Todos los capítulos de The Alpha's Hidden Heir: Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

ERINThe corridor outside my assigned chambers was empty when I finally escaped the suffocating formality of the evening session.Alpha Sullivan had departed an hour earlier, his promised private conversation with Jake scheduled for later tonight. The absence of his calculating gaze should have brought relief, but instead I felt the weight of everything unspoken pressing against my chest like a physical burden.Jake was waiting by my door. Of course he was. Even with his world crumbling around him, his first instinct was still to make sure I was safe."You should be resting," I said quietly. "Preparing for tonight.""I've had four years to prepare for tonight." He pushed off from the wall, his expression unreadable in the torchlight. "Right now, I need to talk to you."I unlocked the door and let him follow me inside. The room was small but comfortable—a bed, a desk, a window overlooking the mountain range that seemed to go on forever. The kind of view that made everything else feel t

ERINThe morning light felt different when you knew someone in the building wanted you dead.I watched it creep across the floor of my chamber, golden and indifferent, while Marcus and Jake conferred in low voices near the door. Sleep had been impossible. Every creak of the old building, every distant footstep in the corridor, had snapped me awake with my heart pounding and my hands reaching for weapons that weren't there.Now, with dawn finally breaking, we had to decide who to trust."Connor," Marcus said finally. "And Marty. No one else until we know more."Jake nodded slowly. "Agreed. If the leak is in Connor's inner circle, we need to keep this contained. But Connor himself—""Has been protecting Erin since before Silver Ridge existed in her world," Marcus finished. "If he's compromised, we're already lost. We have to start somewhere."The logic was sound, but it still felt like walking across ice that might crack at any moment. Trust built over months, reduced to calculated risk

ERINThe fabric scrap with the broken circle sat on Connor's desk like a small bomb waiting to detonate.We had gathered in his private study—Connor, Marty, Jake, Marcus, and myself—while the emergency horn's echoes still rang in our ears. The assembly call had been a false alarm, triggered by an overeager guard who had mistaken a falling branch for an intruder. But the panic it caused revealed just how close to breaking everyone was.Now, with the false alarm resolved, we had a brief window before the final session to examine what I had found."This is the first physical evidence linking the sabotage to Hollow Fang," Marcus said, his voice tight with controlled excitement. "Not rumors. Not fragments of overheard conversation. Actual proof that their operatives have been inside this compound."Connor picked up the scrap, turning it over in his weathered fingers. The broken circle was faint but unmistakable—the same symbol we had seen on weapons during the Silver Ridge attack, the same

ERINThe hall erupted into competing demands the moment Alpha Varen sat down."He should speak now—""This is clearly a manipulation—""What guarantee do we have that his information is genuine—""A private meeting undermines the transparency this summit was supposed to represent—"I watched the chaos unfold, feeling the weight of what Varen had offered pressing against my chest. Names. Evidence. The possibility of finally knowing who had orchestrated my family's murder and continued hunting me across territories and years.But also the very real possibility of a trap.Connor raised his hands, his voice cutting through the noise with practiced authority."Enough." The single word carried the weight of decades of leadership. "Alpha Varen has offered information under conditions he believes necessary for his own safety. We can debate his motives endlessly, or we can accept that smaller territories have legitimate reasons to fear exposure when naming powerful enemies."He turned to Varen

ERINThe guard's body lay crumpled against the corridor wall, his eyes still open, fixed on nothing.I stood over him, forcing myself to look. To see what our enemy was capable of. To understand, with absolute clarity, what we were fighting against.The wound that killed him was familiar. Too familiar. Three deep gashes across his throat, parallel and precise, made by something that wasn't quite a blade and wasn't quite claws. The same wounds I had seen in reports about the murdered Shadowcrest patrol weeks earlier. The same signature that had haunted our investigation from the beginning."It's the same." Marcus crouched beside the body, his face pale but professional. "The weapon, the technique, the placement. Whoever killed the Shadowcrest wolves killed this man.""Inside our compound." Connor's voice was barely controlled. "Inside a guarded cell block. While the entire summit was on high alert."The implications spread like poison through my understanding of everything that had hap