All Chapters of Alpha's Obsession With His Pet: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

101 Chapters

Chapter 71 – Wrong Man

(Rene)"You haven't heard a word I've said," Cole tells me on the east lawn, holding a clipboard I'm supposed to be reading."Seating for the visiting Alphas. Karth's seat stays empty out of respect. I heard you.""That was ten minutes ago. I've moved on twice since."I haven't slept.She left my room with her lie hanging in the air and I spent the night taking it apart instead of resting, because the pieces don't fit and I don't tolerate things that don't fit.She shut the bond before the cruelty, not after.She ran with two bags and a child toward nothing.She's lying, and there's exactly one man in my house worth lying for."The Warden's car just cleared the gate," Cole says."Two days early. His clerk didn't know he was coming, which I find interesting, because that clerk knows everything. Where do you want him seated?""I don’t care. He can watch Brynn get crowned from whatever seat he likes."That's when I see them across the lawn.Zack's in the grass by the garden wall, running

Chapter 72 – Running Low

(Angelique)I catch Zack halfway out the door with his shoes on the wrong feet."Where do you think you're going?""There's MORE cars, Mama."He says it like Christmas landed early."Big black ones. Cole says they're Alphas. I'm gonna go say hi.""You are not going to go say hi.""But what if they don't know anybody here? They'll be lonely."Four years old and he wants to host the crowning himself.He'd shake every hand on that lawn and answer any question a stranger felt like asking, because nobody's ever managed to teach my son that some people are something to fear.That's the whole problem in one small body."Inside. Shoes off. You can watch from the window."He stomps to the window to sulk at the view, and while his back's turned I open the tea tin behind the wardrobe door and count what's left.Two packets.I count again, as if numbers work differently the second time.Two.He’s already had today’s dose, so tomorrow morning and the day after and then that’s it.I’m supposed to b

Chapter 73 – Can't Stop

(Rene)The lock turns behind her and she stands just inside my study like the room might bite."Ask your questions, Alpha. I'd like to get back to my son.""Sit.""I'll stand."I stay by the window, because the width of the room between us is the closest thing to discipline I’ve got left when it comes to her."Why did you run, five years ago?"Pain rushes through her at the unexpected question before she can hide it."I didn't want this life. I wanted to be free.""Try again. You loved me, I loved you. If you didn’t want to be Luna you could have just turned the offer down if I made it. I wasn’t Alpha yet. You never even asked if I wanted to be Alpha. Neither of us expected me to be in this position so soon. There are much simpler ways to say no than faking your own death.”I watch her face give me nothing."I don’t believe you did it to run from me, but maybe you did it to run to someone else?"The bond sits between us, gray and flat, that dead hum she manufactures.I've come to hate

Chapter 74 – Containment

(Maliyah)"Somebody's going to ask," Alpha Doyle says, "So it may as well be me."He sets his coffee down in the middle of my breakfast table like a man laying a card."The whole east wing woke up smelling it. There's a bonded pair under this roof, and tomorrow I'm supposed to sit in a good seat and watch that man put a crown on a different woman."Eleven people at the table and not one fork moves.Rene's at the sideboard with his back to us.He doesn't turn around."You're welcome to leave if the seating doesn't suit you," he says, and carries his plate out through the terrace door.He doesn't explain himself.He never has.That habit was extremely useful to me right up until this morning.Doyle looks at me.They all look at me.So I laugh.It's a good laugh.I've had forty years to build it."Rene keeps a woman," I tell them."She ran from him years ago, he brought her back to serve as his pet. She lives upstairs, she eats what she's given, and she goes to his room when he wants her

Chapter 75 – The Last Night

(Angelique)"Is the giant getting his crown TOMORROW?"Zack's bolt upright in Tova's bed.Having a sleepover because I don’t want him being alone if Rene sends for me."Who told you that?""Cole. He gets one and Brynn gets one, but his should be the BIGGEST because he's the biggest. I wanna see.""You're not seeing it, baby.""WHY?""Because it's a boring grown-up party and you and me are staying upstairs."He flops back with his arms crossed like a man cheated out of money."That's not FAIR. He's my friend."I kiss his forehead and turn off the light.He's still awake when I shut the door.Here's what this week taught me.I can't make Rene hate me.Maliyah wanted me to earn my own exile. Get him sick of me, get the paper signed.I lied to his face with his hands on me and the bond called me a liar in the same breath.Every time.You can't lie to a man who feels what you feel.So I have to wait until he’s distracted and get away for good.Far enough that the bond will shrivel and die.

