All Chapters of Bound to the Alpha She Was Raised to Hate : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Odessa's POVWe didn't hear anything for two full days.Garrick kept saying that was normal, that a full council session took time to convene properly, that no news wasn't automatically bad news. I believed him about as much as anyone believes reassurance during a wait like that, which is to say not very much at all.I spent most of it in the study with Ronan, going over what little we actually knew, trying to guess how the session might unfold. Marsh's name came up more than once."He's the only one who's already gone on record questioning Corvin," I said. "If anyone pushes back in that room, it's probably him.""Probably," Ronan agreed. "But one voice doesn't carry a council. He needs others willing to stand with him, and from what you've told me, most of them have spent years too scared or too comfortable to challenge Corvin directly.""Maybe this changes that. Vale soldiers dead on treaty land, signet rings, coded orders. That's not something even his allies can wave away easily."

Odessa's POVSeventy-two hours. I kept doing the math in my head, over and over, watching the number shrink with every hour that passed while Garrick and Ronan worked through every legal angle they could think of to challenge the writ."There has to be something," I said, pacing the length of the study for what felt like the hundredth time. "Some clause, some loophole, something.""We're looking," Ronan said, exhausted, papers spread across the desk in front of him. "The original treaty language is dense. Decades of amendments layered on top of each other. If there's a way out, it's buried somewhere in here.""And if there isn't?"Nobody answered that.My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I almost ignored it, too deep in the spiral of panic to care about anything outside this room. Then I saw the name on the screen.Nora.I hadn't heard from her in days, not since she'd shown up on Ironhollow's doorstep with that newspaper clipping that started everything. I answered fast, grateful for e

Odessa's POVNora slept in the room next to mine that night, exhausted enough that she finally drifted off despite everything, and I sat up long after the house had gone quiet, unable to shut my own mind down the same way.Thirty-one hours left. I started counting differently since Nora arrived, less abstract, ticking down toward something that felt inevitable no matter how many legal loopholes Ronan and Garrick tried to find in the treaty language.I found Ronan outside, sitting on the same porch steps where I'd once talked to Briar, staring out at the dark treeline the way he always seemed to when something weighed too heavy to sit with indoors."Can't sleep either," I said, sitting beside him."No." He didn't look over right away. "Found three more clauses in the treaty tonight. None of them help.""None?""One almost worked," he said. "A provision about coerced consent invalidating certain bonding agreements. But it requires formal proof of coercion, submitted through the same cou

Odessa's POVThe words hung in the chamber for a long, silent moment before anyone moved."The old way," Ronan repeated, his voice flat, controlled in a way I could tell was costing him effort. "You want to invoke a formal challenge. Over this.""It's within precedent," the elder said, unbothered. "Any pack member may challenge an heir's fitness to lead, provided the elders sanction it first. We're sanctioning it.""That's insane," I said, before I could stop myself. "This isn't about his fitness to lead. This is about who he loves.""It's about whether that love clouds his judgment enough to endanger this pack," Petra said,but her voice left no room for argument. "The challenge exists precisely for moments like this, when the council can't agree, when the pack itself is divided. Let the old law decide instead of endless debate."A murmur rippled through the gathered crowd, and I felt the weight of dozens of eyes shifting between

Odessa's POVIt happened so fast I barely tracked it.One second Ronan lay pinned beneath Tobias's full weight, jaws inches from ending everything. The next, his whole body exploded upward with a force that shouldn't have been possible given how much blood already matted his fur, throwing Tobias off balance and sideways in one violent, desperate motion.Tobias hit the ground hard, rolling, and Ronan was on him before he could recover, a blur of teeth and claws and sheer, furious momentum. The crowd surged forward slightly, gasps and shouts rising all around me, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the two shapes tangled together in the center of that circle.It ended fast after that.Ronan drove Tobias down hard, pinning him the way he'd been pinned moments before, jaws closing around his throat with enough controlled force to end this permanently if he chose to. Tobias went still beneath him, chest heaving, no fight left, no strength left to