All Chapters of Destined to Save the Cursed Alpha: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

ANAIYAHI'd been standing outside Adrian's bedroom door for three minutes before I knocked.Three minutes of listening to sounds I had no business hearing. Three minutes of staring at the wood grain, telling myself this was fine—just another morning. I'd survived worse.I knocked."Enter."I pushed the door open.The she-wolf in his bed didn't bother covering herself. Neither did Adrian. He lay there watching me with those green eyes, waiting to see what I'd do with it.I looked at the wall behind him."I said come in." His voice carried the particular softness that meant he was paying close attention. "Look at me, Anaiyah."'Don't.'I looked at him.He smiled.The woman beside him was Mara—a warrior's daughter with a ranked family, a healthy wolf, and zero interest in acknowledging my existence. She stretched slowly, deliberately, and slid out from under the sheets without a single glance in my direction. Omegas weren't worth acknowledging. The door clicked shut behind her.Adrian ha

ANAIYAHAdrian stood behind his desk when I was pushed through the door. He lifted a silver tray without looking at me and held it across the desk."Deliver this to Alpha Dravenmoor's quarters."I crossed the room and took it.The cup was full—dark liquid, wine by appearance. My fingers wrapped around the tray, and I walked out.The smell reached me in the corridor. A shadow beneath the wine, bitter in a way that had no business being there. Lunara stirred immediately.'Put it down.'I kept walking.Deep down, I knew what the smell meant. Couldn't have explained how, but I just did. Something inside me had recognized it, and what it recognized was dangerous.I'd taken it anyway, because the alternative would be immediate and severe, and I knew exactly what that looked like. I had the healed bruises to remind me when I forgot.So, I climbed the stairs with the tray level and my mind turning the same question over with every step: I wasn't going to watch him drink it. I knew that alread

ANAIYAHThe bed was too soft.That was the first thing I registered—not the absence beside me, not the cold where warmth had been, but the unfamiliar luxury of a mattress that didn't feel like punishment. My storage room cot had prepared me for a lot of things. Not this.Then his scent reached me.Cedarwood and cold smoke, woven into the sheets, still present everywhere except the space that mattered. I reached across without thinking. My hand found nothing but cooling linen.I pulled it back immediately.'He's gone,' Lunara murmured."I noticed."I sat up. The room sat exactly as it had last night—nothing displaced except the obvious vacancy—and I stared at the empty indentation on the other side of the mattress until I caught myself doing it and stopped.Fine. He left. This was fine. I'd spent thirteen years not expecting anything from anyone; one night wasn't going to restructure that.'Mine,' Lunara pressed. Quiet and unhappy."Absolutely not." I swung my legs off the bed. "We don

ANAIYAHThe Crescent wolves bowed one by one, and I watched them do it.People who had spat in my food. People who had looked through me in corridors. People who had told their children that I was what happened to traitors' daughters—all of them lowering their heads to the man who had just dismantled their Alpha in under ten minutes.Thirteen years. That was how long they had bowed to Adrian.Apparently, the calculation was simpler than I'd thought.Nikolai stood in the center of the courtyard with the late afternoon light behind him, and even from twenty feet away his presence was something you felt before you saw. His wolf pressing against everything, restrained but unmistakable.I forced myself not to look at him.'He's looking at you,' Lunara offered."Thank you. That's very helpful."Adrian was still on the ground when two Dravenmoor soldiers moved to take his arms. His expression was a study in controlled devastation—the particular horror of a man discovering his entire identity