All Chapters of The Cursed Alpha King's Witch Bride : Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

THALIA POV My bare feet hit stone slick with dew, and I didn't slow down. My heart kept thundering in my chest; I could hear the shouts of the wizards closing in.I didn't expect my cover to be blown this early. I didn't bother checking how close they were; my eyes were trained on the east gate, the ivy-covered gate from here, the one the guards always forgot to check twice a night. I had snuck out to the orchard over a hundred times through that gate as a young girl.My lungs burned as the gust of wind left my nose raw and tingly. My blueprint was still folded against my chest, tucked into the front of my nightrobe like it mattered more than my own feet digging through the raw, wooden stones.Behind me, the torchlights closed in even more as I moved along the upper terrace. They started shouting my name.“Thalia, stop right there!” My heart skipped as my brain processed the implications; no guard would call me by my name, it only meant they woke my parents.I kept on running, my rob

RONAN POVI stirred slightly, my arm gone numb where it was tucked beneath Isolde's neck—a habit I'd warned her against more than once, though she never seemed to remember it by morning.I pulled her closer against my chest instead of moving it, my eyes catching the faint tracks of dried tears at the side of her face. She'd cried again in her sleep, hoping, probably, that I wouldn't take a new bride.She'd never said it outright in the daylight. She didn't have to. I'd learned the shape of her worry a long time ago, the way her jaw tightened even in rest."No one can replace you," I murmured against her hair, stirring her gently awake. Her pale blue eyes found mine almost immediately, the way they always did, like some part of her stayed half-alert even in sleep."You were moving," she said, groggy, rubbing at her eyes."It's nothing. Get a little more sleep."I brushed the hair back from her face and pressed my mouth briefly to the side of her head before turning to stand. Her hand c

THALIA POVThe palace gates came into view just as the sky was turning that pale, bruised gray that isn't quite morning yet, and for a long moment I simply sat there staring at them, unable to make my body want to move any closer.I had grown up on stories about this place. Not the palace specifically — the land itself, the whole dark shape of it in my childhood imagination, wolves who peeled the skin from witches who wandered too close, bloodlines with tempers too old and too violent to reason with. I used to think I was too clever to actually believe any of it. Sitting outside those gates with my ankle throbbing and my magic still sealed shut inside me, I found I believed every last word.I had run last night. I had actually tried, properly tried, not the half-hearted rebellion of a girl who expects to fail — and something out there in that forest had still been faster than me, stronger than me, closer to whatever those old stories described than I wanted to admit. I'd been carried