All Chapters of Bound to the Alpha She Was Raised to Hate : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Odessa's POVGarrick didn't want to leave me in that room. I could see it in the way his jaw worked before he finally nodded and walked out, Ronan right behind him, throwing one last look over his shoulder that told me he'd be standing right outside that door the whole time.Then it was just me and Corvin, and the door clicking shut.The change happened fast. One second he was still sitting there with that same composed, diplomatic posture he held through the whole meeting. The next, something in his face just dropped away, like he'd been wearing a mask the entire time and finally didn't need it anymore."Sit," he said. Not a request.I stayed standing."Suit yourself." He leaned back in the chair, studying me the way you study a chess board, working out moves three steps ahead. "You've been busy, Odessa. Archives. Old newspaper clippings. A rather industrious human friend of yours, digging through campus records like she's got nothing better to do."My stomach dropped. He knew about

Odessa's POVCorvin left within the hour, taking his delegation with him, no further theatrics, no parting threats shouted over anyone's shoulder this time. Just a formal goodbye to Garrick, a promise to "consider the council's position carefully," and a look thrown my way on his way out that told me this wasn't over, not by a long shot.Garrick gave him a full week before pushing the tribunal question. Seven days. That's what we had."We need to know more," I said, the second the gate closed behind the last of the Vale delegation. "About the facility, about the program, about anything that tells us what we're actually up against.""The file's gone," Ronan reminded me. "Whatever detail we could've pulled from it, we lost when it got stolen.""Not everything's gone." I was already moving toward the archive room, my mind racing ahead of my feet. "Whoever took it grabbed the Ravencourt folder specifically. They knew exactly what they wanted. That means they might've left everything else

Odessa's POVThe east fence wasn't holding by the time we reached the courtyard.I could see the break in it from here, splintered wood scattered across the grass, and shapes moving through the gap fast, coordinated in a way that made my stomach turn. This wasn't a handful of confused rogues stumbling onto pack land. These were moving like a unit, spreading out at first, then converging again, hitting specific points with a precision that felt almost rehearsed."Get her inside!" Garrick barked at one of the younger scouts, already shifting, fur rippling across his arms before the sentence even finished.The scout grabbed my arm. "This way, come on..""Wait…" I tried to pull free, watching the chaos unfold across the yard, watching Ronan already gone from beside me, already three shapes deep into a fight I couldn't fully track."Alpha's orders," the scout said, hauling harder.I let him drag me a few steps before something in my gut told me to stop, some instinct I didn't fully underst

Odessa's POVThe attackers scattered within minutes of the fire finally dying down. The coordination that had driven them through the fence in the first place seemed to break; the second the ones inside the archive room went down, the rest melting back into the treeline like they'd never been there at all, dragging their unconscious with them where they could, abandoning the ones they couldn't.Ronan didn't let go of me for a long while after that. We just stood there in the wreckage of the archive room, smoke still curling up from the last of the embers, both of us too shaken to move much beyond breathing.It was Garrick's voice that finally pulled us back into motion, shouting orders across the yard, organizing what was left of the pack into search parties, medical triage, a headcount that none of us wanted to hear the results of.Few were wounded, badly. A dozen more with cuts and burns that would heal within a day or two. I helped where I could, fetching bandages, holding pressure

Odessa's POVThe full pack gathering happened three days later, called by Garrick himself, everyone crammed into the main hall the same way they had been the morning after the rogue attack, back when half the room had wanted me thrown out on principle alone.It felt different this time. I noticed it the second I walked in, standing near the back, except this time a few people shifted slightly to make room instead of shifting away.Garrick stood at the front, the room quieting fast the way it always did for him, though I caught a heaviness in his posture that wasn't fully lifted since Finn's burial."We lost one of our own three nights ago," he began, no preamble. "Finn. Nineteen years old. Braver than half the wolves twice his age, and I mean that."A low murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd, some heads bowing slightly."We also nearly lost more," he continued. "Few others were wounded badly enough to need real healing time. An archive nearly burned to nothing. And every sing