All Chapters of Bite Me Harder, Alpha: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Kieran Byrne puts six feet of space between us and turns to face the bookshelf as it offended him.I stand there with my pulse hammering in my ears and my skin still burning where his nose grazed my neck, and I have to physically remind myself how to breathe.“Right,” I say, to nobody.“You should sleep.” His voice is gravelly. He doesn’t turn around.“You just had your face in my neck.”“I’m aware.”“And now you want me to sleep.”“Yes.”I stare at the back of his head. At the rigid line of his shoulders. The way his hands are gripping the bookshelf is the only thing keeping him in the room.“Okay,” I say pleasantly. “Goodnight, Alpha.”I walk out.I get all the way to the east wing corridor before I lean against the wall and press both hands over my face and make a sound that would embarrass me if anyone heard it.***The room they’ve given me is nice, which is annoying, because I wanted to hate it.Big timber bed. A window that looks out over the forest. A blanket that smells like

He’s gone in under four seconds.Kieran’s complexion grows paler, a sign that something had slipped through his control, and then he dashes out the door. I’m standing in the middle of the east wing, listening to his footsteps fade away at the end of the hallway.I count to five, then I put on my shoes.The lodge at 1 a.m. is a different animal.During the day, wolves move through every corridor: eating, training, sparring, and living. At night, the building breathes quietly.I follow the sound of voices.The main hall. Kieran, Maddox, and Elara. Two enforcers I don’t know yet. All of them were standing in a cluster near the far door with the specific body language of people receiving bad news.Kieran has his back to me. He’s talking in a low, rapid voice, and then Elara says something, and he goes very quiet, and the quiet is worse than the talking.“Kieran,” I say.He turns around. His eyes are fully gold. “I told you to stay in your room.”“You told me nothing. You ran.” I cross the

I can’t stay still.The roof of the lodge is the only place that feels far enough from her scent. Cold wind slices across my bare chest, but it doesn’t cool the burn under my skin. Moon’s fat and low, silver light pooling in the valleys below. I pace the edge like a caged animal, wolf clawing at the inside of my ribs.Mine. Protect. Keep.The words loop endlessly. Every time I close my eyes, I see her swinging that lamp like she’s ready to die for her friend. Seeing the way her hands shook when she pressed them to my chest. Seeing the fire in her eyes when she told me she wouldn’t disappear.She’s twenty-two, still smells like coffee, old books, and stubborn human hope. Meanwhile, I’m thirty-four, carrying ten years of pack scars and bad decisions, wondering how the hell a girl like her slipped under every wall I built.Downstairs, the lodge is quiet now. Tabitha’s sedated in the infirmary, Elara’s orders. The dead operative’s body is in cold storage. They chain the live ones in the l

The parking lot goes sideways fast.A black SUV blocks the exit. Three agents spread out in that tight, practiced formation that screams they’re not amateurs. They planned for Maddox and Ryker. They accounted for wolves, weapons, every damn variable.Not one of them is looking at me. They didn’t put me in the equation. I don’t know yet if that’s good or catastrophic.“Kieran’s muscles go numb. The shift claws its way up from the inside, stripping away his ability to pretend. The loud noise that comes out of him hits me in the chest before I even think about it.The nearest agent stumbles backward, nearly losing his balance, but catches himself just in time, muscle memory kicking in from all those training drills.Three years. That’s how long I’ve studied werewolves: reading dusty journals, scribbling notes, listening to stories wrapped up in careful academic bullshit. None of it mattered. Not a single word prepared me for seeing Kieran mo

The kiss is still on my mouth when Elara finds me. Kieran is somewhere, doing god knows what with his self-control, and I’m standing here like an idiot thinking about the way his hand felt in my hair when the door at the end of the hall opens. She walks out. She looks at my face and knows immediately. There’s no hiding this kind of thing. “Come with me,” she says. Not a request. She takes me to the medical win. “Close the door,” she says, pulling on latex gloves like this is a clinical visit and not whatever this actually is. I close the door. “How much do you know about mate bonds?” she asks, not looking at me. Am I really his fated mate? That’s fucking nuts. “Enough,” I say, which is a lie. I know theories. I know what I’ve read in books and research papers. I don’t know anything real. “You know nothing.” She turns around, and I see