All Chapters of THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN BLOODLINE; His Blood, Her Secret.: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

The doctor’s handwriting was careful. Deliberate. The kind of careful that meant he’d written the same sentence many times and still hadn’t found a way to soften it. Accelerated cellular degradation. Unknown etiology. Refer to specialist, Dr. Colm Reeves, Northfield Clinic. Aria folded the paper in half without reading it again. She already had it memorized. Outside the exam room, Liam was sitting in the waiting area with his sneakers pressed flat on the linoleum and his hands in his lap. He wasn’t fidgeting. He never fidgeted. He was five years old and he sat like a man waiting for news he already knew was bad, and that stillness in him had always made her chest hurt in a way she couldn’t explain. “Mom.” He looked up when she came through the door. Not a question. Just her name, placed there like a hand on her arm. “Let’s go get food,” she said. “What did he say?” “Pizza first. Then talking.” He looked at her for a moment, that direct, weighing look he’d

The medical wing was built into the mountain itself. That was the thing nobody told you about Bloodmoon territory, you expected it to feel like a fortress, cold stone and military efficiency, but the mountain rock held warmth the way old wood did, and the corridors smelled of cedar and something medicinal and clean, and it was quieter than anywhere Aria had been in years. Nora Hayes walked them through intake with a brisk competence that had kindness underneath it, the kind of kindness that didn’t make a production of itself. She was mid-ranking, Aria judged, not a healer by designation but clearly trained, the way pack wolves often cross-trained because packs couldn’t afford specialists for every function. She had a round, observant face and brown eyes that moved quickly and retained everything. Aria liked her immediately and immediately distrusted that she liked her. In this place, liking someone quickly was a liability. Liam sat on the examination table and let Nor

Killian found her at the edge of the forest. She’d taken to walking the outer path during the hour after the council session, when her work as Xavier’s aide was technically complete for the day and Liam was in the medical wing for his early afternoon treatment. The path ran along the tree line, where the pine resin was strongest and the noise of the pack faded to a low murmur, and she walked it because she needed the thirty minutes more than she needed anything else. She heard his footsteps before he spoke. Unhurried. Deliberate. The footsteps of someone who wanted to be heard coming. “I thought I’d find you here,” Killian said. She kept walking. “Am I so predictable?” “Everyone has a pattern. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He fell into step beside her, hands in his pockets, at ease in the way expensive things were at ease, a settled confidence that came from never having doubted his own standing. “You needed air. Understandable. It’s a lot to take in, coming into a

The isolation cells were worse than she’d expected, and she’d expected the worst. The glass walls meant everyone could see inside. The pack walked past and some of them looked and some of them didn’t, but the ones who didn’t look, those were worse. Those were the ones who’d already decided what she was and didn’t need to confirm it with a glance. The first night, she didn’t sleep. The second night, Selene came. The old woman moved slowly, deliberately, a cup of tea in her weathered hands. She set it on the small table inside the cell and sat down on the bench across from Aria and simply looked at her for a very long time. “I came to see if you would break,” Selene said finally. “I haven’t.” Selene studied her. The old woman’s eyes were sharp, missing nothing. “In my day,” she said, “a woman who came back to a pack she’d fled, carrying a child whose father was the Alpha, and lied about it, she would break. By day three, at latest. She would beg. She would cry. She would