All Chapters of Bound to the Alpha She Was Raised to Hate : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Odessa's POVThe crowd thinned out slowly after the healer's announcement, people breaking off in small groups to help carry the worst-off back toward the house, the anger from minutes earlier draining into something quieter and more uncertain. Nobody apologized to me. A few people caught my eye and looked away fast, which was as close to an apology as I was going to get today.Ronan didn't move from beside me until most of the crowd had cleared, his jaw still tight, eyes scanning the remaining stragglers like he was cataloguing who'd stood with Micah and who hadn't."You okay?" he asked, once it was mostly just the two of us and a few pack members helping the healer pack up her supplies."I don't know," I said honestly. "I keep waiting to feel relieved, and it's not really landing.""Because of the word Vale?""Because of the word alchemy." I wrapped my arms around myself, even though the morning had warmed up since we first got here. "That's not a word people throw around casually.

Odessa's POV We ended up in the small sitting room off the main hallway, the closest thing to privacy the house offered on short notice. Nora dropped onto the couch, still catching her breath, digging through her bag with hands that hadn't quite stopped shaking. "Okay," she said. "Okay, before I show you this, I need you to know I wasn't looking for anything about you specifically. This started as research for my journalism project, the campus folklore thing, remember?" "I remember." I sat across from her, Ronan hovering near the doorway, close but giving us space. "Nora, what did you find?" "I've been digging through old newspaper archives, trying to trace some of the weirder rumors back to actual events, to see if any of them had real roots." She pulled a folded piece of paper free, yellowed and soft at the creases like it had been handled a lot, unfolded and refolded more than once. "I wasn't even looking for your name. I swear. It just showed up." She held it out, and my

Odessa's POVWe ended up sitting on the floor of the hallway, backs against the wall, close enough that our shoulders touched. Nora had slipped back into the sitting room at some point, giving us space without either of us asking her to. I was grateful for that more than I could say."Tell me," I said. "About Callan. All of it, not just the part you gave me before."Ronan was quiet for a moment, staring at some point on the opposite wall like it might make this easier to say out loud."He was my age," he said finally. "We grew up together, trained together, ran patrols together since we were old enough to shift on our own. He was the kind of guy who made everything less serious than it needed to be, you know? Cracked jokes during drills. Drove the trainers crazy.""Sounds like Finn.""Yeah." Something flickered across his face. "That's actually part of why this whole thing with Finn hit so hard. Different kid, same kind of spirit.""What happened to him?""Border patrol." Ronan's jaw

Odessa's POVThe seal cracked easily under my thumb, wax giving way faster than I expected, like it had been pressed on light on purpose.Ronan didn't say anything, just stood close enough that I could feel him there, not crowding, just present. I pulled the folded parchment free and unfolded it slowly, my hands steady only because I was forcing them to be.I recognized the handwriting immediately.I didn't know why that surprised me. I'd never actually seen Corvin's handwriting before, not once, not in eight years of him being the most powerful man hovering at the edges of my life. But something about it fit exactly what I expected anyway,small, precise letters, evenly spaced, nothing rushed or careless about a single stroke of it. Even his handwriting felt controlled."What's it say?" Ronan asked."Give me a second."I read it once fast, just scanning for the shape of it, and then again slower, letting the actual words land properly.‘Miss Ravencourt,’‘It has come to the council's

Odessa's POVI spent the rest of the night sitting on the floor of my ruined room, sweeping broken glass into a pile with my hands because I couldn't stand looking at it anymore, and by the time morning light came through the cracked window, I felt hollowed out in a way exhaustion alone couldn't explain.Word had already spread by the time I made it to the dining hall.I felt it the second I walked in. The room didn't go quiet exactly, not the way it had after the well house incident. It went carefully. Conversations kept going, but voices dropped, eyes flicked toward me and away fast, and nobody quite met my gaze the way they usually did, not even the people who started warming up to me over the last few weeks."Morning," Briar said, sliding into her usual seat across from me, but even so she looked a little more cautious than before."Is it?" I said, not really asking."People are talking," she said, quietly. "About last night. About what they felt.""I figured.""Some of them are s