บททั้งหมดของ RIDE OR DIE: The Alpha's Reckless Queen : บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

Turns out my arsonist has a logo.Ronan spread three photographs across the long table in his office — printed off some pack database I didn't ask too many questions about, given everything else I'd learned to accept without asking in the past week — and tapped the middle one with two fingers."Vipers," he said. "Formerly Ashgrove's second pack, before the split. Now our closest and most persistent enemy."I'd asked for this meeting the morning after Killian and I found the bike at the property line, expecting resistance, expecting another round of not tonight, Rae dressed up in different words. Instead Ronan had led me straight to his office without argument, pulled a locked drawer I hadn't known existed, and started laying out everything the pack had on record about the rival club — territory maps, old photographs, a genealogy chart with more branches crossed out than left intact. It was, I realized slowly, the first time he'd volunteered information instead of making me drag it out

I've picked locks, hot-wired bikes, and broken into exactly one filing cabinet belonging to a werewolf.I told myself, riding the wave of frustration that carried me back to the main compound two nights later, that this wasn't reckless. This was practical. Ronan had made it abundantly clear he wasn't going to hand over the truth about my father on his own timeline, which meant I needed to find it on mine, and I'd spent enough of my life fixing things other people said couldn't be fixed to believe patience was always the smarter option.I waited until I knew he'd be gone — a pack matter across the territory line, Killian had mentioned offhand at dinner, the kind of business that would keep the Alpha out past midnight. It felt like a betrayal even as I planned it, sneaking into a man's private office while he was busy protecting his own people, but I reasoned my way past the guilt the same way I'd reasoned my way past every uncomfortable feeling since the fire: by telling myself the end

I've been kissed before. I've never been claimed.The kiss started rough, all the frustration and fear and unspoken longing of the past two weeks finally breaking loose at once, his hand fisted gently in the collar of my jacket like he needed something to hold onto, mine sliding up into his hair like I'd been waiting to do exactly that since the night at the gate. It deepened fast, both of us losing whatever careful distance we'd spent two weeks pretending to maintain, and for one long, unbroken stretch of time there was nothing in the world except the two of us and the office door shut against everything waiting outside it.I'd been kissed plenty of times before this — clumsy high school kisses, a handful of relationships that never quite fit right, the ordinary give and take of two people who liked each other well enough to try. None of it had prepared me for this. This felt less like affection and more like something ancient finally recognizing its match, a current running under my

I've never watched a grown man break the truth to someone like it was a bone he had to set himself.We sat in his office an hour later, the ruined garage still smoldering somewhere behind us, and I watched Ronan pour two glasses of whiskey neither of us had asked for, his hands not quite steady as he did it. He hadn't spoken since the wall. I'd let the silence stretch as long as I could stand it, but my patience for his careful pacing had burned down along with everything else that night.I watched him circle the room twice before he finally sat down across from me, like the truth he was carrying needed physical distance covered before he could set it down. Whatever composure he usually wore like a second skin had entirely deserted him tonight — his jaw was tight, his hands restless on the desk, every part of him bracing for something he clearly expected to cost him everything once it was said."Tell me," I said. "Whatever it is. I've had enough of the parts you leave out."He set the

I have never driven that fast in my life, and I've raced actual werewolves.My heart had gone from a dull, grieving ache to a hammering, adrenaline-soaked drumbeat in the space of a single glance in the mirror, every ounce of the night's earlier heartbreak shoved aside by pure animal instinct. Fight, flee, survive — the hierarchy of priorities rearranged itself instantly, and my hands found the wheel with a grip that ached, some old, practical part of me grateful, absurdly, that I'd at least chosen a car with a decent engine for whatever came next.My father used to say the backroads around Ashgrove were the only inheritance that actually mattered — not the garage, not the tools, just the maps he kept in his head of every shortcut, every washed-out turn, every stretch of gravel too rough for anyone without a decade of practice to take at speed. I'd learned those roads riding shotgun in his truck as a kid, half-listening while he narrated turns like scripture, more interested back then