All Chapters of CLAIMED BY THE RUTHLESS ALPHA KING : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the DarkCouldn't sleep after the feast. there was too much sitting in my head, Ashby's needling, Kael's warning, the look on Damian's face right before he turned back to his court. Gave up somewhere past midnight and went looking for water instead of just staring at the ceiling.The kitchens were empty that late, everybody long gone to bed, just banked coals glowing low in the hearth and the smell of bread from whatever they'd baked earlier. Found a cup, filled it, stood there a minute just breathing, glad for one room in that castle that didn't come with somebody watching me.Then I heard it. Footsteps in the corridor, slow, careful, the kind of careful that's not about respecting anybody's sleep. I froze, cup halfway to my mouth, listening.They stopped right outside the door.Told myself it was probably a guard doing rounds. Kept telling myself that right up until the door eased open an inch, no knock, nothing, just a sliver of dark hallway and somebo

Chapter Thirteen: The MountainHe came for me before Greta did, which hadn't happened once since I got here. Knocked once, let himself in when I called out, stood in the doorway looking like he hadn't slept any more than I had."You said tomorrow," I said."It's tomorrow."He wasn't wrong. Gray light through the window, early enough the castle still had that hushed, half asleep feel to it. I sat up in the chair I'd fallen asleep in past four, blanket sliding off again, and watched him cross the room and sit down across from me the same way he had the night before, elbows on his knees, like he needed something solid to hold onto before he started."I don't know how to do this," he said. "Ran through it a hundred ways since I left last night. None of them make it easier to say.""Just say it."He looked at me a long second. Then he reached into his shirt and pulled out a thin silver chain, small moon pendant on the end of it, worn smooth from somebody's thumb running over it for years.

Chapter FifteenThe claiming got set for three weeks out, which Greta told me was fast by Black Moon standards and slow by how nervous it made Damian, who apparently wanted it done the following week and got talked out of it by half his own council."Three weeks gives us time to secure the grounds properly," Kael said, going over some list with me in the small library, the room that had turned into something like a home base for me the last few days. "Word's already out about who you are to him. Rush this and we're rushing straight into whatever Nightshade's planning without knowing what it is yet.""And if we wait, they get three more weeks to plan it.""They get three more weeks either way. Might as well spend it making sure we're not walking in blind." He tapped the list. "Guards doubled at every entrance during the ceremony. Nobody gets within a hundred feet of you who isn't vetted twice over. Damian wanted triple vetting. Talked him down to double before he started interrogating

Chapter SeventeenDamian asked me to come with him to see Rowan's mate, which surprised me enough I could not answer right away."I Don't have to," he said quickly, like he already talked himself into taking it back. "Just thought. You've lost people too. Not the same way, but you know what it is to have your life rearranged by something you didn't choose.""I'll come."The lower district sat at the base of the hill the castle stood on, closer to the ground in every sense, narrower streets, smaller houses, wolves who worked with their hands instead of titles. Damian didn't ride through it the way I pictured a King might, no procession, no announcing himself. He walked, plain cloak over his shoulders, and the wolves we passed nodded to him like someone they recognized rather than someone they feared, which didn't match anything I'd been told about him before I got here."They don't look at you the way the court does," I said."Court's never had to depend on me for anything real. Grai

Chapter NineteenSable wasn't in the laundry the next morning.Noticed before Damian did, standing in the doorway of the wash house scanning faces that weren't hers, a knot forming low in my stomach that had nothing to do with the pregnancy this time. The other girls kept their heads down over the basins, not meeting my eyes, which told me something on its own."Where's Sable," I asked one of them, a younger girl with flour still dusted on her hands from the kitchens she must have come from."Didn't come in today." Didn't look up. "Nobody's seen her since last night."Damian went very still beside me. "Since when exactly."The girl finally lifted her eyes, caught the weight in his voice, looked between the two of us like she was reconsidering how much she wanted in on this conversation. "Someone said she got called to Lord Ashby's household late. Something about mending needing done before morning. Last anyone saw her."The knot in my stomach turned into something closer to nausea. "