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Chapter 13: Father

Author: AuthorRuby
last update publish date: 2026-06-09 21:40:20

I built HALE ATELIER on a cutting table in a studio apartment with a six-month-old asleep in a bassinet three feet away.

People don’t know that. The press version is cleaner: “Self-funded designer launches minimalist label, gains cult following, secures first stockist within eighteen months.” What that sentence doesn’t include is the part where I hand-stitched samples at 2 AM with milk stains on my shirt, or the part where I cried in a fabric store because I couldn’t afford the lining I needed
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  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 110: Fail You

    SAGECole's blood has dried into the lines of my palms. It's under my fingernails now, dark and stubborn, and I've stopped trying to wipe it off because there's nothing clean left to wipe it on. Forty minutes I've been sitting on this road with his head in my lap, watching his wolf work beneath the surface of his skin. The gash on his forehead has closed to a pink seam and the swelling around his eye is going down, but he hasn't opened his eyes, and his chest keeps catching mid-breath in a way that stops mine every single time.I should have screamed when the car hit. When the metal crumpled and the glass broke and his head snapped forward into the steering wheel, some sound should have come out of me, but Derek's hand was over my mouth before it could, and now the scream lives behind my ribs, building pressure with nowhere to go.A few feet away, Mason is curled against Nick's side. Nick's wolf hasn't moved since Derek and I dragged him out of the trees. His silver fur is matted dark

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 109: Severance

    EMILYThe ceiling is white and the room is cold and my wrists are burning.I blink until the fluorescent strip above me stops swimming. It hums, a thin whine I can feel in my molars. The air stings the back of my throat, antiseptic layered over something chemical that makes each breath feel like swallowing a coin.I try to sit. Leather catches both wrists. My ankles are free but my legs don't feel like mine. The metal bed is pulling heat straight out of my spine and the shaking starts in my shoulders and runs down through my ribs before my brain catches up to where I am and why and who put me here."Mia." My voice sounds like I swallowed gravel. "Where is Mia?""She's here."Alex. Behind me. I wrench my head sideways and the room tilts but I find him in the corner, legs crossed, tablet in his lap. Showered. Changed. Rested. Looking at him is like finding a photograph of someone you buried and realizing the person standing in front of you has the same face but nothing behind it."She's

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 108: The Lycan

    EMILYThe impact is a sound before it's a feeling. Metal giving way, a deep wet crunch, and then my body is airborne, the seatbelt locking across my chest as the car spins. Glass explodes inward. I don't think. I just grab. My arms find Mia and Mason and I curl around them like a shell closing, my back taking the spray, my head cracking against the window frame hard enough that stars bloom behind my eyes.We slide. We stop.The engine hisses. Steam vents from under the crumpled hood. My ears ring so loud I can't hear my own breathing, but I can feel it, ragged and shallow, catching on something sharp in my ribs.Under my arms, Mia trembles. A full-body shake I can feel through my chest. Mason is rigid, his small fingers clamped onto my wrist."Mama." Mia's voice is a wet whisper. "Mama, there's glass in your hair.""Stay down. Both of you. Don't move."I lift my head. The world tilts. Cole is slumped against the steering wheel, blood running from his hairline down the side of his face

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   107: Safe house

    NICKThe phone screen glows between us, casting harsh light over our faces. Alex's words sit there in the dark, smug and invasive. He knew about the moonlight. He knew about the third date, intimate details Emily shared with him years ago when he was someone she trusted. He's been hoarding those memories like currency, waiting to spend them the moment they would hurt her the most.Emily is sitting up in bed with the white sheets pooled around her waist. Her hand is still outstretched, frozen in the moment she handed me the phone. She keeps glancing toward the window where the moonlight falls across the pillow, the same moonlight Alex referenced in his message. Her chest is rising and falling too fast."He knows about the cabin," she whispers. "He knows things I only told him when I thought he was the one."I swing my legs off the bed and grab my jeans. "He knows what you told him, Em. That's a memory. It doesn't mean he's actually here.""He knew about the bedroom window." Her eyes ar

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 106: Sage and Cole 2

    I should go to my room. Close the door, open the laptop, work.I walk to the kitchen.He's leaning against the counter with a glass of water, sleeves rolled up, forearms still damp from Mason's bath negotiation. He doesn't look up."Kids are down," I say from the doorway."Good.""Mason called lukewarm a non-committal temperature.""He's not wrong."I open the fridge, grab a water, close the fridge, and lean against the opposite counter. Maximum distance. Six feet."You can take the first shift," I say. "I'll sleep and relieve you at two.""I'm not doing shifts. I'm staying up.""All night?""Yes.""That's unnecessary.""It's protocol.""Protocol." I take a sip. "Your favourite word. Right behind drop it and goodnight."He looks up for the first time since dinner. His dark eyes find mine across the kitchen and something in my ribs tightens."Go to bed, Sage.""There it is. Three words, right on schedule.""It's not a dismissal. It's practical. One of us should sleep.""Then YOU sleep.

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   105: Sage and Cole 1

    The first crisis happens fourteen minutes after Nick and Emily leave.Mia wants mac and cheese. Mason wants pasta with butter. I'm standing in the kitchen of the Blackwood estate holding a box of macaroni in one hand and a box of penne in the other while two children stare at me from the kitchen table like opposing counsel."They're both pasta," I say."Mac and cheese has CHEESE," Mia says."I can put cheese on the penne.""That's not mac and cheese. That's pasta pretending."Mason sits with his hands folded on the table. "I just want butter. Butter is easy.""I'M not being hard," Mia says. "I'm being SPECIFIC."Cole walks through the kitchen on his way to check windows, sees me holding two boxes and two children at war."Make both," he says without stopping."I'm not making two pots for two kids."He's already gone. His footsteps fade down the hallway and I stare at the empty doorway and add it to the list of things I want to throw at his head.I make both.Mia eats her mac and chees

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 88: Safe

    MASONThe car stops and Jessica pulls me out and we’re somewhere with little planes.Not the big airport where Dad took me once to watch planes land. A small place with a fence and a gate and a man who waves Jessica through without checking anything. It’s dark and the lights on the ground are blue

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 66: Ruined Jacket

    EMILYNick walks into my studio carrying a backpack and a boy who isn't crying anymore but hasn't started talking yet either. Mason rides on his hip with his face pressed into his father's neck, arms locked around his shoulders. He's holding himself still. Dry-eyed. Breath shallow and even against

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 49: Seduction?

    NICKCole is sitting across from me looking like a man who already knows how this ends.“Tell me again,” I say.“I set up the resort. Donated the trip through Reed Consulting. Structured it through the school competition.”“Without telling me.”“You wanted time with her outside the apartment. You s

  • RECLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: THE ALPHA’S HIDDEN HEIR   Chapter 29: Pretending

    NICKMason is finally asleep.It took forty minutes. He cried for the first twenty not loud, not the thrashing kind, just the kind that a five-year-old does when he’s too tired to sob but too upset to stop. He asked me three times if Mia was really his sister. I said yes three times. On the third o

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