Semua Bab The Alpha King's Human Obsession: Bab 1 - Bab 10

Marlowe woke to silk sheets and the wrong ceiling.For one long, disoriented breath she thought she was still dreaming, because nothing about the room made sense against the last thing she remembered. Stone walls stretched high above her, threaded with old wood beams that looked older than the country she'd grown up in. A fire cracked low in a hearth big enough to stand in. The bed beneath her was massive, soft in a way that felt obscene compared to the mattress she'd been sleeping on for the last three years, and none of it belonged to her.She sat up so fast her head spun, and the memory slammed back into her all at once. The bar. The man with the gold eyes. His arms closing around her and the world tilting sideways until the darkness took everything else."Ronan," she said out loud, testing the name like it might explain what had happened to her.The room didn't answer. She was alone, still dressed in the same clothes from the club, her robe gone somewhere between then and now. She

"Who is that?" Marlowe asked before Ronan had even fully crossed the room to her, her attention caught by the man standing just inside the doorway, blood drying dark along his forearms, watching her with an intensity that had nothing to do with concern and everything to do with something colder.Ronan's jaw tightened. "Alaric. A member of my council." He didn't look back at the man, though his voice carried an edge meant clearly for him as much as for her. "He wasn't invited into this room.""I came the moment I heard rogues breached the courtyard," Alaric said, stepping further inside despite the obvious lack of welcome, his eyes never leaving Marlowe. "Forgive me for assuming the safety of the king mattered more than protocol. Though I see now the real danger tonight had very little to do with wolves at the gate.""Careful," Ronan said, low, a warning Marlowe felt more than heard."I'm simply observing what the entire pack will be asking by morning." Alaric's gaze flicked over Marlo

Ronan crossed the room and took her face gently between his hands, gold eyes steady despite the storm clearly moving behind them. "I promise you," he said, "on everything I am, that no harm will come to her while I have breath left to prevent it. But Marlowe, I need you to understand something before I send anyone north to secure her." His jaw tightened, the weight of what he was about to say settling into his voice like stone. "If whoever's behind this has already found a way to reach into the human world and touch the people you love, bringing her here, into Blackwood territory where we can actually protect her, may be the only option left that doesn't end in tragedy.""You want to bring her here." Marlowe pulled back enough to search his face, half expecting to find the same possessive certainty that had driven him to take her out of the club without asking. Instead she found only exhaustion, and fear that looked genuinely aimed at losing something rather than gaining it. "Into a w

"Speak," Ronan said, already rising to his feet, every trace of the gentleness from a moment ago replaced by the hard focus of a king bracing for the worst.The scout swayed slightly, catching himself against the doorframe, blood from the gash at his temple dripping steadily onto the stone floor. "Southern ridge," he managed. "The fortress ruins. She's there. I saw her myself, through a window, alive, tied but unharmed as far as I could tell."Relief crashed through Marlowe so hard her knees nearly buckled. "She's alive.""She's alive," the scout confirmed. "But my king, it's not just Vex's people holding her. There were at least thirty wolves stationed around that fortress, more organization than any rogue pack I've seen in years. And there's something else." He hesitated, glancing at Ronan like he wasn't certain how to deliver the rest. "I recognized one of the guards. Not a rogue. A Blackwood wolf, one of Alaric's personal guard."The silence that followed was absolute. Marlowe wat

"Walk into it." Ronan's voice cut through the chaos of the fight, cold with a fury that made even Torren's guards falter mid-strike. "You mean to tell me every step of this rescue was engineered?""Every step," Torren confirmed, satisfaction dripping from the words. "The letter. The abduction. Even the scout who so conveniently spotted me at the gate and lived long enough to report it. Alaric wanted you here, my king. Desperate, reckless, exactly where he needed you."The boots pounding down the stairwell grew louder, and Marlowe's mind raced through everything Torren had just confessed, every carefully placed piece of a trap they'd walked into with their eyes wide open. "Why," she demanded. "Why go to all this trouble instead of just attacking the palace directly?""Because a king who dies defending his walls is a martyr," Torren said. "A king who dies chasing a human woman and her friend into a trap he should have seen coming is a cautionary tale. Alaric intends for the council to r