Todos los capítulos de BOUND TO THE FORBIDDEN ALPHA PRINCE • BOOK II: Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

💫RAYNE💫 “Don’t go too slow or too fast, Rayne.” Talia walked beside me down a corridor that seemed to stretch on longer than any hallway had a right to, her hand wrapped tight around my wrist because I could not stop shaking. My whole body trembled with it, small tremors running from my shoulders down through my fingertips, rattling loose whatever composure I had scraped together back in the sleeping hall. I could not tell anymore whether it was fear, or the ankle still throbbing dull and constant beneath me, or something else entirely I did not have a name for yet. “Don’t look at him in the eyes. He hates it.” But he ordered me twice to look at him in the eyes. The thought rose before I could stop it, unwanted, cold winter blue flashing behind my own eyes even now, the memory of that stare freezing something deep inside my chest all over again, the same way it had the first time he pinned me with it in that hall. “And please, Rayne, don’t make a sound. No noise at all. Control

✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦ When the Third Star walks beneath a bleeding moon…The Beast shall remember what the man forgot. The Crown shall kneel before the one born without a wolf. Three stars shall shine where no stars should exist… And only then…Will blood choose love over hunger.—THE ANCIENT PROPHECY. ✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦ 🩸WARREN🩸 The temple sat apart from the rest of the pack house, connected only by a narrow covered walkway that always felt colder than the corridors it led away from. Garrick fell into step beside me the moment I left the guard wing and Ronan trailed a pace behind us both, silent, his eyes cutting toward every corner we passed like he expected an ambush from the architecture itself. “Wait outside.” I did not look back at him as we reached the temple doors. Ronan said nothing, though I felt the weight of his stare settle against my back regardless, hatred banked low but never fully extinguished. He took his position beside the entrance without argument

🩸WARREN🩸 My mother’s carriage disappeared past the gate an hour ago, and still the weight of everything Aldric said in that temple sat lodged behind my ribs like a blade I could not work free. I had not eaten a single bite at that table. I told myself it was the meeting, the exhaustion of another wasted morning chasing ghosts, but the truth sat closer to my skin than that. Every time I lifted my fork, Kian dragged my attention sideways, down the length of that table, toward a servant girl refilling water no one had asked her to refill. Has the beast begun to dream. The words circled through my skull on a loop I could not silence. Only a mate who had awakened triggered the dreaming. Only the Starborn could snap the bond according to two hundred years of prophecy carved into stone by men who never once had to live with the consequences of being wrong. And still Kian wanted her. A fat, dirty thief with no mark, no bloodline, no shred of anything the prophecy demanded. Eith

💫RAYNE💫 Food had never tasted this good in my entire life. I ate until my stomach ached in a way that felt almost foreign, warm bread and roasted fruit and something close to peace settling into me for the first time since I woke up in that unfamiliar hall this morning. The bread was still faintly warm when I tore into it, soft in the center, the crust giving way beneath my fingers. I chased every bite with water, greedy for it, my body finally remembering what it felt like to not be hungry, not be aching, not be afraid for a few stolen minutes. Talia sat across from me through the whole meal, chattering about nothing in particular, laughing easily at her own jokes, and by the time we finished, Greta had somehow found no work waiting for either of us. Now I sat cross-legged on my own bed while Talia knelt behind me, her fingers working slow and careful through my hair, weaving small sections into a braid with the kind of patience nobody had ever spent on me before. The gentle tug

💫RAYNE💫The word left me before I could stop it, small and shaking in the dark. "No."Silence answered me first, thick and heavy, stretching long enough that I wondered if I had imagined saying it at all."I might be your slave." I forced the rest out before my courage could fail me completely, my voice trembling with every word. "I stole from you, and I know I owe you for that. I split the logs. I scrubbed your floor on my knees this morning. But what I stole cannot buy my dignity from me. You cannot ask this of me."He moved closer through the darkness, and I stumbled a step back on instinct, my heel catching against something on the floor, my heart hammering so hard I felt it climbing into my throat. His eyes stayed fixed on mine the entire time, still crimson, still glowing faint and terrible in the black, and something about the steadiness of that color, unblinking, unmoved by anything I had just said, told me he had not heard a single word of my protest as anything worth consi