All Chapters of Bound to the Alpha She Was Raised to Hate : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Odessa's POVRonan's hands dropped off my shoulders like I caught fire.I turned toward the treeline, and there he was. Julian. Standing at the edge of the field like he walked out of a photo shoot instead of half a mile through wolf territory, not a hair out of place, jacket pressed, boots somehow spotless despite the mud everywhere else."How did you get through the sentries?" Ronan said, voice flat, already moving to put himself half a step in front of me."Politely," Julian said. "Turns out manners still work on most people.""Not on me.""Clearly." Julian's eyes moved past Ronan, landing on me, and for a second the easy smile stayed exactly where it was. "Odessa. You look well. Better than well, actually, given the circumstances.""What are you doing here, Julian?""Checking on you." He said it lightly, casually, like it was the most normal thing in the world to walk unannounced into enemy territory. "You haven't answered a single message in three days. I was starting to worry."

Odessa's POVBriar hadn't said much more once the question was out there, just that she'd heard it once, from an older pack member who'd been around during the original treaty negotiations, that the official Vale record on my parents' deaths never got a proper review, not even the basic kind every death in the coven was supposed to get. She didn't know the details. She just knew it had bothered her enough to remember it.That was enough to keep me up half the night, staring at the ceiling, running through everything I'd been told growing up. A carriage accident. Bad weather, a cliff road, nothing anyone could have prevented. That's what I'd been raised on, repeated by every relative who bothered to mention it at all, always with the same flat, closed-door tone that told me not to ask follow-up questions.I never questioned it. Not once, not really. Why would I? Grief doesn't leave much room for investigation when you're twelve.By the next afternoon, I couldn't sit still with it anymo

Odessa's POVBy breakfast, everyone already knew.I don't know how word traveled that fast, but by the time I made it to the dining hall, the whole room had gone quiet in a different way than usual, not glaring at me this time, just talking low and fast among themselves, glancing toward me every so often like they were trying to work out where I fit into this new version of events."Heard about the archive," Briar said, sliding into the seat across from me without asking. "Vale scent, right? That's what's going around.""That's what Ronan found," I said. "Fabric caught on the cabinet. He said it wasn't a rogue, it wasn't pack...""That's not nothing." She glanced around the room, lowering her voice slightly. "People are actually talking differently this morning. Less 'watch the vampire' and more 'who let a Vale spy walk through our territory twice.'""Feels like a strange thing to be relieved about.""Not strange. Just honest." She shrugged. "Fear needs somewhere to go. Better it goes

Odessa's POVGarrick's new terms turned Ronan into something between a bodyguard and a shadow, and by the third day of it, I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone more than an hour without him somewhere in sight.Meals, sure, that made sense. But he started showing up in the hallway outside my room in the mornings too, leaning against the wall like he just happened to be passing by, which stopped being believable after the second time it happened at exactly the same hour."You don't actually have anywhere else to be?" I asked him one morning, stepping out to find him already there, arms crossed, looking entirely too casual about it."Not really," he said. "Guard duty comes with the job now.""Feels less like guard duty and more like babysitting.""Call it whatever helps you sleep at night." A faint smile tugged at his mouth before he caught it. "Come on. The kitchen's serving something that isn't oatmeal for once."We fell into step together, easy in a way that still surprised me e

Odessa's POVI could've run. Some part of me actually thought about it, just for a second, that old instinct kicking in, telling me to make myself small, disappear, let the accusation blow past me the way it always had at Duskmere.I didn't move."I'm not going anywhere," I said, and my voice came out steady, given how hard my heart was slamming. "I didn't do this. I'm not going to run like I did.""Then prove it," Micah snapped."How? Tell me exactly how I'm supposed to prove a negative, Micah, and I'll do it right now."He didn't have an answer for that. Nobody did, which somehow made the silence worse.More people were pushing closer, some out of anger, some just swept up in the panic of the moment, faces I recognized and faces I didn't, all of it blurring together into one wall of suspicion aimed straight at me.Ronan stepped in front of me before I even registered him moving.Not beside me. In front of me, s