All Chapters of Mated to the Alpha CEO: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

One month after the marsh battleThe Blight had not retreated.It had slowed, but it continued to spread — creeping through the southern territories like a cold fog. Wolves who had been touched by it grew listless, their eyes glassy, their wills fading. Plants withered. Water turned foul. The land itself seemed to mourn.Lira stood at the edge of the territory, staring at the grey line that marked the Blight's advance. It was closer than it had been a week ago.Ronan joined her, leaning on his cane. "It's accelerating.""I noticed.""We need to find the source. The real source, not the ruin.""How do we do that?""Follow the cold." He pointed to the grey line. "It's not spreading randomly. It's moving along ley lines—ancient paths of magic that crisscross the continent. The Grey Death is using them to spread faster.""Then we follow the ley lines.""Yes. But we need to be careful. The Blight corrupts everything it touches. Even wolves with strong wills can fall."Lira's jaw tightened.

The last patch of living grass died beneath Lira’s paws at midday.She felt the shift before she saw it — a coldness that did not belong to the wind, a silence that swallowed even the rustle of her own fur. One moment the earth was grey and brittle but still soil; the next it was something else, something that crunched like old bones and offered no scent of root or water. The world ahead flattened into a monochrome wound. Even the sky, which had held a thin winter blue, surrendered to a bruised yellow-grey that pressed down like a held breath.Lira stopped. The column of wolves behind her rippled to a halt: a hundred bodies, perhaps more, drawn from territories that had spent a generation sharpening their claws on each other. Nightclaw’s swift scouts. Ironmaw’s heavy-shouldered fighters. Eastern wolves with ghost-pale eyes. Southern refugees who carried everything they owned in their limp. And in the middle, flanked by Aria and two silent guards, a cart pulled by four of the strongest

Lira stepped forward before anyone else could speak.The Guardian’s empty eyes tracked her movement, that lipless smile still stretched across its too-long face. The silver light of the seal pulsed once, as if acknowledging her choice, and the column of woven light and shadow seemed to widen, opening a path into its heart.“A leader who does not ask her pack to face what she will not face herself,” the Guardian said, its voice carrying a note of something that might have been approval. “Good. The seal will know you, Hidden Luna. Step into the light.”“Lira.” Ronan’s voice was thin but sharp with warning. “Whatever you see in there, remember: the seal shows truth, but truth can be a weapon. Don’t let it break you.”She met his eyes across the chamber. He knows what I’ll see. He’s seen it himself. She wanted to ask what waited for her in the light, but the Guardian’s presence pressed against her mind like a held breath, and she knew the question would not be answered.“I’ll come back,”

The cold spoke with the voice of a thousand winters.Lira stood at the edge of the First Wound, the tear in reality yawning before her, its grey light pulsing like a dying heart. The Unmaker's words still echoed in the chamber, settling into the bones of every wolf present: Give me everything that makes you who you are. And I will close the wound. The silence that followed was worse than the voice — a silence that pressed in from all sides, heavy with expectation and dread.Behind her, the pack held their breath. She could feel their eyes on her back, their hope and their terror tangled together. Kael's steady presence, solid as stone. Aria's trembling awareness, her seer's senses surely screaming. Thane's youthful faith, so fragile it might shatter at a wrong word. Vestra's grim pragmatism, already calculating what a leader's sacrifice would mean for the rest of them.And Ronan. She could feel him most of all — the faint, flickering warmth of his life, the weight of his gaze. He had

The dead forest had begun to bloom.Lira saw it as they descended the final slope of the Black Mountain: small green shoots pushing through the grey bark of the twisted trees, tiny white flowers opening to a sky that was slowly remembering how to be blue. The Blight's retreat was visible now, a physical thing, the grey receding like frost melting under a long-awaited sun. The air smelled different — not the sterile nothing of the grey lands, but something faint and sweet, the first breath of a world coming back to life.Behind her, the pack carried Ronan's body down the mountain.They had wrapped him in the white cloth that had once padded his litter, the fabric now serving as his shroud. Four wolves bore the weight — Kael at the front, Vestra at the rear, and two Ironmaw fighters on the sides. They moved with deliberate slowness, a funeral pace that matched the mournful silence of the column. Aria walked directly behind the litter, her seer's eyes rimmed with red, a single glowstone