บททั้งหมดของ Married To The Alpha By Mistake : บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

NICOLEThe words sounded worse once they were out of my mouth.Deena stared at my phone.For one second, all the noise in the medical room disappeared. Lena’s equipment. Xavier’s rough breathing. Rain ticking against the repaired ward-glass. Mace shifting behind me like he wanted to put his body between all of us and a computer screen.Deena’s face did not crumple.That would have been easier.Instead, she went very still.Her smooth brown skin seemed warmer under the medical lights, her big eyes locked on the red notices glowing across my screen. I had seen that look before. At the hospital when she coded a patient for forty minutes and refused to give up until a doctor called it. In her apartment when she found out someone had used her badge. At the mansion when rich supernatural assholes kept talking about her like she was furniture with a pulse.Deena Williams did not break loudly.She got quiet first.Then everyone needed to worry.Xavier reached for her, but he stopped before to

XAVIER“The west study door just sealed from the inside,” Mace said. “And Silas is asking for Deena.”My first answer rose like a snarl.No.Absolute. Final. Alpha command.Deena looked at me before I spoke, and the word died behind my teeth.A few hours ago, I would have mistaken that death for weakness.Now, after blood, silver, Rowan’s voice in my veins, and Deena standing in my family library with proof I had failed her, it felt like the first honest thing I had done all night.“My advice is no,” I said carefully. “But it is your choice.”Nicole blinked. “Wow. Character growth at knife point.”Deena’s gaze stayed on mine. The hurt had not left her eyes. Neither had fury. But beneath both, I felt the bond shift—cautious, bruised, listening.“I’m not going alone,” she said.“No,” I said. “You are not.”Her eyebrow lifted.I added, “Because you decided that. Not because I commanded it.”Nicole pointed her pen at me. “Look at him learning. Terrifying.”Mace was already moving. “The we

DEENA“Something is writing on the inside of the sheets.”Of course it was.Because apparently, my life had moved past haunted mirrors and into luxury bedding with demonic penmanship.For one stupid second, I missed Mercy General so hard it hurt. At least there, if something bled through sheets, I knew which supply closet had the bleach wipes.Xavier went utterly still beside me.Not calm. Not relaxed.Still like a loaded gun.“Seal the guest wing,” he ordered.I turned my head slowly. “Excuse me?”His blue eyes cut to mine. His long hair was loose around his shoulders, messy from sleep, sex, and the mirror he had just punched into glitter. There was blood on his knuckles again, because apparently Alpha Kings came with a self-destruct setting.“No one enters until I clear it,” he said.“I’m entering.”“No.”Nicole made a sound behind me. “Oh, look. He chose death before breakfast.”Mace muttered, “Nicole.”“No, I want to see how this goes for him.”Xavier’s jaw worked. “Deena, Rowan m

MACEThe windshield cracked.Not all at once. Slowly.Deliberately.A single split opened beneath Nicole’s name and crawled outward in thin silver lines, spreading across the glass like ice over black water.I moved before the sound finished.One arm swept Nicole behind me. My gun came up, muzzle trained on the SUV. My shoulder burned where the gala blade had reopened old muscle, but pain was information. Nothing more.Nicole shoved at my back. “I can see around you, you know.”“Stay behind me.”“Try asking like you didn’t hatch fully grown from a tactical manual.”The crack widened.Fog gathered inside the windshield again.Four new words appeared beneath the first.STOP DIGGING, HUMAN GIRL.Nicole went very still.Her heartbeat changed.I heard it. Fast, sharp, controlled only because she forced it to be.Then she leaned around my arm and lifted her phone.I caught her wrist. “No.”Her blue eyes snapped to mine. “Excuse me?”“You are not photographing a threat aimed at you while sta

DEENA“Come alone, little Wren,” fake Nicole whispered from the screen, “or she stops breathing.”Then the video cuts to black.For half a second, nobody moved.Not Xavier. Not Mace. Not Lena with her medical bag already half-open. Not Nicole, whose real face had gone tight with horror and fury.Me?I moved.“Play it again,” I said.Xavier’s hand snapped around my wrist. “No.”I looked down at his fingers, then back up at him. “This is not the part where you practice being difficult.”“This is exactly what Rowan wants.”“Talia is what I’m worried about.”His blue eyes burned. “And you think I am not?”“I think you’re making this about the trap when I’m making it about the patient.”That hit him. Good. I needed it too.Nicole replayed the video with shaking hands. The image flickered back to life—Talia on the stone floor, water around her hip, blood at her temple, the brass door behind her, fake Nicole smiling like she had learned human expression from a serial killer’s scrapbook.“Fre