All Chapters of A Second Chance For Alpha Ayden: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

AYDENWe repel the first wave before dawn, and the relief lasts exactly as long as it takes me to count how many of my warriors don't walk back through the gate under their own strength. Smoke still hangs low over the eastern tree line when the last of them straggle in, and for one disoriented moment I stand in the gray half-light simply counting bodies against the number I sent out, praying the math comes out kinder than I expect it to.Six wounded. One dead. A young courier who was barely two years into his service died, the same rotation Lucian mentioned when he first narrowed his suspect list days ago. It was a probing strike, not the full assault Paxton warned us was coming. A handful of Stormfang scouts happen to test our eastern defenses before whatever's actually massing beyond the treeline decides to commit fully. Small mercy. It doesn't feel like one standing over a boy's body in the gray half-light before sunrise.By the time I make it back to the packhouse, exhausted, bloo

AYDENI meet Ronan Thrynn's advance guard at the southern wall with nothing but instinct and fury carrying me forward, and for three brutal minutes I don't think about gardens or wildflowers or anything Samantha and I imagined together an hour ago. I think about the wall holding. I think about every warrior fighting beside me making it back through the gate alive. The stars we'd been looking at together feel like something from another lifetime entirely by the time the first horn stops echoing.We push them back before the sun fully clears the ridge, faster than I expect, faster than should be possible against a force led personally by the man who's spent five years plotting exactly this moment. Ronan doesn't commit fully. He tests our southern defences, loses a handful of warriors to our own, and pulls back into the treeline the moment it becomes clear we were far better prepared than his information led him to expect.It isn't victory. It's a warning shot that cost both sides blood,

SAMANTHAI stop shaking somewhere around dawn, and by the time the sun is fully up, the grief hasn't gone anywhere, it simply changed shape into something I can actually use. I sit with it in the quiet dark for a long time before I let myself move, turning Zarek's easy laugh and Amara's steady hands over in my mind until the ache stops feeling like something that might break me and starts feeling like something I can move on with.Sharon finds me in the east wing before I've fully finished dressing. Alisa is still asleep in the next room, and she doesn't say anything for a long moment. She just wraps both arms around me from behind and holds on the way only a sister can, the way she used to when we were girls and the world felt too large to face alone."Lucian told me about Zarek and Amara," she says quietly against my shoulder. "I only met them a handful of times, being with you in Hollow Pine, but I remember exactly how they looked at you like family.""They're gone because of me,"

SAMANTHAI'm running before Ayden finishes giving the order, faster than I've moved in years. My heart is slamming against my ribs with a single, unbearable thought.“Alisa, Alisa, Alisa,” looping over and over in my mind until it drowns out everything else, even the sound of my own footsteps pounding down a corridor that suddenly feels three times longer than it did this morning.The east wing corridor is dim, lit only by the low emergency lanterns Lucian installed after the leak weeks ago, and I hear the commotion before I see it. Sharon's voice is sharp with fear and beneath it, the distinct sound of a struggle. I round the corner into the nursery antechamber and find her standing between Alisa's crib and a Stormfang warrior who's already halfway through the window, one gloved hand reaching for the latch on the reinforced shutter Lucian swore was impenetrable a week ago.I don't think. I grab the heavy iron candlestick from the side table without breaking stride and swing it hard i

SAMANTHA"Please get her out," I say into Lucian's radio, my voice more persistent than I feel. It is more steady than I have any right to feel with my entire life's work burning down two hundred miles away while I stand helpless in a war room I can't leave. My hands are already shaking before I finish the sentence, some old instinct screaming at me to run, to do something with my own two hands instead of standing here relaying instructions through static. "Naomi knows that building better than anyone alive. There’s a way through the back storage corridor that the fire must not have reached yet, I’m sure she'll know it.” I say through the radio. “Tell your warriors to check behind the flour stores…there’s a service door there."The radio crackles, static stretching out long enough that I feel my own heartbeat in my throat, and then the garrison commander's voice returns, breathless. "Copy that, Luna. Sending a team through now."I set the radio down with hands that won't quite stop