All Chapters of CLAIMED BY THE FOUR ALPHA BROTHERS: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Calla's POVI threw myself backward so hard I hit the carved wall, and the impact still didn't feel like enough distance from whatever was pressing up through that water like a hand against wet glass."Get back," the woman said, already moving between me and the basin, silver eyes blown wide, and whatever ancient composure she'd been wearing since I first woke in this chamber had burned off entirely, replaced by something that looked, horrifyingly, like actual fear. "Do not look directly into it. Do not let it find your eyes.""What is it?" I whispered, though every instinct I had left screamed that I already half-knew, that the shape forming under the surface was too deliberate, too patient, to be anything but exactly what it wanted to be."Something that has been trying to reach you since the moment your mark first woke in that cell." She kept herself angled between me and the light, one hand raised, and thin lines of the same silver I'd seen humming through the guardians' hides beg

Calla's POV"I'm calling your bluff," I said, my voice firm, trying to keep the fear from showing. "Stop using my friends as leverage and spell it out - what is it that you really want from me?" Something inside me had shifted, a cold determination settling in, as I realized I had to face this head-on. The last day had been a crash course in recognizing threats, and I knew I had to stand my ground. "No more games, no more hiding behind violence - just tell me what you want, straight out."The man's eyes, a sharp mix of silver and black, darted towards the woman who was standing a little ways behind me. Whatever he saw in her expression made him change his stance, becoming more cautious and reappraising the situation. His whole demeanor shifted, like he was suddenly thinking twice about everything."He told you, straightforwardly," he said. "It doesn't matter if you want to or not. The thing that you stirred up in that basin isn't interested in your feelings about it, one way or the ot

Calla's POV"Stop it." I lunged toward the crack showing me the hillside, hands slamming against ash that gave way like smoke under my palms, useless, insubstantial. " Whatever you're planning, stop it right now."The ash-like figure floated nearer, its pace almost casual, as if it was enjoying the fear that was growing inside me."I'm not starting anything new," it said. "I'm just not going to stop something that's already happening. There's a big difference between the two, and you should think carefully about which one you should really be afraid of."As I stood there, a loud noise came through the crack, getting louder by the second. It sounded like branches breaking and something huge was moving quickly towards us. I felt helpless as I watched Knox's head suddenly turn towards the trees, his sword already up in the air. He was shouting something to his brothers, but I couldn't quite make out what he was saying because of the crack."Let me go back," I said, and my voice had lost

Calla's POVTime stretched thin the way it only ever does in the brief half-second before a thing is irreversibly and fatally altered, and I observed everything with a merciless precision, every facet of the event rendered so clearly as to sting.Draven was the first to respond, launching his body forward like a thrown stone directly in the creature’s path, and I cried out with a strangled, incoherent sound when one of its black limbs swept into his ribs with a crack and sent him flying into the churned-up earth. It however have enough time for Knox to drive his knife into the space opened up by the lunge, deep into some apparent joint, and the thing shuddered with a squeal that sounded like a millstone against itself, then lurched aside.Straight into Calix.He didn't try to dodge. I watched him choose not to, plant his feet and drive his dagger upward into whatever passed for the creature's underside with his one good arm, using its own momentum against it, and the shriek that follow

Calla's POV"You knew my mother." The words came out of me before I'd fully decided to speak them, cutting through whatever tension had settled between the figure and the woman at my side. "Not knew of. Knew.""I knew," the figure said softly. "This was all before the packs that are now surrounding you even existed. Back then, bearers were respected and admired, not hunted and feared like they are today. I had the chance to teach her the ways, just like I would have wanted to teach you, if only our family's complicated history and the conflict between our bloodlines hadn't gotten in the way seventeen years ago. I often think about what could have been, if things had been different, if I could have been the one to guide you as I did her.""Tell me what really happened to her," I said, my voice trembling with a mix of exhaustion, grief, and anger. It had already been a long day, with more truth revealed than I could handle. "I don't want to hear the old man's side of the story, or Drave