Lahat ng Kabanata ng MATED TO MY BESTIE'S ALPHA DADDY: Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

The drive to my father's estate is silent.Raylynn sits beside me, her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. She hasn't spoken since we left the prison. She hasn't cried. She hasn't screamed. She's just... still.I don't know what to say to her. I don't know how to make this better. So I just drive.The gates open as we approach. The guards don't stop us. They know better.I park in front of the house. I turn off the engine. I look at Raylynn."You don't have to come in.""Yes, I do." She opens the door. "She's my mother."I nod. I get out. We walk to the door together.My father is waiting in his study.He's sitting behind his desk, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He looks calm. Composed. Like he hasn't just orchestrated the kidnapping of an innocent woman."Zephyr." He sets the glass down. "I see you brought company.""Where is she?""Straight to business. I respect that." He leans back. "But first, let's talk about what you're going to do for me.""I'm not doi

"Raylynn."Zephyr's hand closes around my arm, warm and solid, and the study swims back into focus around me, the shelves of leather-bound books, the low lamp on his desk, the faint smell of cedar and ink that always clings to this room.I'm still standing just inside the door. I haven't moved neither have I said a single word."You've been staring at me for almost a full minute," he says, and his voice has gone careful, the way it does when he's trying not to spook something fragile. "Your heart is racing so hard I can hear it from here. What's wrong?"I open my mouth, and nothing comes out, because somewhere in my own head I just watched myself tell him the cruelest lie I've ever imagined, slash my palm, and walk away from the only person who has ever made me feel like I belonged somewhere.None of it happened.I know that now, with my feet planted on his study floor and his hand gripping my arm and his eyes searching my face like he's trying to read a language he's only half fluent

"Again," I say, circling her on the training lawn, watching the way her claws flex and retract at her sides like she's testing a blade she doesn't trust yet. "Let her forward this time instead of yanking her back.""That's exactly what I'm afraid of." Raylynn's breath comes fast, her eyes still faintly gold at the edges, Nix riding close beneath her skin even in human form. "Last time I let her forward, I bit you.""You were poisoned.""I don't want to find out what she does when I'm not.""Then let's find out together, right now, where it's safe, instead of tonight, where it isn't." I stop in front of her, close enough that she has to tip her chin up to meet my eyes. "You've spent your whole life being told your wolf is dangerous. Tonight, dangerous is exactly what we need her to be.""That's not the same as controlled.""No," I agree. "But you keep trying to cage her instead of ride with her, and a caged animal doesn't listen. It waits for the door to break."Her jaw tightens, and I

I don't remember deciding to move.One second I'm staring at the gun in Morvena's hand, and the next my body is already in motion, throwing itself into the space between the barrel and Zephyr before my mind has caught up with what my feet are doing. The shot cracks through the warehouse like thunder splitting open the sky, and then there's heat, impossible heat, blooming high in my chest, and the world tips sideways so fast that I don't even feel myself hit the ground."RAYLYNN!"Zephyr's voice reaches me from somewhere very far away, stretched thin and distorted, and then there's nothing at all, no pain, no sound, no warehouse, just a soft, gray hush folding over me like a blanket pulled too high.When the gray clears, I'm standing on a cracked sidewalk I haven't seen in twenty years.The old apartment block rises up in front of me, peeling paint and rusted railings, the corner store on the ground floor with its flickering sign that always buzzed too loud. I know this street. I know i

I was not born slowly.I was born in one single, screaming second, dragged into existence out of a frightened girl's hatred and her mother's prayers and the particular, aching way small bodies learn to want to survive even after they've stopped believing they deserve to. I had no childhood of my own. I had only hers, every bruise and every silence folded into the marrow I was built from, and the very first thing I ever felt with my own four paws was the snow burning cold beneath them and the scent of my own blood steaming into the night air.The second thing I felt was him.He stood over her, over us, dagger lowered now, his eyes wide with something that should have been fear and wasn't quite there yet, not fully, not the way it was about to be. I knew him before I'd ever had a single thought of my own. I knew the shape of his cruelty, the exact weight of his hand, the precise cadence of his voice calling her useless, calling her a mistake, calling her anything but what she actually w