried to grasp it, it slipped away like smoke through my fingers. As if deliberately cloaked, as if deliberately erased from my memory… though it's silhouette remained. Below me,by now, the Rogue Lord had stopped his circling. His head lifted slightly, and I caught a glimpse of his annoyance.The way his strong jaw clenched, the way his ears swiveled forward, the dark intelligence in the eye...he was definitely pi