Lahat ng Kabanata ng MATED TO MY BESTIE'S ALPHA DADDY: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

Zion steps fully into the moonlight, and for one strange second, something shifts across his face that I don't expect at all.His eyes land on Ivy still perched on my back, and his jaw goes slack, just for a breath, just long enough for me to catch it before the mask slides back into place. It's gone almost as fast as it appears, smoothed over into that same thin, unbothered smile he wore walking into the council room, but I saw it. Something in him cracked, just once, at the sight of her."Well," he says, voice smooth as silk over stone. "Isn't this a surprise."Ivy's grip on my fur tightens, but she doesn't shrink back. Instead she slides down off my side in one fluid motion, landing steady on her feet, and she plants herself directly between me and the man standing at the tree line."You don't get to look surprised," she says, and her voice doesn't shake at all. "Not at me.""Ivy." He says her name like it costs him something. "You've grown.""Seven years will do that." Her chin lif

"Dad, she left me." Ivy's voice cracks through the phone pressed against my ear, ragged and half drowned in the noise of a crowded room. "She ran into the woods with a piece of silver still in her side, and she wouldn't even look back.""I know." My boots hit the ground hard as I cut through the trees, and I don't slow down. "I'm coming, Ivy. Where are you right now?""Inside the tavern. Some man gave me a glass of water and I couldn't even hold it." She sniffs, and I hear her swallow the rest of a sob. "Dad, I scratched her. No, she scratched me. It wasn't her fault. It was the silver.""Ivy, stop. Are you hurt?""It's three little lines. I don't care about my arm!""I care about your arm." I keep my voice steady, the way I always have with her, low and even so she has something to hold on to. "Drew is pulling up outside the front door right now. You stay in that room until he walks in and takes you to the car.""I want to come with you.""I know you do.""She's my best friend.""She

Her spine arches off the table, and her hands claw at the wood on either side of her, and for one terrible second I think Samantha is right, that this is the hunt clawing its way out of her.Then I see her face, twisted not in hunger but in raw agony, and I understand."It's the wound," Samantha says quickly, already moving back to the table instead of away from it. "The nerves are waking up all at once, now that the silver's gone. Everything her body numbed to survive is catching up to her in one go.""That's normal?""That's good." She presses a hand gently to Raylynn's shoulder, steadying her through the worst of it. "Pain means the body's remembered how to feel again. A corpse doesn't scream, Zephyr. A healing body does."Raylynn's scream tapers into a shaking, ragged breath, and her eyes flutter open, glassy and confused but unmistakably hers."Ray?" I'm at her side before I've decided to move. "Talk to me.""Everything hurts," she rasps. "Everything hurts so much, all at once, w

"Which part?" I murmur against her collarbone, and for one reckless second I let myself imagine an answer that isn't restraint.We've done this before, the two of us tangled together with nothing held back, and my whole body remembers exactly how she feels beneath my hands. But something's different this morning, something steadier than hunger, and it roots me in place even as every instinct screams at me to finish what I've started against this staircase wall.I want to marry her.The thought lands so clearly, so completely, that it startles me more than her scent does. Not the bond whispering it, not the wolf demanding it, just me, plain and certain, wanting to stand in front of every person I've ever answered to and call her mine in the way that can't be undone or questioned.Her grandmother raised her on the old rules, the ones about patience and courtship meaning something before a mate claim is spoken aloud, and Raylynn has never said so outright, but I've seen it in the careful

"What the hell did you do?"The door slams against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. My father doesn't flinch. He's sitting behind his desk in his private study, a glass of whiskey in his hand, his expression calm."Zephyr." He sets the glass down. "I was wondering when you'd show up.""You announced my engagement." I cross the room. My hands are shaking. My wolf is snarling. "Without asking me. Without telling me. To a woman I've met twice.""Calantha is a fine match." He leans back in his chair. "Her father controls the northern trade routes. The alliance will secure our borders for a generation.""I don't care about the borders.""You should. You're the Alpha.""I'm the Alpha who's already mated." I slam my hands on his desk. "Or have you forgotten?"His expression doesn't change. "I haven't forgotten. I've simply chosen to ignore it.""You can't ignore it. The bond is sacred. The Goddess—""The Goddess isn't going to protect our pack from Osric Veyra's army if he decides t