All Chapters of CLAIMED BY THE FOUR ALPHA BROTHERS: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Calla's POVMore of them came out of the dark, one after another, and every single one dropped to its knees the second it saw my hands.I counted four before I stopped counting, because counting felt like it mattered less than the fact that I was still crouched in dirt with my palms glowing gold and an entire clearing full of silver-veined creatures bowing to me like I was something they'd been waiting on for a very long time."This isn't normal," I said, to no one in particular, to the almost-man thing still crouched at my side, to the forest itself if it happened to be listening. "Tell me this isn't normal.""Nothing about you is normal, little Luna, that much I established the moment your mark scorched a symbol into solid stone from inside a locked cell." It hadn't taken its silver eyes off the kneeling shapes, wariness pulling its almost-face tight in a way that did nothing for my nerves. "But no. This specifically is not normal. This is old. Older than the forest we're standin

Calla's POV“Blackthorns," I said, my voice sounding as if it were from someone much farther away than where I stood."You know my husband's family.""Everybody who matters knows your husband's family." The man in green and silver moved another step, the sort of slow, casual progress that a predator might make when it already knew it was over before the game began."Although watching your husband's line fail even to guess what it had done in bringing a bearer into the family for three full years is considerably more incompetent than I would have predicted.""I don't know what a bearer is." The words came out sharper than intended as the fear I'd been holding back finally started to crumble under the weight of the sheer idiocy. "And nobody is apparently willing to actually tell me, just use the word like it's some kind of magic spell."That seemed to have an effect. The man's surprise, visible just for a flicker on his face, was quick enough that it might have been overlooked if one

Calla's POVIt was a ring.Small, tarnished, the band worn thin in that specific manner that metal becomes when rubbed and twisted, turned over and over by a thumb for years without intention. As soon as the light hit the stone set within it, my insides turned cold with a frigid chill that had little to do with the night air of the woods.I knew that ring.I wouldn’t call it memory. Perhaps an older knowledge, a primordial, bone-deep acknowledgment that was buried beneath the superficial layers of consciousness, like you know your own name even before you know what naming actually means.“Where did you get that?” My own voice was weaker than I desired it to be."It was recovered." The man in green watched me carefully, gauging every flicker crossing my face like he was reading a language he'd studied his whole life. "From the site of an unmarked grave, your husband's family has been actively pretending doesn't exist for the last seventeen years.""That's not possible." The almost-man'

Calla's POV"Say it." My voice didn't shake this time. I made sure of that.Soren's throat worked once before any sound came out of it. "When you first came to the pack, you were six. Your mother had just died, that part's true, but the story about fever, that was never true, and I don't think it was ever meant to be believed by anyone who actually looked closely at how she died.""How did she die?""Alaric knew her. My father," Draven said quietly, the frantic fear all drained out of his voice, leaving only a man making the smart decision ten years too late. "He met your mother long before either of us was born, or he was married to my own. He knew what she was from the second he met her, and after she died, he paid the elders to report the fever and keep you close enough to see, but he never explained the importance of it all."The clearing tilted again, worse this time, and I actually reached out to steady myself against the almost-man's arm before I registered doing it."He raised

Calla's POVFor exactly three seconds, no one stirred, three seconds in which I knew with an alarm more profound than anything the old man’d divulged, that every soul in the clearing was silently taking the measure of a fight that hadn’t yet begun. Then Draven moved."She's not going anywhere with you." He stepped forward, placing himself between me and the tightening ring of green-and-silver guards. Whatever fracture his father's decades of lies had just torn open in him, none of it showed in his voice now, only the flat, immovable certainty of an Alpha who has decided exactly where his line is. "You can confess to killing her mother and still expect me to hand you her daughter in the same breath. That tells me everything about how little you've actually changed.""Sentiment," the old man said, almost fond, the way you'd address a child, insisting the sky was a color it wasn't. "Understandable, given the last few hours, but sentiment nonetheless. I have no interest in harming her. I