Todos los capítulos de A Second Chance For Alpha Ayden: Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

AYDENThe guard doesn't run and I can’t tell if it's because he is disciplined or innocent. "Do you need something?" I ask again, quieter this time, because a raised voice will only give him something to act on."No, Alpha," he repeats, and his eyes dart toward the door calculating his exit.Lucian is beside me before I finish deciding whether to press further, one hand closing on the guard's shoulder with a grip that isn't gentle. "You'll come with me," he says. I hold Samantha's gaze over the top of the guard's bowed head, and she gives me the smallest nod that says ‘We’ll talk later’. She's right. Whatever this man knows about the leak, the interrogation will last for an hour. The coalition splintering in front of six Alphas will not.I let Lucian take him. It costs me something to turn away from a lead, but I've learned this week that the wolf who chases every scent at once ends up catching nothing.The private session I called for happens in the smaller council room, the one wit

AYDENEvery torch on the ceremony grounds seems to hold its breath along with the crowd."Say it," I tell Frois, and I hear my own voice come out rougher than I intend it to be. I have unanswered questions that compress into two words; I've waited far too long to speak them aloud.Frois's hands are steady, but his eyes aren't. "Stormfang wasn't circling our borders that week because of anything Samantha Nonis represented," he says. "They were circling because I told them we were vulnerable. I opened that door myself, Alpha, in a private meeting I never disclosed to your father's council, trying to force a faster succession I believed would strengthen this pack.” he looks at Samantha and then back at me, “I miscalculated how aggressively they'd respond. When the threat became real, I needed a way to explain it that didn't implicate my own mistake. A warrior's daughter as Luna was the easiest lie to sell. It cost you nothing I hadn't already cost you first."The clearing goes utterly si

SAMANTHABy dawn, Lucian still hasn't found the two warriors who reached out to Stormfang, and the not-knowing is doing more damage to Moonclaw than the betrayal itself."They didn't report for morning drills," he tells Ayden and me in the war room, tiredness carved into every line of his face after a night spent quietly questioning anyone who might know something. "Their bunks are empty. No one's seen either of them since before Paxton’s outburst yesterday." He hesitates before adding the part I can tell he's been dreading saying aloud. "Word's already spreading anyway. Not the details…I've kept that contained as tightly as I can, but enough that half the pack knows something is wrong, and rumor is filling in details faster than truth can catch up to it."Ayden's jaw tightens. "How bad?.""Bad enough that Paxton’s concerns from yesterday don't feel strange anymore," Lucian says. "Bad enough that I think if we don't address this directly, we're going to lose warriors before Stormfang

SAMANTHALucian doesn't knock. He simply appears in the doorway of our private quarters at an hour when nothing good has ever once arrived unannounced, and the look on his face tells me before he says a single word that whatever he's found has already cost him a full night's sleep. I sit up fully in the chair I'd only just managed to settle into, the last hour's fragile quiet already draining out of the room around us."I have a short list," he says, closing the door behind him with a care that feels almost ceremonial, like he's sealing something dangerous inside the room with us rather than shutting it out. "There are three names of people with both the access and the opportunity to have intercepted Bram's message and known about Tuesday's meeting."Ayden straightens from where he's been standing at the window, exhaustion sharpening instantly into focus. "Let’s hear them.""The records clerk who logs correspondence through the guest wing," Lucian begins. "New enough that we can't ful

AYDENAsher is dead before his body finishes hitting the ground, and the sound that leaves Frois isn't a shout so much as something torn loose from somewhere far older than tonight, a sound I don't think I'll fully stop hearing even after everything else about this night fades.I don't let myself process it yet. There's no time. "The gap!" I bark at Lucian, already moving toward the narrow opening in the chamber ceiling where the blade came from, and he's beside me instantly, boosting me up through the shaft before I've fully finished the command. The passage above is tight, barely wide enough for my shoulders, but it opens quickly onto a shallow trench cut into the hillside above the tunnel, close enough to the surface that whoever threw that blade could have heard every word spoken below.I catch him before he clears the treeline, a shadow moving fast and low through the underbrush, and it takes every ounce of restraint I have not to simply tear into him the moment my hands close on