All Chapters of Too late to want me Alpha: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Fire burned behind my eyelids, but my skin was coated in frost.The fever had arrived silently in the night, creeping into my blood like poison. My lungs felt packed with smoldering embers, each shallow breath dragging a dry, agonizing heat through my torn throat. My body was a battleground of contradictions—my core was blazing, my limbs were stiff as ice, and the deep, hollow agony in my womb pulsed with a rhythmic, sickening throb.Infection. I knew the signs. The forced, violent birth, the unsanitary floor of the tower, the untreated tear in my throat—it was all festering inside me.The wagon jolted violently. A fresh wave of nausea hit me, and I gagged, my stomach heaving against nothing. A choked, bloody froth bubbled past my cracked lips. I tried to swallow, but my throat closed up like rusted iron, sending a blinding wave of pain straight to the base of my skull.I couldn't make a sound. Not a cry. Not a moan. Just the wet, pathetic wheeze of air fighting through ruined flesh.

The mist didn't clear so much as it was torn apart by the mountainside.As the carriage rounded the final jagged cliff pass, the trees abruptly vanished, replaced by vast, barren slopes of black basalt and ice. And there, carved directly into the living rock of the peak, sat the gargantuan heart of the northern world.The Obsidian Spire.It didn't look like a castle built by human or wolf hands. It looked like a dark god had driven a jagged, frozen crown of volcanic glass straight through the chest of the mountain. Towering turrets pierced the low-hanging snow clouds, their sharp parapets gleaming like polished obsidian under the pale winter sun. Bridges made of iron and black stone spanned terrifying chasms between the castle’s outer towers, suspended hundreds of feet above jagged, pine-choked ravines.It was immense. Oppressive. Magnificent in its absolute brutality.The sheer scale of it forced my breath to catch in my ruined throat. In the Southern territories, the Shadow Moon pac

The final bell echoed through the subterranean vaults, its deep, brass tone signaling the end of the evening shift.My knuckles were raw and split, the skin around my fingernails stained dark with charcoal soot and cold grease. All twelve massive iron cauldrons stood in a neat line against the damp wall, their inner surfaces scraped clean down to the bare, gleaming metal.Mistress Veda walked down the line, trailing her rough index finger inside the rim of the last pot. She pulled her hand back and inspected her skin in the dim torchlight.No soot. No grease.She gave a single, curt nod—the closest thing to praise someone like Veda would ever offer. "Scullery door closes in five minutes. If you're not in the quarters by the third strike, you spend the night locked in the meat cellar."I didn't waste a second. I wiped my wet, bleeding hands against the sides of my rough burlap tunic and joined the small, somber queue of kitchen workers shuffling toward the heavy oak door at the back of

The days that followed dissolved into a blur of iron, steam, and red-hot pain.Brida did not relent. If anything, my silent defiance in the butcher bay had struck a nerve, morphing her casual cruelty into a focused, personal vendetta. She assigned me every backbreaking, humiliating task the lower fortress had to offer.I hauled sacks of damp black coal up six flights of narrow stone stairs until my lungs felt scorched with soot. I scrubbed the frozen grease from the scullery drains with bare, bleeding fingers. I emptied the heavy brass slop buckets from the lower guard barracks, carrying them through the bitter, freezing mountain winds to the cliffside chute.Every single task was designed to make me break. Brida wanted tears. She wanted to see me drop to my knees in the filthy straw, sob for mercy, and beg her for an easier shift.She watched me like a hawk from the gallery, her sharp eyes searching for the slightest tremble of my lower lip, the smallest glint of moisture in my hazel

It started not with a sound, but with a vibration in the soles of my feet.Deep within the dark stone bedrock beneath the scullery, the ground began to thrum. A low, resonant hum rushed through the basalt pillars, shaking the soot from the ceiling arches and sending ripples across the surface of the greasy wash water in my wooden bucket.Then came the horn.It was not the high, clear trumpet of a garrison patrol or the sharp chime of the change-of-guard. It was the terrifying, guttural roar of the Vael-Hark—the giant war horn forged from the skull of a subterranean wyrm, mounted on the highest parapet of the Obsidian Spire.The sound filled the mountain, vibrating through stone, iron, and bone. It blown only for two reasons: total war, or the return of the Lycan King.In an instant, the endless, rhythmic rhythm of the lower kitchens exploded into sheer, unadulterated chaos."He's back!" a prep cook shrieked, dropping a tray of clay bowls that shattered against the flagstones. "The Kin