All Chapters of Beg For Me, Alpha Kael : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The morning sun broke over the estate like a shattered blade, casting cold, sharp light through the stained-glass arches of the Grand Academy Hall. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment, damp ink, and the nervous, sour pheromones of seventy surviving participants.One Rule about the Lunar Selection Society is that every test must be done the old way, so that is why it's been done in a grand old hall, dresses and formalities are very strict and you must adhere to it. Week Two had officially begun: The Trial of the Mind. If the first week was a public meat market, the second was a psychological slaughterhouse. The High Council did not merely want beautiful mates for their regional lords; they demanded strategic tacticians who could govern territories, manage wartime logistics, and enforce pack law. At the center of the hall, seventy heavy oak desks were arranged in a wide circle. On each desk rested an iron quill, a blank scroll, and a sealed obsidian box containing the

The High Council did not operate in the light; they governed from the damp, subterranean vaults beneath the Selection Colosseum.Late into the night, long after the private banquet in the Northern Wing had concluded, the corrupt Under-Secretary of the Council, Lord Corvin, sat behind a heavy iron desk. The air in the underground chamber reeked of stale wine, old wax, and black-market wolfsbane.Sitting across from him in a high-backed velvet chair was Mask 27.Seraphina had spent the last three hours scrubbing the tears of humiliation from her cheeks, but her eyes were still rimmed with venomous red behind her golden visor. Her reputation among the aristocratic matrons was in ruins, her voting rights were suspended, and Kael had threatened to throw her to the wolves."You are in a very dangerous position, Mask 27," Lord Corvin murmured, his slimy, rasping voice echoing off the wet stone walls. He twirled a heavy signet ring on his fat pinky finger. "The Eastern faction paid millions o

The iron doors of the war-room were three inches thick, completely sealing us off from the screams of Seraphina and the impotent threats of Lord Corvin outside. But inside, the air was far more dangerous than any political battlefield.It was thick, heavy, and hot charged with the suffocating weight of Alpha King Lucien Storm’s unyielding presence.His large, scarred hand remained anchored to the side of my waist, his long fingers pressing through the silver silk of my tunic until the heat of his palm sank directly into my skin. He didn't pull back. Instead, he took half a step closer, his chest pressing against my shoulder blades, completely swallowing my shadow under the dim, golden flickering of the hearth fire.“He is burning,” Nyx whispered, her silver eyes glowing with predatory hunger deep inside my soul. I didn't shrink away from his touch. I kept my hands resting flat against the dark oak of the tactical map table, looking down at the hand-drawn topographies of the northern

The ancient northern forest did not welcome trespassers; it hunted them.Within two hours of passing through the heavy iron gates, the pitch-black canopy of towering silver-pines swallowed the moon entirely. Freezing fog rolled off the icy crags, clinging to the heavy velvet and leather of my cloth. High above the tree line, the territorial howls of wild Shadow-Beasts echoed through the canyon, a terrifying reminder that the High Council’s rules ended at the tree line.I moved through the dense underbrush like a phantom, my silent boots breaking no twigs. Wrapped in Lucien’s heavy silver-and-black Sovereign cloak, my body was comfortably warm against the bitter mountain draft, filled with the thick, lingering scent of dark cedar and ozone that emanated from its fur trim.“He is thirty paces behind us,” Nyx murmured softly inside my mind, her silver wolf form pacing back and forth across my soul. “He isn't tracking us to protect the Council’s objectives, Aria. He is tracking us because

The air at the base of the glacial waterfall was so cold it turned breath into silver mist before it could touch the stone. Cascades of roaring water slammed against jagged, ice-slicked boulders, creating an endless, deafening thunder that masked the quiet approach of predators. I stood at the absolute edge of the icy precipice, wrapped tight in Alpha King Lucien Storm’s heavy Sovereign cloak. Inside the black cavern behind us, the ancient Shadow-Beast, a massive, six-eyed horror of dark muscle and razor-sharp shadow-fangs snarled in its sleep. Its suffocating, sulfurous aura rolled out into the night air, mixed with the sharp, intoxicating fragrance of my own divine goddess scent and Lucien’s dominant cedarwood. “The flies are in the web,” Nyx purred inside my mind, her silver claws unsheathed, scratching against the floorboards of my soul. “Look at them. Coming to claim a prize that will devour them whole.” Down below, emerging from the fog-shrouded tree line, two figures