Alle Kapitel von From Cast-Off Daughter to Lycan Queen: Kapitel 11 – Kapitel 20

We sat in the Alpha's office for what felt like hours, trying to piece together what could possibly be dreadful enough, what secret could be heavy enough, to make an entire pack fight this hard to keep someone they'd otherwise treated like she didn't matter.“What if you're not their real daughter?” Julian said it quietly, but the words still landed like an accusation. “Think about it — a pack doesn't fight this hard to keep someone unless there's something they're desperate to hide.”Something shifted in Damon's face — a flicker gone almost before I caught it, his jaw tightening, the color draining slightly from his skin. His hand, resting on the arm of his chair, curled until I could see his nails press white crescents into his own palm. For half a second, his Alpha aura leaked out around him, pressing against the room like the air before a storm — there and gone so fast I might have imagined it, except for the way the papers on his desk stirred with no wind to move them.“Julian.” T

I woke up gasping three nights later, my hand pressed to my chest where the bond used to live. For a moment — just a split second — I could have sworn I felt it again. That golden thread that had connected me to Michael, warm and alive and whole.Then reality crashed back in. There was nothing there. Just scar tissue where something sacred used to be.My wolf whimpered, confused and grieving. She didn't understand how something the Moon Goddess herself had created could just — disappear. How something that was supposed to be permanent could be destroyed by choice.I found myself on the porch again, unable to go back to sleep. The moon was nearly full, casting silver light across the Ashcroft territory. Somewhere out there, in Whitefang, Michael was probably awake too. Fighting with Emilia. Fighting with his wolf. Living with the consequences of his choice.The thought should have satisfied me. Instead, it just made the ache in my chest worse.“Can't sleep?”I jumped.Julian materialize

The guard's grip on my arm loosened for exactly one second. Then Jared's guards fanned out around Nathan — six of them forming a semicircle, cutting off every exit.That was when I understood. Really understood. This had never been a negotiation. It had been a formality, a script Jared needed to run through before the actual plan took over. Six against one wasn't an accident. It was the whole point.“When I move, you run,” Nathan said, never taking his eyes off Jared. “Understand?”“Nathan, there are six of them—”“Do you understand?”I nodded, even though every instinct in me screamed against leaving him to face those odds alone.He didn't wait for anything else. He moved.It happened faster than I could fully track, but not so fast that it didn't leave marks on me. The first guard went down with a sound I felt more than heard — something wet and final, bone or cartilage giving way under Nathan's fist. The air filled with the copper tang of blood and the sour edge of adrenaline-sweat.

Morning came, and I could still feel Michael's presence like a handprint on glass — visible evidence of an intrusion I hadn't invited but somehow felt responsible for anyway.That was the thing about Whitefang's training. They didn't need to be in the room to control you. They'd spent eighteen years building the cage inside my own head, and even now, miles away in Ashcroft territory, I could feel the bars closing in.Should I tell Uncle Damon? The question itself felt like a trap. At Whitefang, telling the truth had always made things worse — not because the truth was bad, but because they'd taught me that my version of events mattered less than keeping everyone else comfortable. The system ran on my silence, and even knowing that, I could feel it trying to run the same way here.I lay in bed longer than I should have, not because I was afraid of Damon's reaction — he'd given me no reason to expect one — but because Whitefang had spent years teaching me that my problems were burdens, t

The blood on the bathroom floor was still fresh when Michael finally came home again, nearly a week later.Emilia stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, the other pressed low against her stomach. Her face had gone the color of paper.It had started hours earlier. She'd gone looking for a spare set of office keys in his desk and found, tucked behind old pack correspondence, a small bundle of letters tied with a ribbon that had clearly once been white. Raven's handwriting. Years old, some of them, from back when the bond between them was still new. Michael had kept every single one.She read them standing in his office, and by the time she finished the last, something in her chest had gone cold and then, without warning, sharp enough to double her over.“You kept them,” she said now, voice shaking, the bundle still crushed in her fist. “All this time. Every time you told me you'd let her go, you had these hidden three feet from where I sleep.”“Emilia—”“Don't.” She pus