All Chapters of RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

I stand in my kitchen. The pad thai containers from last night are still on the counter. The napkin with his handwriting. Extra lime. No peanuts. The way you like it.I pick up my phone.*Come upstairs. Bring the stories.*Three dots. Then:*Are you sure?**I’m sure. But just stories. Nothing else.**Okay.**And bring ice for your shoulder.**Okay.**And Nick?**Yeah?**If you try to kiss me I’m pushing you off my balcony.**Noted.*He knocks four minutes later. Two knocks. My hand is on the doorknob before the second knock finishes and I stopped pretending that bothers me somewhere between the punch and the pasta story.He’s holding an ice pack and two bottles of water and he’s changed into a t-shirt and his hair is messy and his left arm is still held against his body and he looks tired and hurt and careful and something else underneath all of it that I can see but won’t name. “Sit,” I say.He sits on the couch. I sit beside him. Not the opposite end. The middle. Close enough that

EMILYI don't sleep.I lie in the grey sheets with the smell of him still on my skin and the echo of his voice in my ears and I watch the streetlamp throw amber light across the ceiling until the light fades and the sun comes up and Mia's alarm goes off in the next room.I hear her feet hit the floor. I hear her open Mason's door and whisper something about pancakes. I hear Mason's low, serious reply, the words too quiet to make out but the tone unmistakably patient. He's always patient with her. He got that from Nick.Everything comes back to Nick.I drag myself out of bed and pull on jeans and a sweater and stand in the bathroom doorway staring at my reflection. My lips are swollen. My hair is a mess. There's a mark on my collarbone that I don't remember getting, a faint purple bruise the exact shape of his mouth. I touch it with my fingers and my stomach flips.Last night I had sex with a man I've known for three weeks. Last night my body recognized him in ways my mind can't explai

NICKMy father's second house smells of lemon polish and nothing else, and that bothers me before anything else does.Edward Blackwood smoked the same cigars in this front hall for thirty years. The smell lived in the curtains for so long that I used to carry it to school on my blazer. Now the curtains are gone. Every chair in the sitting room is covered with a white sheet, and the grandfather clock by the stairs has stopped at ten past four."Eleven days," Cole says behind me. His left arm is strapped to his chest in a sling, and he hates it so much that nobody is allowed to mention it. "The patrol logs say he was here yesterday. And the day before that.""Then the patrol logs are lying.""The patrol logs are lying," he agrees.A maid in a grey uniform crosses the hall with a feather duster, sees me, and stops dead. She can't be more than twenty. I have never seen her before in my life, and I grew up in this house."Who hired you?" I ask."An agency, sir." Her voice wobbles. "Three w

EMILYBy the time Derek knocks at half past four the next morning, my eyes are brown again.I checked them eleven times last night, and Nick checked them twice as often. Neither of us said a word about it, because talking about it would mean admitting that something inside me woke up in my kitchen and neither of us knows what it is.Derek comes in with a cane in one hand and a cardboard cup in the other. He still moves carefully, as if his ribs might fall out if he turns too fast, and he still hasn’t let me thank him for walking into six wolves so Nick could get to me.He holds out the cup. “Oat milk, one sugar, extra hot.”I take it and drink, and it’s perfect, and I want to cry for no reason at all.“You’re supposed to be resting,” I say.“I rested for three days in a coma. I’m very rested.” He leans the cane against the wall and looks at the paper in my hand. “Is that the list?”“It’s a short list.”“It’s three pages, Emily.”“It’s double spaced.” I hand it to him anyway. “Mia does

NICKWe drive through the gates because the alternative is sitting in the snow and waiting for my father to move first.The guard steps aside as our trucks roll past. He doesn’t reach for a weapon or a radio. He just watches us with a blank, polite face, and when I look at him through the window, he nods to me.My warriors spread out across the yard as soon as we stop. Cole climbs out of the third truck with his arm strapped to his chest and scans the rooftops. Sage comes out behind him with her laptop open against her stomach, typing as she walks.“Every door is unlocked,” she says. “Every single one. There’s no code on anything. I checked twice.”“He’s not hiding,” Cole says.“No,” I say. “He’s hosting.”Emily walks beside me. She has her hair pulled back and her jaw set, and she looks at that building as if she wants to rip it apart with her hands. I think about asking her one more time to stay in the truck. I think about how that went in her kitchen. I keep my mouth shut.“Stay cl