All Chapters of UNTIL THE LAST ALPHA BEGS : Chapter 11 - Chapter 18

POV: RhydianThe fog never really left the garden these days. It just sat low in the grass, turning the stone paths grey and slick. I stood back under the shadow of the archway, my boots damp, watching Freya drop into her training stance.Sable was circling her, whispering things I couldn't catch even with my ears straining. The drills they did didn't look like any pack work I’d ever seen on the border. Freya wasn't just learning to defend herself. She was digging for something deep inside her own skin.Every single time she shifted now, her wolf came out larger. The fur was turning darker,, looking less like a standard pack omega and more like something born out of the ancient woods before the treaties were signed. Her movements had gone from careful to lethal and precise.Watching her grow stronger made this weird knot form right behind my ribs. It was a tight, annoying pressure that I absolutely refused to put a name to. I was the guard. I got paid to keep her alive and keep everyo

POV: FreyaThe gardens felt empty now, even with the guards stationed every ten paces along the walls.Rhydian had been distant ever since the day the fountain shattered. He didn't stand under the archway anymore; he stayed out near the perimeter line, his posture stiff and his eyes looking right past me whenever our paths crossed. He wouldn't even look at my face.I told myself it didn't matter. I had much larger concerns to worry about, but the sudden absence of his easy conversation left this quiet, irritating space in my days that I hadn't realized he’d filled.“You're distracted, girl,” Sable rasped, her voice cutting through the damp afternoon air as I finished another breathing cycle. “The mind must be completely clear if you want to hold the floorboards down.”“I'm fine,” I muttered, my hand automatically dropping down to brush against my belly.“You are lying,” Sable said, her eyes narrowing as she stepped closer, the smell of smoke drifting off her skirts. “The ancient thing

POV: EryxThey put me in the western wing on the third floor. It’s a nice room if you like cedar paneling and the smell of expensive beeswax polish covering up the scent of old damp.There are two guards stationed right outside the door. I can hear the larger one shifting his weight every four minutes—his left boot has a loose heel that clicks against the stone floorboards.Every twenty minutes, another one walks past the narrow window down in the courtyard, his head tilted up just enough to check the glass.It’s a standard box.Zevren thinks he’s being subtle, keeping me close where he can watch my breath fog up the windowpane, trying to figure out how much Oren told me before I left the peaks.He’s weighing me on a scale in his head. Am I useful or am I just a nuisance he can dump in the river lines with a stone tied to my ankles?It’s a tedious game. I’ve played three variations of it with four different Alphas since I turned twenty, and they all use the same script. They think the

POV: FreyaThe truth had been sitting around me for days like a bad smell I kept pretending not to notice.Veda’s careful pauses whenever the subject of my tonics came up. Sable’s expression the first time she looked at me, like she knew something she had no right to know.Eryx showing up out of nowhere and talking about guardian bloodlines like he was reading from a book I had somehow already started bleeding through.Rhydian, with that hollow, distant stare that made him look like he was standing beside me in body only. He had not really looked at me since the full moon ritual, and that had hurt in a way I could not quite explain without sounding pathetic.And then there was Zevren.His hands. His voice. The ancient words he had spoken while the moon sat above us like an open wound.Even now, days later, I could still feel the ghost-pressure of his fingers on my skin, as if my body had memorized the touch and refused to forget it. I would be standing still and suddenly my side would