บททั้งหมดของ Broken by My Family, Reclaimed by the Alpha King: บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

Murielle's POV I didn't give him anything. Not fear, not the flinch he was fishing for, nothing but a flat stare until he lost interest and faced forward again.That was the first thing three years in a cell had actually been good for.He hadn't touched the cloth.I turned that over as we walked, the wolfsbane still thick in my blood, my legs answering slower than I wanted them to. He'd seen it swinging there against the dark bark, plain as anything, and he'd kept walking without so much as breaking stride to tear it down.At first I told myself it was arrogance. Men who'd done this before, who knew this stretch of ground the way they clearly did, might not think a scrap of pale cloth was worth the ten seconds it would cost them to remove.Then a worse thought arrived, and once it did, I couldn't put it back down.What if they wanted it found?What if I wasn't leaving a trail behind me at all, but exactly the trail someone else meant for me to leave, every scrap pointing whoever foll

Murielle's POVPaper crackled nearby. The younger man had unfolded a map across one knee and was tracing something with his finger."This crosses the old boundary marker. We shouldn't be anywhere near it.""Then we're near it.""That's not an answer."The older man looked at him sharply. "Would you rather argue with the map or get moving before that wolf catches our scent?"The younger man held his stare for a moment. "I'd rather not walk us into ground none of us have actually crossed before."Nobody answered him.These were the same men who had moved through the earlier route without hesitation. They'd known where the bridge sat and who would be waiting there, spoken about houses and crossings without once needing to check where they were going.Now they were bent over a map arguing about a boundary marker none of them recognized.Whatever certainty had carried them through the first part of the journey ended here. The changed orders had pushed them onto unfamiliar ground, and for t

Alpha King Cassian's POVThe first thing I noticed was how little of the room seemed intended for anyone to live in it. There was a narrow cot against one wall, a table and two chairs, but nearly every other available surface held paper. Several ledgers sat on a shelf with their spines turned toward the wall, an effort at concealment so lazy it suggested the keeper rarely expected anyone with reason to look.I opened the first.There were dates but no names, some with numbers beside them and others with marks I didn't immediately recognize. The entries went back months. The next ledger took them farther, and by the third I was looking at records old enough to make the idea of one corrupt keeper taking occasional coin impossible."Soren."He appeared in the doorway, still holding the keeper by one arm.I turned the ledger toward him. "Tell me what that looks like."His eyes moved down the page. "Crossings.""That's what I thought.""That's a lot of crossings for a bridge nobody uses."

Murielle's POVNobody dragged me the last stretch to the doors.That alone should have felt like relief, and instead it unsettled me more than being hauled would have. Two of the men flanking me slowed their pace to match mine without being told, one of them even steadying my elbow when my knees threatened to give on the front steps, careful in a way that had nothing kind behind it.They hadn't cared when I stumbled on the road. They'd been willing to drag me if I stopped walking and tie me across a wolf's back when I couldn't keep up. Now, suddenly, they were making sure I reached the doors on my own feet.Someone wanted me alive, but apparently that wasn't enough anymore. Whoever was waiting inside wanted me in one piece too.They brought me through a side door instead of the grand ones under the Draeger crest, down a short corridor lined with paintings gone dark with age, and into a room that looked nothing like anywhere else I'd been dragged through tonight. A proper bed instead o

Murielle's POVHe was close.I didn't have time to hold onto that thought before the shouting behind me sharpened, another voice answering closer than the last, followed by the crash of someone coming through the trees.They'd found the empty room.I ran.The ground was hard with frost, and every step sent pain through my bare feet. I couldn't feel two of my toes anymore, which should probably have worried me more than it did, but there were men behind me and another howl somewhere ahead, and standing still long enough to worry about anything wasn't an option.The howl came again, further off this time, and something inside me stirred with it, so faintly I might have convinced myself I'd imagined it if I hadn't felt the same thing moments earlier. My wolf wasn't telling me where to go. There were no words in my head, no sudden instinct pointing me toward safety. She simply hadn't gone completely still again, and after three years of silence, even that was enough to make my chest ache.