Chapter 76 – Ceremony Day

(Angelique)"You've been holding that tin upside down a while now," Tova says."Have I?"She knows all of it now and it’s breaking her heart almost as badly as it’s breaking mine that I have to go.Zack drank the last of the herbs in his juice an hour ago and went off to put his shoes on the wrong feet because he’s too stubborn to let me help."He smelled thin this morning," I say, chewing my lip."He smelled like a boy.""You’d tell me if it slips?""Angelique." She looks at me like I’m crazy. "Of course I'd tell you. I wouldn’t gamble his life just to spare you worrying."Zack's on his knees at the window with his chin on the sill, counting cars."Twenty-one. Twenty-two.""Come away from there.""Can I go down and just LOOK?""No.""Just look. Not even talk to anybody.""You've never just looked at anything in your entire life.""That's not true."He considers it seriously."That's a little bit true. But mama, pleeeeez.""We're staying up here. We've got the puzzle, we've got the bi

Chapter 77 – The Boy in the Hall

(Rene)The crown is lighter than it looks.Cole puts it in my hands, steps back, and three hundred wolves go quiet at the same time.Brynn kneels on the step below me in white with her chin up and her hands folded.Her thumb is moving nervously against her knuckle, over and over.She's twenty-one.We don’t love each other.Her mother concocted this.Let her be nervous."Alpha Rene Beck," she says, on cue. “I pledge myself as your Luna.”Alpha Doyle's in the third row with his arms crossed, and he hasn't stopped glaring at me since he sat down.Half this room is here for the ceremony and the other half is here to watch me put the crown on the wrong woman.I've decided I don't care.At five o'clock this ends.It’s a ridiculously long ceremony with all the pledges and swearing and praying to the Moon goddess and waiting for the Warden to pronounce it all done by the book.Then the feast, and shaking everyone’s hands before I can finally go up those stairs and not come down until she can'

Chapter 78 – Blast Radius

(Angelique)Cole gets the side door open and Rene walks us through it with my son on his hip and my arm in his fist, and there is nothing gentle anywhere in his hand."You're squishing me," Zack says happily.Rene sets him down on the damask-draped table like he weighs nothing.In among hundreds of glasses of champagne, waiting to be carried out for a feast that isn’t going to happen.Then he stands there. Looking at him.Not at me. At him."You're four," Rene says."I'm four and a HALF.""Four and a half.""Are you mad at me?"Rene crouches down so their eyes are level and says, "No. I’m very proud of you.""Then why's everybody standing up?""Because I told them to sit down."Zack thinks that's the funniest thing he's ever heard.Cole comes rushing over."Rene, Doyle's got half the west province on their feet-""I don’t care. Take Zack to the kitchen and feed him, then do whatever he wants to. Don’t leave him with anyone, don’t let anyone near him."Zack goes to Cole with both arms

Chapter 79 – Name Her and Die

(Rene)"Sit down."Three hundred wolves sit down.Not all of them at once.Doyle takes his time about it, because he wants to prove he doesn’t take orders from me.Warden Levi Knox doesn't sit at all.He's at the foot of the altar steps with his hands behind his back, and he's looking at the door Cole carried my son out of."Warden."He turns."Alpha Beck.""You came here to witness a crowning and pronounce it done by the book.""I did.""Then witness this instead."Angelique is standing in the side doorway, shaking, one hand on the frame, looking at me like she knows exactly what I'm about to do and can't work out how to get across the room fast enough to stop it."Come here."She doesn't move.'Make her,' my wolf says. 'She's ours. Say it in front of all of them and let them choke on it.'"Angelique Pruitt. Come here."She comes, because I've used the voice, and I'll hate myself for that later along with everything else.Brynn's still standing on the dais in her white dress, next to

Chapter 80 – The Sanctioned Thing

(Maliyah)"Wait in here."The guard opens a door on the little sewing room and gestures me through it impatiently.I’m the Luna of a neighboring pack, former member of this one, and they've put me in the room where the staff hem curtains."I'll want my phone.""You won't," he says, and shuts the door on me.No lock.They don't need one.There's a wolf on the other side of it who'd come through the wall if I raised my voice, and every soul in this house has just been handed a reason to wish me dead.I sit.Not because he told me to.Because sitting is what you do with hands that want to shake, when you would rather die than let anyone watch you steady them.So.My carefully laid board has gone to hell.Brynn is not going to be Luna.My own daughter stood in that hall and gave me to a Warden with the whole district watching.I'll deal with her later, and she knows I will, which is the only satisfaction I get to keep tonight.The boy is his.Everyone breathing knows it now.The thing I s

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