บททั้งหมดของ Claimed by the Seven Alphas: บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

I stared at his back. Stared at the very faint crease on the shoulder of his suit jacket. The mark left when the fabric had been pulled taut as he stood in front of me earlier. The physical evidence of his body's primal instinct imprinted on his clothes. "That red necklace," I said. His back went rigid for a split second. "You just said it represents a Wolf King's Covenant. Putting it in my pocket means you chose your mate." I stepped forward, my bare foot landing exactly where he had just been standing. His body heat still lingered on the marble. "You did it right in front of her face. In front of the Third Territory Lord's adjutants. In front of everyone who will carry her words to all seven territories. You just declared war." He turned around. There were still thre

Three of them. Closing in from the northwest. Footsteps pressed low, but their breathing was too heavy. The ragged, ungoverned breathing of men fresh off a fight, adrenaline still slugging thick through the bloodstream. Two Betas. Each built like a slaughterhouse hand, wearing cured-leather armor with heavy curved blades at their hips. The Alpha leading them stood half a head taller. Bald. Three old scars clawed down the left side of his face, dragging from brow to jawline as though a wolf's foreclaws had raked him open and left the flesh to heal crooked. His turbid yellow eyes dragged over me, crawling from my chest to my thighs before landing on the scalpel in my hand. His lips cracked apart, flashing a row of stained teeth. "Yo." His voice scraped like a file over sheet tin. "What's this? On the run with

"Injured like this, and you played dead. Then you got up and fought. Then you decided to show off?" "You said it." His voice was so faint it barely stirred the air, his lips scarcely moving, that wrecked, sand-scoured rasp crawling straight into my ear. *"You'd have to gut him first."* My hands froze for half a beat. "You were conscious the whole time?" I tore the bandage clear and the wound lay fully exposed. It ran diagonally from below the collarbone to the sternum. The edges of the flesh were peeled back as though gouged by a meat hook. It had mercifully spared the organs, but the blood loss was catastrophic. I reached for what was left of the thistle. "When you drew him off." He opened his eyes, staring up at me f

"What now." I stayed where I was. Elias fixed his gaze on me, and the predatory aggression of a high-tier Alpha hadn't dimmed a fraction inside those pale, tea-colored wolf eyes. He strode forward abruptly, closing the distance with a wave of sun-warmed cedar and the scent of old books, backing me right up against the creek stones. Then, in front of me, he drove his knee down onto the gravel at the water's edge. An Alpha physician. A man who carried himself with the untouchable austerity of a shrine. Knelt on one knee before me. His broad palm closed around my right wrist with devastating precision. No brute force. But his fingertips scorched like live coals. He lifted my hand, still wet from the creek, knuckles rough with old callus, and raised it to the level of his

The laundry house. Three years ago. My first month. The first heavy load of clothing I was assigned had been a physician's work coat, soaked through with old, irreversible bloodstains, the cuffs worn to threads, a fine serpent crest embroidered on the left breast pocket. I hadn't recognized that crest then. I only remembered the coat was so saturated it felt like hauling a drowned thing out of deep water. On the inner collar, a scribbled ink initial. *E.C.* E.C. Elias Crane. "From back then." "A new Omega, washing one hundred and thirty-four white coats alone." He cut me off, and for the first time his voice showed rea