Todos los capítulos de BOUND TO THE FORBIDDEN ALPHA PRINCE • BOOK II: Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

💫RAYNE💫 I stepped through the door and walked straight toward the bedroom, my whole body already curling in on itself the second the air changed around me. I had forgotten how cold his chambers were. The chill sank through the thin fabric of my dress before I had taken three full steps, biting straight through to skin that had barely finished thawing from the cell I had just been dragged out of. My arms wrapped tight around my own ribs on instinct, my fingers digging into my sleeves, and my teeth picked up their chattering again almost immediately, a rhythm my jaw could not seem to stop no matter how hard I clenched it. I had thought nothing could feel colder than that cell. This room proved me wrong within seconds, the cold here was different somehow, sharper, more deliberate, like it had been built this way on purpose rather than simply left untended. I knocked twice against the bedroom door. No answer came from beyond it. I pushed it open anyway, and the darkness swallowed

💫RAYNE💫 Ronan watched me carefully, clearly noticing the sentence I had swallowed back down, his eyes narrowing just slightly the way they always did when he caught me hiding something. He did not push for the rest of it, though I saw the question sitting there behind his eyes, patient, waiting for whenever I finally decided to hand it over. "He's unpredictable." His voice dropped lower, careful now, the teasing gone entirely from it. "Unstable, if half of what I've seen and heard since I started working under him is true. But he wouldn't kill you, Rayne. His pride wouldn't allow it, not after everything he's already done to keep you close. And I don't think his arrogance would ever let another person—even Lady Emery—lay a hand on you either. Not while he's decided you're his to control." He reached over and took both my hands in his, squeezing hard, grounding me the way he had grounded me a hundred times before, since we were children too small to understand half the cruelty alre

🩸WARREN🩸 Incense burned thick enough in the temple that I could taste it on the back of my tongue before I ever crossed the threshold, sweet and cloying, the same scent that had clung to every ritual Aldric had ever dragged me through since I was old enough to sit still for one. Twelve maidens knelt in a single row along the stone floor, their gowns pooling around them in careful arrangements of silk and velvet, heads bowed, hands folded in their laps like they had rehearsed the posture in front of a mirror before ever setting foot inside these walls. Torchlight caught the jewels woven through their hair, throwing small fractured points of light across the ceiling with every small movement any of them dared to make. Red hair. Gold. Auburn. One with hair black enough to swallow the torchlight whole rather than reflect it. None of it interested me in the slightest. I took my seat at the front without ceremony, Ronan settling into position near the wall behind me, his eyes already

💫RAYNE💫 I felt him before I saw him, that same pull tightening low in my chest, warm and unwelcome, dragging my attention toward the door even before my eyes managed to find the shape of him standing there. I dropped to my knees the second his presence registered fully, forgetting the shards scattered beneath me until one bit sharp into my palm, my forehead nearly touching the stone floor. "I'm sorry, Alpha." Silence answered me first, thick and unmoving, broken only by the slow, deliberate sound of his footsteps crossing the room toward me. Each one landed unhurried against the stone, patient in a way that frightened me more than speed ever could have, a predator who already knew exactly how much time he had to spend on this. "Raise your head." I lifted it, my whole body trembling, my eyes finding his crimson ones glowing steady in the firelight, unreadable the way they always were, giving me nothing at all to gauge the danger by. And even now, even kneeling in broken clay wi

✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦ The Hexemerald shall bewitch the Beast, and beneath her spell, he shall claim her. The moment his mark is made, the sky shall rain blood. His hunger shall awaken in wrath, and every heart beneath the bleeding sky shall call to him. He shall hunt the living for the Star he cannot find within the witch. Until the Starborn answers the Beast’s hunger. —THE ANCIENT PROPHECY ✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦✦────✦ 💫RAYNE💫 The door clicked shut behind him, and I stood there a long moment before I let myself move, listening to his footsteps fade somewhere beyond the wall, waiting for the particular silence that told me I was truly alone. The room was not fancy. A bed pushed against one wall, a small chest for whatever belongings I might eventually own, a single window too high to see much through except a strip of dark sky. But it was clean, and it was quiet, and it was mine in a way nothing else in this pack house had been mine since the moment those guards first dragg