Todos los capítulos de MY STEPBROTHER ALPHA'S DIRTY OBSESSION: Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

Serena’s POVThe first mountain range is harder than it looks from Silver Crest.Everything always is.You stand at the base of something, and your eyes give you one version of it. Scale. Distance. The general shape of the challenge. Then you start climbing, and the ground under your feet gives you the honest version. Every loose stone. Every false summit that reveals another summit behind it. Every place where the path narrows to something that requires both hands and full attention and leaves no room for anything else.We've been climbing for four hours.The Silver Crest Valley is invisible below us now. The morning that started gray has stayed gray. Low cloud pressing down on the upper slopes. The kind of weather that isn't dangerous yet but is making clear it could become dangerous if it decides to.Kael reads it the same way I do. I feel his assessment through the bond. The particular quality of an Alpha cataloging terrain and weather simultaneously. Filing variables. Adjusting t

Kael’s POVWe move in ten minutes.Elena falls into the group without ceremony. No formal acknowledgment of her inclusion. No discussion of terms or conditions or what her presence means for the dynamic of the five of us moving through mountain terrain toward something none of us have a complete picture of yet.Serena said you're coming with us.Elena said yes.That's the whole of it.Which is either the most sensible way to handle a complicated situation or the most dangerous. I haven't decided yet. The bond carries Serena's certainty about it, and her certainty is usually better calibrated than my caution, so I let it stand. For now, we climb.The second range is steeper than the first. The path is narrower. The ground is less forgiving. Large flat stones that look stable and aren't. Sections of loose shale that require slow deliberate movement and full attention. Nobody talks much during the climb.The terrain doesn't allow for it. I stay close to Serena. Not hovering, present. The

Serena’s POVThe fourth range is different from the others.I feel it before we reach it. Not through the mark, not through the bond. Through something older than both. The specific awareness that lives in a body when it's approaching something significant. Not danger exactly. Significance. The particular weight of a place that has been important for a very long time and carries that importance in its geology.The mountain knows we're here. That sounds like something Maya would say and probably dismiss immediately after saying it. But it's the most accurate description I have for the feeling that starts in my feet when the path transitions from the third range's rocky terrain into the fourth range's approach. Different stone, older.Darker in color. Denser. The kind of formation that was here before the mountain ranges around it finished deciding what shape they wanted to be.Elena notices me notice it. "The Thornline chose well," she says quietly beside me. "This range is a natural b

Kael’s POVStart from the beginning.Serena says it like the beginning is a simple thing. A fixed point. Something with a clear location in time that you can walk up to and say here. This is where it started.Maren looks at her with the expression of a wolf who has been alive long enough to know that beginnings are never where you think they are, but she nods, and she begins."The gate existed before the packs did," Maren says. She says it the way very old things get said. Without drama, without the performance of significance. Just the flat accurate statement of something that is true regardless of whether anyone finds it remarkable.We find it remarkable. I sit beside Serena. Maya and Damien have come through the door by now. Elena last. Maren looked at Elena when she entered, and something passed between them. Not recognition exactly. The specific acknowledgment of a wolf who knows what another wolf did and has decided to receive their presence anyway. No words exchanged, just that

Serena’s POVThey gather at dusk. Not summoned, not organized into rows or formations or any of the structured arrangements that Silver Crest uses for formal pack gatherings. They simply come. Moving through the trees from different directions. Arriving in ones and twos and small groups. Finding their places in the large open space at the center of the settlement where the ancient trees create a natural amphitheater around a central clearing.I watch them arrive from the edge of the space. Seventy-eight wolves. I keep counting them even though the number doesn't change. Seventy-eight. Some with the mark visible at their collarbones. Glowing faintly in the dusk light the way mine does. Most without the full mark but carrying something in the way they move. In the quality of their attention. Something that lives in the blood even when it doesn't surface as the visible crescent.They range in age from what looks like late teens to old wolves whose faces carry decades of this valley and t