All Chapters of The Devil Alpha: Chapter 21 - Chapter 25

~ Mira's POV ~Somewhere between the second switchback and the city lights, I remembered I was supposed to hate him.I sat up like I'd been burned. My head had been on his shoulder for twenty minutes of mountain road, a treaty violation I had no memory of signing, and the man had simply driven, one hand on the wheel, the other apparently seconded to keeping me vertical, and said nothing. He'd sent the convoy down ahead of us with Nico at its head. Whatever this car was about to become, he'd wanted no witnesses.The heater was on. It had been on the whole time, I realized. Turned to my side before I'd even noticed I was cold.Neither of us acknowledged any of it. The treaty had clauses.For a while there was only the road, and the engine, and the city coming up gold out of the dark like an argument we were driving toward."Repeat it," he said."Repeat what?""Blackwood. At the doors. The man doesn't stop people to compliment jewelry." His eyes didn't leave the road. "Verbatim, Mrs. Mor

~ Mira's POV ~The coffee came exactly right, so the standing order had survived the night, which meant the kitchen had survived the night, which meant "the kitchen's" was holding as official testimony. I drank it black with my own two hands and refused to feel anything about the supply chain.Tribute day began at noon.The pack came up the drive in delegations, three cars to a family, dressed like embassies. Forty wolves in wool coats stood on the gravel in the cold while Harrison received their gifts into the entrance hall with the solemnity of a man cataloguing a peace treaty, which, I was coming to understand, was exactly what tribute was. The Elders had confirmed me four days ago. This was the city of wolves arriving to check the merchandise in person.The Blackwoods sent a card. Full honors, Corvin's regrets, and Selene sent neither. I read her absence twice: insult, or alibi.Elder Westfall's delegation brought a fountain pen. The card said: ~ For the paperwork. — W. ~I was be

~ Mira's POV ~The old ring lay past the treeline north of the estate — sunken into the earth like a crater from some war the maps didn't record, ringed with standing stones older than the Moot's, floored with sand that had drunk more blood than any river I could name.They filed in around the rim in silence, four hundred wolves in the cold, breath rising. I stood at the near edge with the necklace at my throat, because it stays on, because it annoys the right people. Sarn was there, and Westfall, come down from the horseshoe for the occasion. Nicolas stood at my shoulder and told me the history in the low voice of a man narrating a church."The night he was nineteen," Nicolas said, "the law owed him fourteen deaths. His father dead a season, the succession contested, and the old law plain as a knife: the challenger dies, and the backers die with him. Thirteen wolves backed Corvin Blackwood that night. The pack came here expecting a slaughter. It's what a nineteen-year-old does; it's