Semua Bab Bound to the Alpha She Was Raised to Hate : Bab 101 - Bab 110

Odessa's POVI expected a guard. I expected Corvin. I didn't expect Julian.He stood in the doorway for a long moment before stepping inside, and something about him looked different from every version of him I'd known before. Smaller, somehow, despite being exactly the same height, the same build. His jacket wasn't pressed the way it always used to be. His hair wasn't perfectly styled. He looked like a man who hadn't slept properly in days."Odessa," he said, his voice quiet.I stood, backing toward the far wall on instinct, my whole body still wound tight from being startled awake. "What do you want?""I asked for permission to see you," he said. "It took some convincing.""Congratulations," I said, my voice flat. "Come to gloat?""No." He stepped further into the room, and I noticed the barred inner gate behind him, still shut, a guard stationed just beyond it, close enough to hear but apparently not close enough to interfere. "I came because I needed you to hear something from me

Ronan's POV We left Ironhollow an hour after I said the words I couldn't take back, my father's face carved from something colder than I'd ever seen from him, Briar and Micah already saddled and waiting despite everything he said moments earlier. Nobody stopped us. That surprised me more than anything else that night, maybe it shouldn't have. My father understood exactly what kind of man he raised, even if he hated the timing of it. "You're sure about this?" Briar asked, riding close beside me as we approached the border, her voice low despite the empty darkness surrounding us. "No," I said. "I'm not sure about any of it. I just know I'm not sitting at home while she's locked in some cell." "Fair enough," Micah said, adjusting the bag slung across his good shoulder, the other still stiff from the injury he'd taken during her arrest. "Wasn't exactly planning on staying behind eith

Corvin's POVThe report reached me just past midnight, and for the first time in longer than I could readily remember, I felt something close to alarm settle beneath my composure.The story had not simply spread. It had detonated, moving through the Vale with a speed no single publication should have achieved on its own, shared and reshared across every device in the coven until containing it had become, by any practical measure, impossible.I sat in my study reading through summary after summary my aides delivered, each one worse than the last, public reaction already fracturing along predictable but unwelcome lines. Outrage. Disbelief. Demands for immediate accountability from council members who spent years comfortably ignoring whispers they never bothered investigating properly themselves."Sir," my aide said, hovering near the door with the particular caution of someone bringing news he already suspected would land poorly, "Councilor Marsh ha

Odessa's POVThe pressure hit before I could brace for it.It started in my teeth, a strange, deep ache that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with something forcing its way through bone, through blood, settling into a place inside me I didn't have a name for. I gasped, my hand flying to my jaw on instinct, though there was nothing physical to press against."What's happening to me?" I asked, my voice cracking.Corvin didn't answer. He stood back, watching, his expression carrying none of the urgency mine did, none of the fear. If anything, something in his posture had loosened, like a man setting down a weight he'd carried for longer than his own body could remember.The hum from the floor grew louder, climbing from my feet up through my knees, my hips, my chest, until I could feel it vibrating behind my ribs in time with my own racing heartbeat. The warmth I chased for hours, the same faint spark I tried summoning against

Odessa's POV"Contained," Ronan repeated, his voice dangerously flat. "That's your word for whatever you're doing to her right now?""It's the accurate word," Corvin said, unbothered, straightening his sleeves like a man finishing a minor errand rather than standing over a girl crumpled on the floor. "Though I understand it may not carry the same weight to you as it does to me.""Ronan," I managed, forcing the word out through gritted teeth, the pressure in my chest still crushing, still pulling something vital further out of reach with every passing second. "Don't listen to him. Just get me out.""I intend to," Ronan said, though he hadn't moved, his eyes locked on Corvin like he was measuring the exact distance he needed to close before the man could react."You should know something first," Corvin said, and something in his tone shifted, almost conversational, like he had all the time in the world despite the chaos still audible just beyond that shattered doorway."I don't care wha